August 17, 2019 • 42 mins
How do girls' relationships with their fathers influence who they grow up to become? This classic episode unpacks the psychology of "daddy issues" and the unique dynamics of father-daughter bonding.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie Ooh and Samantha, and welcome to Stuff.
I'm Never Told your protection of I Heartradio's House to Works.
We've been doing that intro for a while now and
I just did it out of memory for the first time,
(00:24):
and I'm feeling really proud of myself because I couldn't
you probably could. Um for this this classic episode, we
wanted to to bring back one that Kristen and Caroline
did UM called Daddy's Girls, about the relationships between fathers
and daughters. And we recently did an episode on daddy
(00:45):
issues and they touch on this on that whole thing
a bit in this episode, and um, It's just been
on my mind recently and I've always kind of been
curious about we just have interesting I find instinct dynamics
in our society about the relationships between children and their parents.
(01:07):
So inevitable, inevitable. You're right, there's a quote I wanted
to say, but I forgot it immediately, So do is useless. Useless,
But this episode is not useless, and we hope you enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff, Mom Never Told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:34):
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this episode is part two
of Weird Parental Psychology Week because in the last episode
we talked all about the Mama's Boy trope, and today
we're going to talk about daddy's girls and daddy issues,
(01:55):
right because you know, we we started off our Mama's Boy,
which I know you listened to. We started off our
Mom's Boy episode talking about kind of the darker side
of not only being a mom's boy, but what people
assumed about you and what that meant. Hitler, Yeah, we talked.
We talked a lot about Hitler, a lot about Hitler. Um.
We're not going to talk about Hitler this time that
(02:15):
I know of, Kristen Um, but we are going to
talk about daddy issues because that is never meant as
a positive thing. No, it's not. And it hadn't occurred
to me until I don't know what I was reading,
but I was on the internet and someone made some
quip about, you know, insulting a woman by calling by
(02:37):
saying that she must have daddy issues and a little
stuff I've never told you. Belle went off in my
brain thinking, why is that's a thing? Why is that
I mean not not why our daddy issues a thing,
although we will talk about that, But why is that
this pop cultural knee jerk insult directed at women and
(02:59):
a lot acted at feminists. Now, for our international listeners
who might not be so familiar with this term, daddy issues,
for a little bit of a very casual definition of
what it is. According to the Urban Dictionary, it's whenever
a female has a screwed up, for the podcast, relationship
with her father or absence of a father figure during
(03:20):
her childhood, so it tends to spill into any adult
relationship they embark on, usually to the chagrin of any
poor male in her life. So stereotypically, women with daddy
issues are needy, obsessive, dramatic, insecure and looking for love
and all the wrong places. Well that'll be in my
head for the rest of the day. Um. But it's
also tacked onto women and girls who are specifically attracted
(03:43):
to older men, and just people assume that something's got
to be wrong with you. If you're attracted to somebody
who's even a little bit older, Yeah, you must be
secretly wanting to have sex with your father. And then
there's a whole idea that vocal feminists must certainly of
toxic relationships or Harvard hatred towards their dad's because why
(04:04):
else would they have an express distaste with a patriarchal
status quo feminists be heaven daddy issues that that is
one of the most like just the hallmark of a
trollish criticism that you will get on the internet if
you talk about gender equality long enough. Not that it's
(04:25):
ever happened to me. And for the record, I love
my dad. I have a perfectly healthy relationship with him.
But why am I even having to defend that? I
don't know, Kristen, I don't know, because we're about to
talk about why that's so good that you have a
relationship with your dad. Yeah. So there is a whole
bunch of research on the dynamics and effects and impacts
(04:49):
of the father daughter relationship, I would say even more
so comparing it to what we read about for our
Mama's Boy episode. It seems like this father daughter relationship
has been put even more so under the academic microscope
than the mother's son relationship. Yeah, Whereas it seems like
(05:10):
a lot of the Mama's Boy research, You know, if
there was any academic psychological research was all really early,
and it was all super negative and awful, and it
was all sort of justifying why being a mama's boy
is so terrible. It was very homophobic, very homophobic. Whereas
the studies into being a daddy's girl or having quote
(05:30):
daddy issues or whatever, it's much more um encouraging of
that relationship, yeah, encouraging if you have an active paternal presence,
it's very pro dad being involved with her daughter. Whereas
on the flip side, there's a lot of panic where
if you have a negative relationship or non existent relationship
(05:50):
with a father figure, then you will have a lot
of premarital sex, which we will get into more. There's
a lot of sex panic surrounding this whole daddy issues
and daddy's girl things. So there was a two thousand
fourteen study published in the Men's Studies Press called Fathers
in the Dorm Room The Unique Influence of Fathers and
(06:11):
Mothers on Young Adult Functioning, And it was really fascinating
because it wasn't so much focused on the father daughter relationship,
but rather just the paternal influence on kids, sons and
daughters alike and how they developed psychologically, their self esteem,
rates of depression, and previous studies cited in this two
(06:34):
thousand fourteen study note how dad's in particular have a
very strong influence, even stronger, some would say, than moms
on young kids. Yeah, so they cited a study, for instance,
that found that father's acceptance might correlate stronger to children's
(06:56):
psychological adjustment versus mother's acceptance. Similarly, a two thousand eight
study found that a father's indifference was more related to
children's scores on measures of depression, and a two thousand
to study looked at father's sensitivity during toddler play and
tied it to predicted attachment representations and adolescents versus the
(07:20):
mother's influence. So all of these studies are pointing to
dad having a super strong influence on all all number
of things. Yeah, and this isn't just within American culture.
A lot of these study findings do apply across culturally
as well. And in this study sample the kids that
they looked at for the father's in the dorm room,
which is such a creepy image study, they found that
(07:44):
father's acceptance was substantially more variable than mother's acceptance levels.
And this is a theme that you see come up
a lot when it comes to the father daughter relationship.
This idea that we sometimes as children take our there's
love for granted, whereas a father's love and acceptance of us.
(08:06):
I think that acceptance party is really important, is something
that we feel like we have to earn. Yeah, and
so I had like like a real, like real talk
moment with myself when I was reading these studies. Yeah,
I was real talking, real talking to myself like, hey,
you you're all right, You're right, But no, I I
can feel this, uh from my own experience because my mother,
(08:29):
I'm an only raised an only child, uh, and my
mother was like we were super close. I was more
of a mama's girl than a daddy's girl. Even though
my dad and I were always close and had a
good relationship, but it always felt like, oh, well, I'm
always perfect in my mother's eyes, Like she's always going
to think I'm perfect and that I'm the prettiest and
the best and the smartest. Um. Whereas my dad is
(08:52):
a little more on the stoic side. And so it's
like I knew he was proud of me, but I
really felt like I had to work harder to earn
that pride and that acceptance and that attention. I can
completely empathize with it, and and that seems to like
a common theme that you see in in this study
(09:12):
in fact from two thousand and fourteen about how we
as kids are really attuned to and sensitive to um
our father's levels of acceptance and also rejection. And one
key quote that jumped out to me in the study
discussion was that parental acceptance and rejection may be perceived
as a reflection of the self's social worth. Thus, low
(09:36):
acceptance and high rejection by fathers compared to mothers may
carry more negative psychological consequences. Dad's beware interesting well. Psychologist
Peggy Drexler, who's the author of Our Fathers, Ourselves UM,
talks about the fact that many daughters this is a quote,
(09:56):
many daughters idolize their fathers because they don't know them
well enough to to see their flaws and therefore desire
his approval. She talks a lot about how stereotypically, uh culturally,
the father is working outside the home more, maybe he
travels more than mom does, maybe mom's home more, being
the primary caregiver, And it's that whole like allure of
(10:18):
this powerful man outside the house and if he's oh well,
if he's so powerful and needed out there, then obviously
he's like a big shot. And there's that whole idea
that dad is this sort of other figure. He's a
little bit more distant from us than Mom, who is,
you know, very close in terms of being a caregiver.
