Men's Group

I wanted to comment regarding the question of father/daughter relationships. I can only offer my own perspective as a child, growing up in the environment I did, with anecdotal evidence as support for my position.

I am the fourth of four children, there is a significant age gap of 9 years between me and the youngest, and 17 years between me and the oldest. And I am the only boy, the three older were all girls. So my perceptions may be somewhat shaped by virtue of the fact that I was observing relationships at a different stage than my own stage of development throughout the period.

My father seemed to be an adequate parent to my three sisters. He was reasonably involved with them as people, and most significantly with the youngest, who was a “tom boy” and who was quite willing to go along with my father’s interests in all things outdoors, hunting and fishing. As did the oldest. The middle one had no such interests. He was so close with the youngest sister that I, even at quite an early age, felt a great deal of jealously over the relationship.

I say that my father was an adequate parent, because he was a pretty typical parent of the “Mad Men” era, in fact he fit that image fairly closely – upper middle management or lower upper management, however you want to phrase it, at one of the Big 3 auto companies. He was reasonably close to them, interacted with them reasonably enough, their relationships seemed normal for the times and social attitudes, which were that he, as the “man of the house” ruled the roost fairly tightly, not quite with an iron fist, but close to it.

Fast forward a bit, I was born when my father was mid-40s and was not planned. And I never sensed any real affection or concern for me on his part, in fact, a great deal of the time, I sensed that he resented me a great deal. I believe there were several reasons for this. The first was the fact that he probably had no desire to have another child who would be an anchor upon him during middle age. The second was that my father was extremely abusive to my mother emotionally, and was literally paranoid in the clinical sense. He was obsessed with the idea that my mother committed adultery against him on a near-daily basis, which is completely divorced from any reality. And he specifically said that I was the product of this infidelity, because the “guys at the shop” i.e. at his work place said it was “strange” that my mother would become pregnant when he was at work all day – as if nothing happened in the evenings I guess.

When I was pre-adolescent, I was set on full-blown ignore mode by my father. I craved attention from him, and I was always rejected. One typical example, when I was about 7, spring came around, and baseball/softball became a hot area of interest on the playground. I begged and pleaded for him just to show me how to pitch and catch. He wouldn’t do anything until my mother forced him to, then he took me in the back yard, tossed me the ball twice, and walked away. That was typical of how he treated me during that period. Simultaneous, he was bonded to the hip with my youngest sister, they spent innumerable hours hunting and fishing. My mother tried to get them to include me once or twice, and I was told that I wasn’t wanted, by both father and sister.

After adolescence, his attitude changed from neglect to abuse. Essentially all emotional/verbal, with only a few times when he became slightly physical, mostly those times he would grab my by the shirt or collar, and perhaps give me an open-handed slap across the face. The verbal/emotional abuse was pretty extreme, I remember him making comments explicitly such as “you are trash, you’ll never amount to anything”. It became pretty bad by the time I was in high school. He was also on a mission to “teach me” how to do various mechanical, automotive, carpentry, etc., skills, which became terrifying because no matter what I did, it was inadequate in his eyes, and he would explode in violent fits of temper at me for the least small offense in his eyes.

It was a fun childhood. Not. I was desperate for a father figure when younger, and terrified of what little I had of one when I was older.

I’ve had a lot of issues in my life. My sisters seem to have turned out significantly more emotionally stable, well adjusted, and prosperous in life.

I don't know if I could say that its a function of gender so much as a function of the quality and character of the parenting skill.