Six of One; Half Dozen of the Other

Ninety-six college women who attended a small private liberal arts college on the east coast responded to The Adjective Check List, ACL, (Gough, 1952) employed in this study to measure Assertiveness, Relational Needs, Cognitive Ego States and Negative Self-Image. In addition the women responded to the father-daughter questionnaire, a questionnaire designed by the author to identify specific father-daughter relationships. Results showed that the women's responses to the Father-Daughter questionnaire identified six distinct father-daughter. relationships: a doting father; a distant father; a demanding/supportive father; a domineering father; a seductive father; an absent father. ~ Merlino-Perkins

Work cited:  Rose Merlino Perkins "The father-daughter relationship: familial interactions that impact a daughter's style of life". College Student Journal. FindArticles.com. 11 Jul, 2012

Baseball hard-hitter Harmon Killebrew tells a story that hints at the importance of fathers to boys: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard,” he says on his Web site. “Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’”

Obviously, Killebrew’s father was tuned in to the needs of his sons, an admirable quality that seems only natural in a man. We accept that every boy needs a father as easily as we accept the notion that he needs a dog. But while society is beginning to acknowledge that a father is more crucial than a dog to a boy’s well-being, the question of how important fathers are to the well-being of their daughters has all but been ignored.

Work cited: Like Father, Like Daughter? Gina Stepp, Vision.org

Linda Nielsen, interviewed recently by Vision's Gina Stepp, is a psychologist and professor of adolescent psychology and women's studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.  The interview between Nielsen and Stepp can be read here: The Lost Relationship: Fathers and Daughters.

When life gives you a wedge of lemon, you suck on that and extract whatever you can. Lemonade is a luxury for folks with time and a pitcher. ~ The Busy Dad Blog

When life hands you lemons: squirt lemon juice in the eye of your enemy! ~ Anonymouse