So we've got to work harder and try to impress
him more. Although I do have a feeling that narrative
(10:40):
is rapidly changing as you do have more stay at
home dads for instance, or moms who are the breadwinners,
and and dad's in general just being more invested in childcare.
And I think that would be a good way, for
a positive way for it to be evolving. Um, but
if we look a little more closely to at that
father daughter relationship, not just looking at kids in general,
(11:02):
looking now at dad's and daughters, what kind of dynamics
tend to emerge. So there's also this common refrain that
fathers are the first men whose love girls seek out.
And a lot of this, too, you have to keep
in mind, is coming from a very heteronormative framework. Um,
(11:24):
there's this important importance of the father figure in terms
of you know, being that that first guy that whose
love and affection girls want to win over is based
on the assumption that you know, in the in the future,
she will be seeking the love and affection of other men,
and so dads thus established our earliest models of what
(11:44):
we expect relationships with men to be like. And then
our relationship attachment styles, which we've talked a lot before
on the podcast anxious attachment, secure attachment, et cetera. Then
flow from there, thanks or no thanks, death. Yeah, I
mean I can I can totally see how this this
goes beyond just like being a stereotype and something that
(12:06):
people assume. I can totally see how dad would be
a model, and psychologist Jennifer Cromberg basically says, yeah, Yeah,
basically that's that's how that works. She says, in my
years of psychology practice, I've met very few women who
didn't unconsciously or consciously pick a romantic partner based on
her dad. Talking about it's true for whether she a
woman dates a man because he's like her father or
(12:28):
because he's nothing like her dad. Somehow, it's all based
one way or another on her relationship with her father. Yeah,
And we actually did a podcast a while back now
called Dewey Mary Our Parents, which if you want, if
you want to dig more into this kind of psychology,
you can head over to stuff Mom Never Told You
dot com and look in our podcast archive, which you
(12:50):
can get to by clicking on the podcast tab and
scrolling all the way down and you'll see a button
browse all of our podcasts and the episode title is
do We Marry Our Parents? But back to dads and daughters.
What daughters say they want more from their dads and
perhaps to divert these so called daddy issues, that negative
(13:14):
baggage that we you know, hear about so often in
a very flip kind of way. Um. According to a
two thousand eleven study in contemporary sexuality, what daughters in
the in this case, college aged daughters wanted more from
their dads was quote understanding men, suggesting ways to deal
with pressure to have sex, sharing their own experiences about adolescence,
(13:35):
dating insects when they, as in the ads, were adolescents,
communicating values, providing more information on sexual risk topics, and
being more open and comfortable when talking to their daughters.
Because this entire study was looking at how dads talked
to their daughters about sex and the answer is not
very much, because that's uncomfortable. As a lot of the
(13:58):
male psychologists they talked to say, yeah, it can be
uncomfortable if you are a dad to talk to your
daughter about sex, because then it gets into questions of
what did you do dad, and then having to stay
out loud well, I was young and horny once, and
then the awkward silence that ensues. Right, Yeah, the whole
idea about dad being all like, hey, kiddo and poling
(14:20):
around with you before puberty, and then puberty hits and
suddenly dad feels like he's in an awkward like just
talk to your mother face. Yeah, because I'm sure for
a lot of dad's there's you know, a line that
they want to respect and don't want to cross. But
also to you hear from these these older daughters saying
that they, you know, wish that there had been more
(14:41):
recognition of the fact that, yeah, they were growing up
and that's not a scary thing, and it would have
been nice from that primary model of what men are
like in relationships to have one that's open and honest
and able to talk about things like sex. Yeah, But
to be fair, neither of my parents talked to me
about sex, so that one, that one wasn't all on dad. Yeah,
(15:03):
this is true, and I mean my mom definitely talked
to me more about it, and the messages that I
got from my dad about sex were more in the
sense of no, you don't want to know what happens
in a boy's mind, which, for the record, people not
a good message to give to your daughters. Well, Kristen,
we have a lot more to talk about, but first
(15:25):
we're going to take a quick break. When it comes
to mailing and shipping, it can seem like a no
win situation because it eats up valuable time going to
the post office and it's also expensive. Luckily, we know
a better way with stamps dot com, where you can
buy and print official US postage for any letter package
(15:46):
right from your desk. Plus, stamps dot com is even
more powerful than a postage meter at just a fraction
of the cost, and you can save up to compared
to a postage meter, and you don't have to go
back to the post office. Right now, you can use
our promo code stuff to access a special offer. It's
(16:07):
a no risk trial that includes a bonus offer with
a digital scale up to fifty five dollars of free postage,
So don't wait. Go to stamps dot com before you
do anything else. Click on the microphone at the top
of the homepage and type in stuff that stamps dot
com and enter stuff. And now back to the show.
(16:28):
Speaking of messages that dads are giving their daughters, what
happens when daughters don't have those ideal, strong, warm relationships
with dad. Study looked at stress responses that women experience
and found that those who had reported relationships with their
(16:50):
dad characterized by rejection, chaos, and coercion ended up having
basically higher stress hormone levels, so cortisol levels and and
but before a task that they anticipated to be stressful,
and had higher cortisol in response to a problem discussion
with a friend. They were also more likely to self
disclose about psychosocial stressors. Yeah, that disclosure thing is something
(17:14):
that comes up a lot in terms of corelates behavioral corelates.
For women who have dysfunctional relationships with their dads, there
is a lot more disclosure going on. And I'm not
sure why, but that was just something that I noticed
from the research. Um, But in that particular instance, the
opposite was true for the women who you know had
(17:35):
self reported father daughter relationships characterized by warmth, autonomy, support,
and structure. They actually on a physiological level, managed stressful
situations better. And Caroline, you know, what is incredible to
me is the fact that this relationship has been studied
down to a physiological level. Did you see any physiological
(17:56):
biological studies about the influence of mother's relationship on their
sons and how they manage stressed Definitely not. There were
just a handful that talked about aggression versus emotional literacy.
It's fascinating when you compare what we what we focus on, uh,
in terms of you know, studies and all that. When
(18:17):
it comes to the risky behavior, risky business comes up
a lot in father daughters studies. There was a two
thousand fourteen study which found that female participants who reported
low psychological presence from their dads were likelier to engage
in risky behavior like drug use and hookups. And there's
also a two thousand six study in the Journal of
(18:39):
Black Psychology which found that girls with involved dads were
less likely to use illegal drugs. And that's a pattern
that comes up over and over and over and over again,
and all of these studies is that you know, absent
or dysfunctional relationships with dads are usually correlated to risk
here behavior which usually just is a catch off or
(19:00):
drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, and premarital sex and
teen pregnancy interesting not sliding down a long hallway within
just a button up in socks listening to Bob Seagery. So,
and of course this all ties into relationship habits as well.
This is what we talk a lot about when you
think about women with quote unquote daddy issues. But other
(19:22):
studies have shown associations between negative relationships with dad's and
relationship self esteem, overall self disclosure, and overall self silencing
in romantic relationships. And then when it comes to sex.
This is kind of echoing when I just said a
minute ago. There's a two thousand three study in child
(19:44):
development which found that girls with absent fathers were likelier
to become pregnant, and I'm assuming that means teen pregnancy.
And other studies have also correlated again absent or dysfunctional
dads with not just uh sexual promiscuity, but lower sexual
confidence in daughters, which psychologists would say would then lead
(20:07):
to that quote unquote risky behavior. So there is a
lot of concern echoed over and over again about will
a bad dad lead to essentially a promiscuous daughter. There's
a lot of focus just on that sex behavior of
(20:30):
the daughter, right and uh. Catherine Hutchinson and Julie cedar
Baum in a study looked at women who talked about
their father's kind of encapsulating them and in this whole
daddy's girl role and found that these according to these women,
in their perspective, their father's inability to see them as
(20:51):
anything but little girls was actually a barrier to father
daughter sexual communication. The father refusing to see his daughter
as either a grown up woman or as a developing adolescent,
refusing to accept it that she's anything other than daddy's princess. Well,
and in that situation too, I think those those relationships
weren't necessarily seen as negative ones. These were dads who
(21:13):
were involved in their daughters lives and were very present
and loving towards their daughters. But like you said, just
crystallize them in this you know, prepubescent phase and kind
of can't move beyond that. I can't think about sex,
doesn't want to talk about sex, noop, et cetera. Yeah,
and so let's talk a little bit though about daddy
(21:34):
issues in Daddy's Little Girls in pop culture, because that
was a large focus of the Mama's Boy episode because
it became so deeply ingrained in mid century American culture.
