Why Daughters Need Their Dads

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Why Daughters Need Their Dads

By: Dr. Meg Meeker

Men, we need you. We—mothers, daughters, and sisters—need your help to raise
healthy young women. We need every ounce of masculine courage and wit you own
because fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life.

After more than twenty years of listening to daughters—and doling out antibiotics, anti-
depressants, and stimulants to girls who have gone without a father’s love—I know just
how important fathers are. I have listened hour after hour to young girls describe how
they vomit in junior high bathrooms to keep their weight down. I have listened to
fourteen-year-old girls tell me they have to provide sex acts that disgust them in order to
keep their boyfriends. I’ve watched girls drop off varsity tennis teams, flunk out of
school, and carve initials or tattoo cult figures onto their bodies—all to see if their dads
will notice.

Fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life.
And I have watched daughters talk to fathers. When you come in the room, they
change. Everything about them changes: their eyes, their mouths, their gestures, their
body language. Daughters are never lukewarm in the presence of their fathers. They
might take their mothers for granted, but not you. They light up—or they cry. They watch
you intensely. They hang on your words. They hope for your attention, and they wait for
it in frustration—or in despair. They need a gesture of approval, a nod of
encouragement, or even simple eye contact to let them know you care and are willing to
help.

When she’s in your company, your daughter tries harder to excel. When you teach her,
she learns more rapidly. When you guide her, she gains confidence.

If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter’s life, you
would be overwhelmed.

Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can’t shape her character the way you do. You will
influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives no other man.

Many fathers (particularly of teen girls) assume they have little influence over their
daughters—certainly less influence than their daughters’ peers or pop culture—and
think their daughters need to figure out life on their own. But your daughter faces a
world markedly different from the one you did growing up: it’s less friendly, morally
unmoored, and even outright dangerous. After age six, “little girl” clothes are hard to
find. Many outfits are cut to make her look like a seductive thirteen- or fourteen-year-old
girl trying to attract older boys. She will enter puberty earlier than girls did a generation
or two ago (and boys will be watching as she begins to physically mature even as young
as age nine). She will see sexual innuendo or scenes of overt sexual behavior in
magazines or on television before she is ten years old, whether you approve or not. She
will learn about HIV and AIDS in elementary school and will also probably learn why and
how it is transmitted.

Fathers are what stand between daughters and this toxic world.
If you’re reading this, you are a motivated, sensitive, and caring father. You are a good
man, but you’re probably exhausted. For you, there is great news and bad news.

The great news is that in order to experience a richer life and raise a fabulous daughter,
you don’t need to change your character. You need only to indulge what’s best in your
character. You have everything you need for a better relationship with your daughter.

Here’s the bad news. You need to stop in your tracks, open your eyes wider, and see
what your daughter faces today, tomorrow, and in ten years. It’s tough and it’s
frightening, but this is the way it is. While you want the world to be cautious and gentle
with her, it is cruel beyond imagination—even before she is a teen. Even though she
may not participate in ugly stuff, it’s all around her: sexual promiscuity, alcohol abuse,
foul language, illegal drugs, and predatory boys and men who want only to take
something from her.

Don’t think you can’t fight her “peers” or the power of pop culture. Exactly the opposite
is true. Yes, the four Ms—MTV, music, movies, and magazines—are enormous
influences that shape what girls think about themselves, what clothes they wear, and
even the grades they get. But their influence doesn’t come close to the influence of a
father. A lot of research has been done on this—and fathers always come out on top.
The effects of loving, caring fathers on their daughters’ lives can be measured in girls of
all ages.

When you are with her, whether you eat dinner and do homework together or even
when you are present but don’t say much, the quality and stability of her life—and, you’ll
find, your own—improves immeasurably. Even if you think the two of you operate on
different planes,

even if you worry that time spent with her shows no measurable results, even if you
doubt you are having a meaningful impact on her, the clinical fact is that you are giving
your daughter the greatest of gifts.
Your daughter will view this time spent with you vastly differently than you do. Over the
years, in erratic bursts and in simple ordinary life together, she will absorb your
influence. She will watch every move you make. She might not understand why you are
happy or angry, affectionate, but you will be the most important man in her life, forever.

When she is twenty-five, she will mentally 



size her boyfriend or husband up against you. When she is thirty-five, the number of
children she has will be affected by her life with you. The clothes she wears will reflect
something about you. Even when she is seventy-five, how she faces her future will
depend on some distant memory of time you spent together. Be it good or painful,

the hours and years you spend with her—or 

don’t spend with her—change who she is.

Come on men, we daughters need you!

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