This is a serious question, mostly addressed to the adult women among us but also to anyone else who has a stake in the matter.
What did your father do for you/not do for you, that you needed?
Context: I have recently become a father to a daughter, with a mother whose father was not around when she was growing up. I won’t bore you all with the details but our daughter is here now and I am realising that I’m the only one in our little family who has really had a father before. But I have never been a girl. And I know that as a boy, my relationships with my mother and father were massively influential and powerful but at the same time radically different to each other. People say that daughters and fathers have a unique relationship too.
Question: What was your father to you? What matters the most when it comes to a father making his daughter loved, safe, confident and free? To live a good life as an adult?
I’d like this to be a mature, personal and real discussion about daughters and fathers, rather than a political thing, so I humbly ask to please speak from the heart and not the head on this one :)
Thank you
P.S Apologies if this question is badly written or conceived; I haven’t been getting enough sleep! It is what it is!
I didn’t grow up living together with my dad as my parents split when I was about 2 or 3. But he’s always been in my life, and I’ve always visited often. He’s always given me good advice about things. Shown me how to be patient. Shown me how to show love. How to be affectionate, and how to be firm but fair. He’s also shown his weaknesses, which I’ve used as an example of what not to do because I saw the negative impacts of them in his own life.
Amazing father, from a distance. I’ve been blessed with unconditional love from every direction, so that’s what I aim to show my kids. Patience, tolerance, respect, love, and teach them to love and respect in good ways.
These things I feel apply whether or not you have a daughter or son, or other. So do with this what you will. ❤️👋