So what about when it comes to Daddy's Girls. And
we'll talk more about that when we come right back
from a quick break and now back to the show.
(22:01):
So it's about time we got around to talking about
Freud because we mentioned him so much in our Mom's
Boy episode, and we also mentioned the whole post World
War two period when a lot of societal fears and
anxieties cropped up, not only around mothers and their children,
(22:21):
but also homosexuality and what that meant as a changing society. Yeah,
and there was just this really intense focus on psychoanalysis,
and particularly psychoanalysis through that edible framework, kind of the
placing perhaps too much importance and fear on the child's relationship,
(22:44):
particularly with the opposite sex parents. And Tulane history professor
Rachel Devlin actually wrote an entire book about this in
two thousand five called Relative Intimacy, Father's Adolescent Daughters and
Postwar American Culture, and she argues in it that the
whole daddy issues Daddy's Girls thing was a combination of
(23:09):
two forces, one being the popularity of Freudian psychoanalysis, and
then also the rise of female delinquency because you have
in post World War two America for the very first time,
teenage culture really being this big thing. I mean, even
if you look back at Life magazine at the time,
they have feature stories on like what being a teenager
(23:32):
is because it's this sort of new phase in life
and it has this whole culture and consumer culture around it.
After the war, and with that, you also see the
rise of female delinquency, and you can see it on
screen through classic films such as Rebel Without a Cause,
And there was a fear about these these female delinquents,
(23:52):
these girl gangs. What's going on? Well, blame their dads,
I know. Well, it's so funny to see those anxieties
blown up like that. It's just like, oh, my god.
You mean, women are women, and young girls are developing
their own sort of like personalities outside of the home,
and they're they're becoming teenagers and that is so scary.
She's wearing lipstick? Oh no, what does that mean? Can
(24:13):
you imagine what they would have done if they had
seen spring Breakers clutched their pearls. For sure, Broyd would
have been like, oh, I got a lot to say.
But Devlin talks about how during this time, girls perceived
misbehavior was explained as a paternal failing. She says that
girls were seen as being not sufficiently edible connected to
(24:36):
their fathers, and this whole edible framework that Kristen mentioned
was a way to try to control and reintegrate girls
into the family. But what surprised me, considering the way
we talked about Freud on this podcast, what surprised me
is that Freud thought this whole perception was warped. He
himself thought that these urges needed to be overcome, not maintained.
(25:00):
Freud thought that sure, girls and young women have to
go through this, pass through this phase of like having
this relationship with their dad, but they the key is
that they have to then pass through it right well.
And one example that she calls out in terms of
maintaining rather than overcoming, was through the use of lipstick.
This is an actual thing. She said that it was
(25:22):
thought at the time that girls who were allowed to
wear bright lipstick, which was in vogue with their father's
blessing would be sexually well developed. Whereas dads who forbade
their daughters to wear lipstick, we're arresting their daughters sexual development.
So yeah, I mean talk about some loaded lipstick, interesting band,
(25:45):
new band name? Well, I mean because two in this
is in the what forties and fifties, and only a
few decades prior, wearing wearing rouge on your lips would
have been something only a stage actresses would do. And
you know what stage actresses do? They act and they
and they flown a kate. But she then ties that
(26:07):
to this idea of a new fatherhood that began emerging
in the nineteen twenties. This is when we slowly see
the development of dad's roles starting to change, gradually becoming
more involved and becoming more of an expected part of
the paternal role, not just to go out and bring
home the bacon and be the provider, but also provide
(26:30):
emotional security as well. And when the depression hit, it
had an interesting influence on the father daughter relationship. And
this is coming from the book American Sweethearts Teenage Girls
in twenties Century Popular Culture, and Alana Nashy, author says
that the trophy daughter idea thrived in the depression, when
(26:51):
the proliferation of sub deb as in debutante images in
popular culture address the perceived crisis of masculinity, suggesting that
Daddy was still a real man and that his masculinity
was not lost entirely in the crisis as long as
he could protect his angelic little girl. So daddy's little
(27:13):
girl is going to be showered with gifts. He is
going to, you know, buy all these things for her
to protect her and also in the process assert his
own masculinity, which is being threatened by this economic crisis
of the Great Depression. That is interesting the layers on
that one. It's probably not the same thing as when
my father a couple of years ago asked if if
(27:36):
I wanted him to take me find china shopping. I
was like, do you really do you think I'm never
gonna get married. You're just gonna step up to the
plate and buy me some some plates. Maybe you wanted
to assert his masculinity or something. Maybe he has a
secret love for ceramics, Caroline, he could I don't know.
I don't know. You know, we don't know everything about
our fathers. This is true. But that's interesting because has
(28:00):
I mean, you're talking in a in a time frame
of the depression, or a lot of nash is talking
about a time frame of the depression. But I mean,
now we have something similar if you look at things
like moving on from debutantes up to the popularity these
days of like purity balls and stuff. Oh yeah, the
purity balls being uh, events that are more typically associated
(28:24):
with evangelical Christianity and the whole virginity pledge thing. There
are these events called purity balls where fathers will escort
their daughters to a prom like event where or and
it's sort of a prom and also a coming out
kind of event where dads will pledge publicly to protect
(28:46):
their daughters sexual purity, and then the daughters sort of
pledge themselves to their dads as well. There's definitely a
lot of interaction between what we've been talking about and
that phenomenon. But in all of this, I mean, you
could argue that all of that sounds pretty weird, but overall,
(29:07):
I think there's a lot more social acceptance for daddy's
little girl, daddy's princess, things like that, even like grown
women saying it versus mama's boy, which is definitely pathologized. Yeah,
because what have we seen in all of this research,
there's this, you know, hammering home over and over again,
this idea that if you have a solid relationship with
(29:29):
your dad as a female, then you are well adjusted,
you know, and there it kind of like can't And
the only way that it starts to get so close
that people start turning their noses up at it is
when it becomes almost too financially involved, where she becomes
the spoiled little princess rather than just daddy's little girl,
(29:50):
but a woman who is codependent on her father in
the same way that a guy might be codependent on
his mother that we call him a mama's boy. Those
are perceived very differently, it seems like, even even today,
and speaking of Peggy Drexler, the author of Our Fathers,
Ourselves and the Psychologists, the one big type of father
(30:10):
that she calls out in her book that she sort
of has no patience for is the dad who really
fosters the whole daddy's little girl image, not in the
sense of like wanting to have a close relationship with
her his daughter, but dads who sort of want to
almost over put put their daughters in a bell jar
in a way to protect them from everything, because she
(30:33):
says that it might render them incapable of self actualizing
as adult women, because these dads want to hold onto
them because maybe it's a need to assertain masculinity. Maybe
it's a fear, you know, the of knowing themselves as younger,
horny men and not wanting to think about that in
the context of their sexually maturing daughters. Um, but yeah,
(30:56):
she's she's not look kindly upon that. That's funny, Like,
I don't, I don't. I never got the impression that
my dad wanted to keep me his little girl forever.
I got the impression more that he was off to
the side, like, ah, she's growing up, and I'm just
I'll just be over here. I don't, I can't watch.
Not that he was like super comfortable with me, like
(31:17):
dating or anything. It was more that he's like, I
don't want to know. I don't want to know, don't
don't tell me. But Rachel Devlin, who we mentioned earlier,
also looks at these contemporary father daughter relationships from an
interesting perspective. She says that they're more commercially oriented as
evidenced by things like MTV show My Super Sweet Sixteen. Yeah,
(31:40):
in case you haven't seen this reality show, and I
don't know that it's still on the air, it showcases
a lavish, over the top sweet sixteen party for a kid.
A lot of times it's a girl who is usually
pretty spoiled, gets everything that she wants and usually ends
with someone getting a new car. And it's always interesting
(32:01):
in the show too, or thinking back on the show.
It's not like I'm sitting at home still watching it
these days, but I watched it enough in my youth
to know that every now and then the mom always
played a larger role in the show because the dad
was off doing whatever, making these bookoo bucks to pay
for this party. And when he would show up, though,
(32:21):
he would always be the one handing over the keys
to the car and like looking proud as a peacock
to be showing off how well he was providing for
his lovely daughter coming of age. Look at look at
what he's doing. It's that trophy daughter idea, which is uh,
which is really fascinating to think about, right, But I mean,
(32:43):
I think what you just said illustrates what Devlin is
talking about. As far as the monetary exchange being used
as a way for fathers to distance themselves from their
daughters sexual development, well, yeah, because it probably feels more
appropriate to make purchase to demonstrate your love because, as
(33:05):
Dad's can probably attest, when you know, girls start to
their daughters start to mature, all of a sudden, they
get boobs when you hug them, it feels different than
when you hug them as little girls, and showing them
physical affection could get uncomfortable maybe for them and for
their daughters. And so yeah, I could totally see the
consumer side of it being a distancing factor or a strategy,
(33:30):
I should say. But one thing that we've touched on
but haven't really gotten into is the fact and we
we talked about this a little bit with Mama's Boys
and that they're just different dynamics going on. If it's
the same sex couple raising kids, then it is with
our stereotypical mother father household that has been studied to death. Yeah.
I mean, the thing for both of these episodes, Mama's
(33:50):
Boys and Daddy's Girls is can goodness those phrases just
burnt holes in my brain. Uh, It's interesting to talk
about both of them at this time when I feel
like the role of mother and father is very much
in flux and almost it's starting to meld together into
(34:10):
this broader role of just being a good parent and
it not being so gender specific. Um, because you know,
like you said, they are now plenty of two parent
households with kids who are doing perfectly well where there
is neither a father or neither a mother, depending on
which kind of same sex couple it is. And there
(34:30):
was actually an article in The Advocate called the Lesbian
Dad and talking about how there are some gender nonconforming
lesbians who are more comfortable with their kids calling them
dad or a derivative thereof, Like they profiled one woman
who preferred to be called Baba rather than being called
(34:53):
mom or mommy, because particularly with the mommy, there's just
there's just no identification with that label. What's however, and
I can understand that, I mean, I oh, thinking myself
being called mommy? Nope, well, I mean, you know, this
also goes back to an episode that Kristen and I
did a while ago on the division of household labor.
Basically that even the most like progressive, forward thinking man
(35:18):
woman feminist couple even those couples can tend to fall
back to gender norms when it comes to the division
of household labor, whereas if you have same sex couple,
the traditional household duties are more equally distributed. Yeah. And
there was a study among sweetest children and lesbian households
(35:39):
that came out in and it concluded based on interviews
with these kids that they quote described daddy's as the
same as mummies, and that's mummies with you because it's
from Sweden and I really enjoy that. Um So, in
other words, in these kids minds who are being raised
(35:59):
in these lesbian households with very egalitarian setups, the both
parents had sort of similar functions, you know, like daddy's mummy,
mummies daddy and everybody's happy. Yeah. I think we are
at an interesting tipping point socially and culturally as far as,
like you said, people realizing the importance of just being
(36:22):
a good parent, whether you are male or female, whether
your mom or dad or Bobba, whoever you are, and
the importance of you know, being loving and caring to
your child, regardless of what role you feel. Well. And
I also know of some straight couples as well where
the father tends to engage in more stereotypical maternal activities
(36:48):
with the child, and vice versa with the mom. Maybe
the mom is a little more outdoorsy and tends to
have a little more rough and tumble play with the kids.
So I think, if anything, it's a positive sign that
there is more acceptance of how there can be fluidity
in these roles. But when it comes to though, Caroline,
(37:09):
this whole daddy issues thing, can we circle back to
the daddy issues insult? It? I don't know, is it
is it a is it a phrase that we need
to retire? Oh, I'd like to see it retired. I mean,
you know, it is always such an ugly insult to
say to somebody. Yeah, I mean it's also used a
(37:29):
lot if you just google around different combinations with it.
It is used a lot in headlines as a clever
turn of phrase to indicate that there there's some kind
of problems somewhere, like oh this you know, this organization
has daddy issues or whatever. So I don't know, I
just feel like it's so hackneed in cliche that, um,
(37:52):
maybe maybe we need to move beyond the daddy issues thing,
or maybe I'm just also tired of it. You know
everyone's that all feminists have daddy issues. Yeah, all right,
let's let's retire it collectively. We'll agree to do it. Okay,
all right, listeners, all right? Well, and also listeners, now
we want to hear from you. We want to know
about your own dad daughter relationship, good, bad, non existent?
(38:17):
How has that impacted you? And also what are your
thoughts on the whole daddy's little girl thing daddy issues?
Do you think it should be retired or do you
think that it is useful in some applications. Let us
know all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is where you can send us your letters.
You can also tweet us a mom stuff podcast and
(38:38):
send us a message on Facebook as well. And We've
got a couple of messages that have nothing to do
with dads to share with you right now. I've got
to let her here. From Hannah in response to our
Women's Wanderlust episode, she writes, I wanted to mention a
(39:00):
few observations I've made while traveling alone. I made my
first alone trip to India ten years ago at twenty one,
and I've kept going back ever since. And the part
of the observation of hers that I wanted to share
with listeners. Is this My biggest problem traveling in India
as a woman has been finding toilets when on long
(39:21):
trips through rural areas. I've had to talk many a
bus driver into keeping the whole bus waiting while I
wander off, usually into some potentially snake infested field, to
find a discreet spot. Women in saris will often just
lift their skirt on the side of the road, and
wearing pants makes it more complicated. The lack of facilities
for women in India is a well known problem, and
(39:42):
of course much more serious for the local women who
risk getting raped when looking for a secluded space. For me,
it's a mere annoyance. As for the distinction between traveler
and tourists, I would just say that someone who insists
on calling herself a traveler and not a tourist is
just a very pretentious tourists. And I do think solo
(40:02):
travel can make you a bit self absorbed in the
long run. Whenever I've come across some of those self
proclaimed off the beaten track travelers who've been roaming around
for years, I make a sport out of timing how
long it takes them to ask a single question about
anyone else. I've experienced having hour long conversations in quotes
about the wonderfully intriguing travels of such people without even
(40:23):
having been asked for my name. This turned out, This
letter turned out long, and I could go on and on.
Sorry about that, and thanks for making my early commute
to work enjoyable. It sounds like she's running into some
not so great travelers see what I did, or tourists. Yeah,
so thanks Hannah. Okay, I have a letter here from Gabby.
(40:44):
She says, Hello, ladies. Hello, I'm a Brazilian actress and
have discovered your podcast recently. Hello, welcome. So your podcast
on fat bottom girls was especially interesting for me. I
grew up in a culture it's really butt center. That
is my own analysis, but I feel that globalization is
changing preferences in Brazil in front of my own eyes.
(41:07):
As in the nineties, most people would choose butts over breasts.
In the two thousands, globalization had a boom in quote
and since then middle and upper class males have been
paying more attention to breasts. The culture and cult of
the bottoms were left to the lower classes that can
be seen very specially in the music scene inside Brazil slums.
(41:30):
A really popular rhythm is called funk karaokea that valorizes
a cultural vision really similar to the North American rap.
The lyrics and dances tend to be really sexualized by
men and women and quite focused on the bottoms. So
thank you, she signs it lots of love from Brazil
and lots of love to you, Gabby. As a new listener.
(41:52):
We appreciate your letter, yes indeed, and we appreciate all
of your letters. Keep them coming. Mom Stuff at house
stuff works dot Com is where you can send them
or can always get in touch by tweeting us a
mom stuff podcast or messaging us on Facebook and for
links to all of our social media's as well as
all of our blog post, videos, and podcast including this one,
which also includes our sources so you can follow along,
(42:15):
head on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot
com or more on this and thousands of other topics
does it how stuff works dot com.
Hey, this is Annie Ooh and Samantha, and welcome to Stuff.
I'm Never Told your protection of I Heartradio's House to Works.
We've been doing that intro for a while now and
I just did it out of memory for the first time,
(00:24):
and I'm feeling really proud of myself because I couldn't
you probably could. Um for this this classic episode, we
wanted to to bring back one that Kristen and Caroline
did UM called Daddy's Girls, about the relationships between fathers
and daughters. And we recently did an episode on daddy
(00:45):
issues and they touch on this on that whole thing
a bit in this episode, and um, It's just been
on my mind recently and I've always kind of been
curious about we just have interesting I find instinct dynamics
in our society about the relationships between children and their parents.
(01:07):
So inevitable, inevitable. You're right, there's a quote I wanted
to say, but I forgot it immediately, So do is useless. Useless,
But this episode is not useless, and we hope you enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff, Mom Never Told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
(01:34):
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And this episode is part two
of Weird Parental Psychology Week because in the last episode
we talked all about the Mama's Boy trope, and today
we're going to talk about daddy's girls and daddy issues,
(01:55):
right because you know, we we started off our Mama's Boy,
which I know you listened to. We started off our
Mom's Boy episode talking about kind of the darker side
of not only being a mom's boy, but what people
assumed about you and what that meant. Hitler, Yeah, we talked.
We talked a lot about Hitler, a lot about Hitler. Um.
We're not going to talk about Hitler this time that
(02:15):
I know of, Kristen Um, but we are going to
talk about daddy issues because that is never meant as
a positive thing. No, it's not. And it hadn't occurred
to me until I don't know what I was reading,
but I was on the internet and someone made some
quip about, you know, insulting a woman by calling by
(02:37):
saying that she must have daddy issues and a little
stuff I've never told you. Belle went off in my
brain thinking, why is that's a thing? Why is that
I mean not not why our daddy issues a thing,
although we will talk about that, But why is that
this pop cultural knee jerk insult directed at women and
(02:59):
a lot acted at feminists. Now, for our international listeners
who might not be so familiar with this term, daddy issues,
for a little bit of a very casual definition of
what it is. According to the Urban Dictionary, it's whenever
a female has a screwed up, for the podcast, relationship
with her father or absence of a father figure during
(03:20):
her childhood, so it tends to spill into any adult
relationship they embark on, usually to the chagrin of any
poor male in her life. So stereotypically, women with daddy
issues are needy, obsessive, dramatic, insecure and looking for love
and all the wrong places. Well that'll be in my
head for the rest of the day. Um. But it's
also tacked onto women and girls who are specifically attracted
(03:43):
to older men, and just people assume that something's got
to be wrong with you. If you're attracted to somebody
who's even a little bit older, Yeah, you must be
secretly wanting to have sex with your father. And then
there's a whole idea that vocal feminists must certainly of
toxic relationships or Harvard hatred towards their dad's because why
(04:04):
else would they have an express distaste with a patriarchal
status quo feminists be heaven daddy issues that that is
one of the most like just the hallmark of a
trollish criticism that you will get on the internet if
you talk about gender equality long enough. Not that it's
(04:25):
ever happened to me. And for the record, I love
my dad. I have a perfectly healthy relationship with him.
But why am I even having to defend that? I
don't know, Kristen, I don't know, because we're about to
talk about why that's so good that you have a
relationship with your dad. Yeah. So there is a whole
bunch of research on the dynamics and effects and impacts
(04:49):
of the father daughter relationship, I would say even more
so comparing it to what we read about for our
Mama's Boy episode. It seems like this father daughter relationship
has been put even more so under the academic microscope
than the mother's son relationship. Yeah, Whereas it seems like
(05:10):
a lot of the Mama's Boy research, You know, if
there was any academic psychological research was all really early,
and it was all super negative and awful, and it
was all sort of justifying why being a mama's boy
is so terrible. It was very homophobic, very homophobic. Whereas
the studies into being a daddy's girl or having quote
(05:30):
daddy issues or whatever, it's much more um encouraging of
that relationship, yeah, encouraging if you have an active paternal presence,
it's very pro dad being involved with her daughter. Whereas
on the flip side, there's a lot of panic where
if you have a negative relationship or non existent relationship
(05:50):
with a father figure, then you will have a lot
of premarital sex, which we will get into more. There's
a lot of sex panic surrounding this whole daddy issues
and daddy's girl things. So there was a two thousand
fourteen study published in the Men's Studies Press called Fathers
in the Dorm Room The Unique Influence of Fathers and
(06:11):
Mothers on Young Adult Functioning, And it was really fascinating
because it wasn't so much focused on the father daughter relationship,
but rather just the paternal influence on kids, sons and
daughters alike and how they developed psychologically, their self esteem,
rates of depression, and previous studies cited in this two
(06:34):
thousand fourteen study note how dad's in particular have a
very strong influence, even stronger, some would say, than moms
on young kids. Yeah, so they cited a study, for instance,
that found that father's acceptance might correlate stronger to children's
(06:56):
psychological adjustment versus mother's acceptance. Similarly, a two thousand eight
study found that a father's indifference was more related to
children's scores on measures of depression, and a two thousand
to study looked at father's sensitivity during toddler play and
tied it to predicted attachment representations and adolescents versus the
(07:20):
mother's influence. So all of these studies are pointing to
dad having a super strong influence on all all number
of things. Yeah, and this isn't just within American culture.
A lot of these study findings do apply across culturally
as well. And in this study sample the kids that
they looked at for the father's in the dorm room,
which is such a creepy image study, they found that
(07:44):
father's acceptance was substantially more variable than mother's acceptance levels.
And this is a theme that you see come up
a lot when it comes to the father daughter relationship.
This idea that we sometimes as children take our there's
love for granted, whereas a father's love and acceptance of us.
(08:06):
I think that acceptance party is really important, is something
that we feel like we have to earn. Yeah, and
so I had like like a real, like real talk
moment with myself when I was reading these studies. Yeah,
I was real talking, real talking to myself like, hey,
you you're all right, You're right, But no, I I
can feel this, uh from my own experience because my mother,
(08:29):
I'm an only raised an only child, uh, and my
mother was like we were super close. I was more
of a mama's girl than a daddy's girl. Even though
my dad and I were always close and had a
good relationship, but it always felt like, oh, well, I'm
always perfect in my mother's eyes, Like she's always going
to think I'm perfect and that I'm the prettiest and
the best and the smartest. Um. Whereas my dad is
(08:52):
a little more on the stoic side. And so it's
like I knew he was proud of me, but I
really felt like I had to work harder to earn
that pride and that acceptance and that attention. I can
completely empathize with it, and and that seems to like
a common theme that you see in in this study
(09:12):
in fact from two thousand and fourteen about how we
as kids are really attuned to and sensitive to um
our father's levels of acceptance and also rejection. And one
key quote that jumped out to me in the study
discussion was that parental acceptance and rejection may be perceived
as a reflection of the self's social worth. Thus, low
(09:36):
acceptance and high rejection by fathers compared to mothers may
carry more negative psychological consequences. Dad's beware interesting well. Psychologist
Peggy Drexler, who's the author of Our Fathers, Ourselves UM,
talks about the fact that many daughters this is a quote,
(09:56):
many daughters idolize their fathers because they don't know them
well enough to to see their flaws and therefore desire
his approval. She talks a lot about how stereotypically, uh culturally,
the father is working outside the home more, maybe he
travels more than mom does, maybe mom's home more, being
the primary caregiver, And it's that whole like allure of
(10:18):
this powerful man outside the house and if he's oh well,
if he's so powerful and needed out there, then obviously
he's like a big shot. And there's that whole idea
that dad is this sort of other figure. He's a
little bit more distant from us than Mom, who is,
you know, very close in terms of being a caregiver.
So we've got to work harder and try to impress
him more. Although I do have a feeling that narrative
(10:40):
is rapidly changing as you do have more stay at
home dads for instance, or moms who are the breadwinners,
and and dad's in general just being more invested in childcare.
And I think that would be a good way, for
a positive way for it to be evolving. Um, but
if we look a little more closely to at that
father daughter relationship, not just looking at kids in general,
(11:02):
looking now at dad's and daughters, what kind of dynamics
tend to emerge. So there's also this common refrain that
fathers are the first men whose love girls seek out.
And a lot of this, too, you have to keep
in mind, is coming from a very heteronormative framework. Um,
(11:24):
there's this important importance of the father figure in terms
of you know, being that that first guy that whose
love and affection girls want to win over is based
on the assumption that you know, in the in the future,
she will be seeking the love and affection of other men,
and so dads thus established our earliest models of what
(11:44):
we expect relationships with men to be like. And then
our relationship attachment styles, which we've talked a lot before
on the podcast anxious attachment, secure attachment, et cetera. Then
flow from there, thanks or no thanks, death. Yeah, I
mean I can I can totally see how this this
goes beyond just like being a stereotype and something that
(12:06):
people assume. I can totally see how dad would be
a model, and psychologist Jennifer Cromberg basically says, yeah, Yeah,
basically that's that's how that works. She says, in my
years of psychology practice, I've met very few women who
didn't unconsciously or consciously pick a romantic partner based on
her dad. Talking about it's true for whether she a
woman dates a man because he's like her father or
(12:28):
because he's nothing like her dad. Somehow, it's all based
one way or another on her relationship with her father. Yeah,
And we actually did a podcast a while back now
called Dewey Mary Our Parents, which if you want, if
you want to dig more into this kind of psychology,
you can head over to stuff Mom Never Told You
dot com and look in our podcast archive, which you
(12:50):
can get to by clicking on the podcast tab and
scrolling all the way down and you'll see a button
browse all of our podcasts and the episode title is
do We Marry Our Parents? But back to dads and daughters.
What daughters say they want more from their dads and
perhaps to divert these so called daddy issues, that negative
(13:14):
baggage that we you know, hear about so often in
a very flip kind of way. Um. According to a
two thousand eleven study in contemporary sexuality, what daughters in
the in this case, college aged daughters wanted more from
their dads was quote understanding men, suggesting ways to deal
with pressure to have sex, sharing their own experiences about adolescence,
(13:35):
dating insects when they, as in the ads, were adolescents,
communicating values, providing more information on sexual risk topics, and
being more open and comfortable when talking to their daughters.
Because this entire study was looking at how dads talked
to their daughters about sex and the answer is not
very much, because that's uncomfortable. As a lot of the
(13:58):
male psychologists they talked to say, yeah, it can be
uncomfortable if you are a dad to talk to your
daughter about sex, because then it gets into questions of
what did you do dad, and then having to stay
out loud well, I was young and horny once, and
then the awkward silence that ensues. Right, Yeah, the whole
idea about dad being all like, hey, kiddo and poling
(14:20):
around with you before puberty, and then puberty hits and
suddenly dad feels like he's in an awkward like just
talk to your mother face. Yeah, because I'm sure for
a lot of dad's there's you know, a line that
they want to respect and don't want to cross. But
also to you hear from these these older daughters saying
that they, you know, wish that there had been more
(14:41):
recognition of the fact that, yeah, they were growing up
and that's not a scary thing, and it would have
been nice from that primary model of what men are
like in relationships to have one that's open and honest
and able to talk about things like sex. Yeah, But
to be fair, neither of my parents talked to me
about sex, so that one, that one wasn't all on dad. Yeah,
(15:03):
this is true, and I mean my mom definitely talked
to me more about it, and the messages that I
got from my dad about sex were more in the
sense of no, you don't want to know what happens
in a boy's mind, which, for the record, people not
a good message to give to your daughters. Well, Kristen,
we have a lot more to talk about, but first
(15:25):
we're going to take a quick break. When it comes
to mailing and shipping, it can seem like a no
win situation because it eats up valuable time going to
the post office and it's also expensive. Luckily, we know
a better way with stamps dot com, where you can
buy and print official US postage for any letter package
(15:46):
right from your desk. Plus, stamps dot com is even
more powerful than a postage meter at just a fraction
of the cost, and you can save up to compared
to a postage meter, and you don't have to go
back to the post office. Right now, you can use
our promo code stuff to access a special offer. It's
(16:07):
a no risk trial that includes a bonus offer with
a digital scale up to fifty five dollars of free postage,
So don't wait. Go to stamps dot com before you
do anything else. Click on the microphone at the top
of the homepage and type in stuff that stamps dot
com and enter stuff. And now back to the show.
(16:28):
Speaking of messages that dads are giving their daughters, what
happens when daughters don't have those ideal, strong, warm relationships
with dad. Study looked at stress responses that women experience
and found that those who had reported relationships with their
(16:50):
dad characterized by rejection, chaos, and coercion ended up having
basically higher stress hormone levels, so cortisol levels and and
but before a task that they anticipated to be stressful,
and had higher cortisol in response to a problem discussion
with a friend. They were also more likely to self
disclose about psychosocial stressors. Yeah, that disclosure thing is something
(17:14):
that comes up a lot in terms of corelates behavioral corelates.
For women who have dysfunctional relationships with their dads, there
is a lot more disclosure going on. And I'm not
sure why, but that was just something that I noticed
from the research. Um, But in that particular instance, the
opposite was true for the women who you know had
(17:35):
self reported father daughter relationships characterized by warmth, autonomy, support,
and structure. They actually on a physiological level, managed stressful
situations better. And Caroline, you know, what is incredible to
me is the fact that this relationship has been studied
down to a physiological level. Did you see any physiological
(17:56):
biological studies about the influence of mother's relationship on their
sons and how they manage stressed Definitely not. There were
just a handful that talked about aggression versus emotional literacy.
It's fascinating when you compare what we what we focus on, uh,
in terms of you know, studies and all that. When
(18:17):
it comes to the risky behavior, risky business comes up
a lot in father daughters studies. There was a two
thousand fourteen study which found that female participants who reported
low psychological presence from their dads were likelier to engage
in risky behavior like drug use and hookups. And there's
also a two thousand six study in the Journal of
(18:39):
Black Psychology which found that girls with involved dads were
less likely to use illegal drugs. And that's a pattern
that comes up over and over and over and over again,
and all of these studies is that you know, absent
or dysfunctional relationships with dads are usually correlated to risk
here behavior which usually just is a catch off or
(19:00):
drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, and premarital sex and
teen pregnancy interesting not sliding down a long hallway within
just a button up in socks listening to Bob Seagery. So,
and of course this all ties into relationship habits as well.
This is what we talk a lot about when you
think about women with quote unquote daddy issues. But other
(19:22):
studies have shown associations between negative relationships with dad's and
relationship self esteem, overall self disclosure, and overall self silencing
in romantic relationships. And then when it comes to sex.
This is kind of echoing when I just said a
minute ago. There's a two thousand three study in child
(19:44):
development which found that girls with absent fathers were likelier
to become pregnant, and I'm assuming that means teen pregnancy.
And other studies have also correlated again absent or dysfunctional
dads with not just uh sexual promiscuity, but lower sexual
confidence in daughters, which psychologists would say would then lead
(20:07):
to that quote unquote risky behavior. So there is a
lot of concern echoed over and over again about will
a bad dad lead to essentially a promiscuous daughter. There's
a lot of focus just on that sex behavior of
(20:30):
the daughter, right and uh. Catherine Hutchinson and Julie cedar
Baum in a study looked at women who talked about
their father's kind of encapsulating them and in this whole
daddy's girl role and found that these according to these women,
in their perspective, their father's inability to see them as
(20:51):
anything but little girls was actually a barrier to father
daughter sexual communication. The father refusing to see his daughter
as either a grown up woman or as a developing adolescent,
refusing to accept it that she's anything other than daddy's princess. Well,
and in that situation too, I think those those relationships
weren't necessarily seen as negative ones. These were dads who
(21:13):
were involved in their daughters lives and were very present
and loving towards their daughters. But like you said, just
crystallize them in this you know, prepubescent phase and kind
of can't move beyond that. I can't think about sex,
doesn't want to talk about sex, noop, et cetera. Yeah,
and so let's talk a little bit though about daddy
(21:34):
issues in Daddy's Little Girls in pop culture, because that
was a large focus of the Mama's Boy episode because
it became so deeply ingrained in mid century American culture.
So what about when it comes to Daddy's Girls. And
we'll talk more about that when we come right back
from a quick break and now back to the show.
(22:01):
So it's about time we got around to talking about
Freud because we mentioned him so much in our Mom's
Boy episode, and we also mentioned the whole post World
War two period when a lot of societal fears and
anxieties cropped up, not only around mothers and their children,
(22:21):
but also homosexuality and what that meant as a changing society. Yeah,
and there was just this really intense focus on psychoanalysis,
and particularly psychoanalysis through that edible framework, kind of the
placing perhaps too much importance and fear on the child's relationship,
(22:44):
particularly with the opposite sex parents. And Tulane history professor
Rachel Devlin actually wrote an entire book about this in
two thousand five called Relative Intimacy, Father's Adolescent Daughters and
Postwar American Culture, and she argues in it that the
whole daddy issues Daddy's Girls thing was a combination of
(23:09):
two forces, one being the popularity of Freudian psychoanalysis, and
then also the rise of female delinquency because you have
in post World War two America for the very first time,
teenage culture really being this big thing. I mean, even
if you look back at Life magazine at the time,
they have feature stories on like what being a teenager
(23:32):
is because it's this sort of new phase in life
and it has this whole culture and consumer culture around it.
After the war, and with that, you also see the
rise of female delinquency, and you can see it on
screen through classic films such as Rebel Without a Cause,
And there was a fear about these these female delinquents,
(23:52):
these girl gangs. What's going on? Well, blame their dads,
I know. Well, it's so funny to see those anxieties
blown up like that. It's just like, oh, my god.
You mean, women are women, and young girls are developing
their own sort of like personalities outside of the home,
and they're they're becoming teenagers and that is so scary.
She's wearing lipstick? Oh no, what does that mean? Can
(24:13):
you imagine what they would have done if they had
seen spring Breakers clutched their pearls. For sure, Broyd would
have been like, oh, I got a lot to say.
But Devlin talks about how during this time, girls perceived
misbehavior was explained as a paternal failing. She says that
girls were seen as being not sufficiently edible connected to
(24:36):
their fathers, and this whole edible framework that Kristen mentioned
was a way to try to control and reintegrate girls
into the family. But what surprised me, considering the way
we talked about Freud on this podcast, what surprised me
is that Freud thought this whole perception was warped. He
himself thought that these urges needed to be overcome, not maintained.
(25:00):
Freud thought that sure, girls and young women have to
go through this, pass through this phase of like having
this relationship with their dad, but they the key is
that they have to then pass through it right well.
And one example that she calls out in terms of
maintaining rather than overcoming, was through the use of lipstick.
This is an actual thing. She said that it was
(25:22):
thought at the time that girls who were allowed to
wear bright lipstick, which was in vogue with their father's
blessing would be sexually well developed. Whereas dads who forbade
their daughters to wear lipstick, we're arresting their daughters sexual development.
So yeah, I mean talk about some loaded lipstick, interesting band,
(25:45):
new band name? Well, I mean because two in this
is in the what forties and fifties, and only a
few decades prior, wearing wearing rouge on your lips would
have been something only a stage actresses would do. And
you know what stage actresses do? They act and they
and they flown a kate. But she then ties that
(26:07):
to this idea of a new fatherhood that began emerging
in the nineteen twenties. This is when we slowly see
the development of dad's roles starting to change, gradually becoming
more involved and becoming more of an expected part of
the paternal role, not just to go out and bring
home the bacon and be the provider, but also provide
(26:30):
emotional security as well. And when the depression hit, it
had an interesting influence on the father daughter relationship. And
this is coming from the book American Sweethearts Teenage Girls
in twenties Century Popular Culture, and Alana Nashy, author says
that the trophy daughter idea thrived in the depression, when
(26:51):
the proliferation of sub deb as in debutante images in
popular culture address the perceived crisis of masculinity, suggesting that
Daddy was still a real man and that his masculinity
was not lost entirely in the crisis as long as
he could protect his angelic little girl. So daddy's little
(27:13):
girl is going to be showered with gifts. He is
going to, you know, buy all these things for her
to protect her and also in the process assert his
own masculinity, which is being threatened by this economic crisis
of the Great Depression. That is interesting the layers on
that one. It's probably not the same thing as when
my father a couple of years ago asked if if
(27:36):
I wanted him to take me find china shopping. I
was like, do you really do you think I'm never
gonna get married. You're just gonna step up to the
plate and buy me some some plates. Maybe you wanted
to assert his masculinity or something. Maybe he has a
secret love for ceramics, Caroline, he could I don't know.
I don't know. You know, we don't know everything about
our fathers. This is true. But that's interesting because has
(28:00):
I mean, you're talking in a in a time frame
of the depression, or a lot of nash is talking
about a time frame of the depression. But I mean,
now we have something similar if you look at things
like moving on from debutantes up to the popularity these
days of like purity balls and stuff. Oh yeah, the
purity balls being uh, events that are more typically associated
(28:24):
with evangelical Christianity and the whole virginity pledge thing. There
are these events called purity balls where fathers will escort
their daughters to a prom like event where or and
it's sort of a prom and also a coming out
kind of event where dads will pledge publicly to protect
(28:46):
their daughters sexual purity, and then the daughters sort of
pledge themselves to their dads as well. There's definitely a
lot of interaction between what we've been talking about and
that phenomenon. But in all of this, I mean, you
could argue that all of that sounds pretty weird, but overall,
(29:07):
I think there's a lot more social acceptance for daddy's
little girl, daddy's princess, things like that, even like grown
women saying it versus mama's boy, which is definitely pathologized. Yeah,
because what have we seen in all of this research,
there's this, you know, hammering home over and over again,
this idea that if you have a solid relationship with
(29:29):
your dad as a female, then you are well adjusted,
you know, and there it kind of like can't And
the only way that it starts to get so close
that people start turning their noses up at it is
when it becomes almost too financially involved, where she becomes
the spoiled little princess rather than just daddy's little girl,
(29:50):
but a woman who is codependent on her father in
the same way that a guy might be codependent on
his mother that we call him a mama's boy. Those
are perceived very differently, it seems like, even even today,
and speaking of Peggy Drexler, the author of Our Fathers,
Ourselves and the Psychologists, the one big type of father
(30:10):
that she calls out in her book that she sort
of has no patience for is the dad who really
fosters the whole daddy's little girl image, not in the
sense of like wanting to have a close relationship with
her his daughter, but dads who sort of want to
almost over put put their daughters in a bell jar
in a way to protect them from everything, because she
(30:33):
says that it might render them incapable of self actualizing
as adult women, because these dads want to hold onto
them because maybe it's a need to assertain masculinity. Maybe
it's a fear, you know, the of knowing themselves as younger,
horny men and not wanting to think about that in
the context of their sexually maturing daughters. Um, but yeah,
(30:56):
she's she's not look kindly upon that. That's funny, Like,
I don't, I don't. I never got the impression that
my dad wanted to keep me his little girl forever.
I got the impression more that he was off to
the side, like, ah, she's growing up, and I'm just
I'll just be over here. I don't, I can't watch.
Not that he was like super comfortable with me, like
(31:17):
dating or anything. It was more that he's like, I
don't want to know. I don't want to know, don't
don't tell me. But Rachel Devlin, who we mentioned earlier,
also looks at these contemporary father daughter relationships from an
interesting perspective. She says that they're more commercially oriented as
evidenced by things like MTV show My Super Sweet Sixteen. Yeah,
(31:40):
in case you haven't seen this reality show, and I
don't know that it's still on the air, it showcases
a lavish, over the top sweet sixteen party for a kid.
A lot of times it's a girl who is usually
pretty spoiled, gets everything that she wants and usually ends
with someone getting a new car. And it's always interesting
(32:01):
in the show too, or thinking back on the show.
It's not like I'm sitting at home still watching it
these days, but I watched it enough in my youth
to know that every now and then the mom always
played a larger role in the show because the dad
was off doing whatever, making these bookoo bucks to pay
for this party. And when he would show up, though,
(32:21):
he would always be the one handing over the keys
to the car and like looking proud as a peacock
to be showing off how well he was providing for
his lovely daughter coming of age. Look at look at
what he's doing. It's that trophy daughter idea, which is uh,
which is really fascinating to think about, right, But I mean,
(32:43):
I think what you just said illustrates what Devlin is
talking about. As far as the monetary exchange being used
as a way for fathers to distance themselves from their
daughters sexual development, well, yeah, because it probably feels more
appropriate to make purchase to demonstrate your love because, as
(33:05):
Dad's can probably attest, when you know, girls start to
their daughters start to mature, all of a sudden, they
get boobs when you hug them, it feels different than
when you hug them as little girls, and showing them
physical affection could get uncomfortable maybe for them and for
their daughters. And so yeah, I could totally see the
consumer side of it being a distancing factor or a strategy,
(33:30):
I should say. But one thing that we've touched on
but haven't really gotten into is the fact and we
we talked about this a little bit with Mama's Boys
and that they're just different dynamics going on. If it's
the same sex couple raising kids, then it is with
our stereotypical mother father household that has been studied to death. Yeah.
I mean, the thing for both of these episodes, Mama's
(33:50):
Boys and Daddy's Girls is can goodness those phrases just
burnt holes in my brain. Uh, It's interesting to talk
about both of them at this time when I feel
like the role of mother and father is very much
in flux and almost it's starting to meld together into
(34:10):
this broader role of just being a good parent and
it not being so gender specific. Um, because you know,
like you said, they are now plenty of two parent
households with kids who are doing perfectly well where there
is neither a father or neither a mother, depending on
which kind of same sex couple it is. And there
(34:30):
was actually an article in The Advocate called the Lesbian
Dad and talking about how there are some gender nonconforming
lesbians who are more comfortable with their kids calling them
dad or a derivative thereof, Like they profiled one woman
who preferred to be called Baba rather than being called
(34:53):
mom or mommy, because particularly with the mommy, there's just
there's just no identification with that label. What's however, and
I can understand that, I mean, I oh, thinking myself
being called mommy? Nope, well, I mean, you know, this
also goes back to an episode that Kristen and I
did a while ago on the division of household labor.
Basically that even the most like progressive, forward thinking man
(35:18):
woman feminist couple even those couples can tend to fall
back to gender norms when it comes to the division
of household labor, whereas if you have same sex couple,
the traditional household duties are more equally distributed. Yeah. And
there was a study among sweetest children and lesbian households
(35:39):
that came out in and it concluded based on interviews
with these kids that they quote described daddy's as the
same as mummies, and that's mummies with you because it's
from Sweden and I really enjoy that. Um So, in
other words, in these kids minds who are being raised
(35:59):
in these lesbian households with very egalitarian setups, the both
parents had sort of similar functions, you know, like daddy's mummy,
mummies daddy and everybody's happy. Yeah. I think we are
at an interesting tipping point socially and culturally as far as,
like you said, people realizing the importance of just being
(36:22):
a good parent, whether you are male or female, whether
your mom or dad or Bobba, whoever you are, and
the importance of you know, being loving and caring to
your child, regardless of what role you feel. Well. And
I also know of some straight couples as well where
the father tends to engage in more stereotypical maternal activities
(36:48):
with the child, and vice versa with the mom. Maybe
the mom is a little more outdoorsy and tends to
have a little more rough and tumble play with the kids.
So I think, if anything, it's a positive sign that
there is more acceptance of how there can be fluidity
in these roles. But when it comes to though, Caroline,
(37:09):
this whole daddy issues thing, can we circle back to
the daddy issues insult? It? I don't know, is it
is it a is it a phrase that we need
to retire? Oh, I'd like to see it retired. I mean,
you know, it is always such an ugly insult to
say to somebody. Yeah, I mean it's also used a
(37:29):
lot if you just google around different combinations with it.
It is used a lot in headlines as a clever
turn of phrase to indicate that there there's some kind
of problems somewhere, like oh this you know, this organization
has daddy issues or whatever. So I don't know, I
just feel like it's so hackneed in cliche that, um,
(37:52):
maybe maybe we need to move beyond the daddy issues thing,
or maybe I'm just also tired of it. You know
everyone's that all feminists have daddy issues. Yeah, all right,
let's let's retire it collectively. We'll agree to do it. Okay,
all right, listeners, all right? Well, and also listeners, now
we want to hear from you. We want to know
about your own dad daughter relationship, good, bad, non existent?
(38:17):
How has that impacted you? And also what are your
thoughts on the whole daddy's little girl thing daddy issues?
Do you think it should be retired or do you
think that it is useful in some applications. Let us
know all of your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is where you can send us your letters.
You can also tweet us a mom stuff podcast and
(38:38):
send us a message on Facebook as well. And We've
got a couple of messages that have nothing to do
with dads to share with you right now. I've got
to let her here. From Hannah in response to our
Women's Wanderlust episode, she writes, I wanted to mention a
(39:00):
few observations I've made while traveling alone. I made my
first alone trip to India ten years ago at twenty one,
and I've kept going back ever since. And the part
of the observation of hers that I wanted to share
with listeners. Is this My biggest problem traveling in India
as a woman has been finding toilets when on long
(39:21):
trips through rural areas. I've had to talk many a
bus driver into keeping the whole bus waiting while I
wander off, usually into some potentially snake infested field, to
find a discreet spot. Women in saris will often just
lift their skirt on the side of the road, and
wearing pants makes it more complicated. The lack of facilities
for women in India is a well known problem, and
(39:42):
of course much more serious for the local women who
risk getting raped when looking for a secluded space. For me,
it's a mere annoyance. As for the distinction between traveler
and tourists, I would just say that someone who insists
on calling herself a traveler and not a tourist is
just a very pretentious tourists. And I do think solo
(40:02):
travel can make you a bit self absorbed in the
long run. Whenever I've come across some of those self
proclaimed off the beaten track travelers who've been roaming around
for years, I make a sport out of timing how
long it takes them to ask a single question about
anyone else. I've experienced having hour long conversations in quotes
about the wonderfully intriguing travels of such people without even
(40:23):
having been asked for my name. This turned out, This
letter turned out long, and I could go on and on.
Sorry about that, and thanks for making my early commute
to work enjoyable. It sounds like she's running into some
not so great travelers see what I did, or tourists. Yeah,
so thanks Hannah. Okay, I have a letter here from Gabby.
(40:44):
She says, Hello, ladies. Hello, I'm a Brazilian actress and
have discovered your podcast recently. Hello, welcome. So your podcast
on fat bottom girls was especially interesting for me. I
grew up in a culture it's really butt center. That
is my own analysis, but I feel that globalization is
changing preferences in Brazil in front of my own eyes.
(41:07):
As in the nineties, most people would choose butts over breasts.
In the two thousands, globalization had a boom in quote
and since then middle and upper class males have been
paying more attention to breasts. The culture and cult of
the bottoms were left to the lower classes that can
be seen very specially in the music scene inside Brazil slums.
(41:30):
A really popular rhythm is called funk karaokea that valorizes
a cultural vision really similar to the North American rap.
The lyrics and dances tend to be really sexualized by
men and women and quite focused on the bottoms. So
thank you, she signs it lots of love from Brazil
and lots of love to you, Gabby. As a new listener.
(41:52):
We appreciate your letter, yes indeed, and we appreciate all
of your letters. Keep them coming. Mom Stuff at house
stuff works dot Com is where you can send them
or can always get in touch by tweeting us a
mom stuff podcast or messaging us on Facebook and for
links to all of our social media's as well as
all of our blog post, videos, and podcast including this one,
which also includes our sources so you can follow along,
(42:15):
head on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot
com or more on this and thousands of other topics
does it how stuff works dot com.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.