What kind of an affect does growing up without a father have on a woman?

Really very much depends on the woman in question – it’s up to her to try to tease out the effects of a father’s absence – it matters who else was present for her rearing and what culture she grew up in. I can tell you that in the Russian/Armenian household that I grew up in, not having a dad around was normal even if he was alive and well and living right with you…you know, ‘cause ‘men didn’t do such things’ and such bullshit.

You kinda answered your own question.

“She constantly seeks approval from any male that pays any attention to her to the point where it seems a little over the top.”

This is true for both women and men. I had an abusive, distant father and find myself doing the same thing.

I have no father and I definitely see a difference in my behavior and outlook on life than your average American woman. I am very comfortable around men and it is possible that this is due to my lack of a father. I never learned to look on men as figures with any inherent authority. Also, as someone from a single parent home, there were never any conflicting views on how to raise to me, but I imagine that has more to do with having only one parent and not just having a mother. Another big difference I’ve noticed is the division of labor. In many families, there seems to be “man’s work” and “woman’s work.” The idea is an utterly alien one to me because, in my house, there were only women. If we didn’t do it, it didn’t get done. That’s why my mother fixes everything there’s no one else to do it and she’s not going to spend an exorbitant amount of money to have someone else come in and do it and it’s why our house is a mess. Neither of us ever wanted to clean, so we didn’t.

I have a feeling that your wife’s issues have more to do with having a drug-addicted parent rather than having no father. Perhaps she learned that she could not count on her mother and that translated into being unable to count on women in general. That would leave only men and since she has no proper guide I’m guessing the men her mother brought around weren’t exactly stand-up citizens she probably has no idea how to act around men and no idea how a man is supposed to act around her.

Does anybody really know?
Anyway, the question seems to only come up when the father is absent for reasons that are subject to social disapproval.
It does not come up when the father is killed in battle or dies of cancer.
In those cases, the kids are sort of expected to rise above.
I wonder why?

@josie: Because it is easier to think badly of a child of an absentee or abusive father than of a father who is absent out of death. Either way, too great a burden is put on the child to deal with a parent’s absence “the correct way.”

For one thing, it leaves her with no clue as to how (when she marries & has children) a father is supposed to interact with children/family. Even worse, if she then grew up with an alcoholic / abusive step-father, then she will usually have grown up running interference between the step-father & her subsequent siblings in order to protect them from him, & this behavior will carry over into her marriage without her even realizing it. It can & does cause a wide range of issues that can lead to the dissolution of what had been a very promising relationship.

Father/daughter relationships are as definitive as mother/son. It’s the first sexual identity we have in life. Presence and affection will always be measured against that first formation, rightly or wrongly.
My mother’s dad was brutal but funny/intellectual. She sought the opposite in her mate – Dad is very sweet natured but a bit dim on the book-learning things. She would constantly try to goad him into fights.
I don’t have a partner but I think I look for sweetness of my dad with a bit of a cayenne kick.

My best friend has an absent biological dad who is a hippie, peace, granola guy. Of course, she joined the military and attracts militant control freaks.

@Linda_Owl I feel like that is only true if the relationship she saw between a father and his children was a good one…besides, don’t you think a father’s relationship is a parent’s relationship? and don’t you think people are able to see that all around them? Neither of my parents had a good relationship with me but I know what a good parent is like and am that kind of parent to my children.

It affects all women differently.

Your view, Simone, is too simplistic. One has to be exposed to good parenting relationships in order to have some grasp of what it takes. Many women will marry, thinking that they know exactly what they are doing, when in fact they are missing some key ingredients & this can (& frequently does) spell disaster for the marriage, because things start falling apart before the woman realizes that there is a whole dimension that she does not comprehend.

It is going to depend upon the individual’s personality, as well as the mother’s projection of the father’s.

@Linda_Owl I think one can grasp what was missing in their relationship with a parent and learn from other good parental-like relationships and give a lot more thought to their own parenting than they would otherwise. As for realities of marriage, that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here, is it? My views on marriage, I feel, aren’t like those of others but my views on parenting certainly connect me to many others who haven’t had stellar times with their parents but ended up knowing exactly what it takes to parent effectively when their turn comes.

My only worry when children grow up in a single parent household, is they don’t get to see a strong example in their home of adult relationships. However, bad marriages are horrible examples for children also, and I think there are a lot of those out there.

I kind of agree with @Simone_De_Beauvoir that parenting is parenting, and the example of being a good parent can be from a man or a woman, so the expectations of a good father is not in question.

I do think children, especially girls, look for verbal reinforcement that they are good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, and when that is lacking at home, and some guy tells them how wonderful they are, they are sucked in easily.

If the father isnot around because he was an asshole, then I think tnat can affect a girls trust of men, especially if that isna theme througout her family. If there are positive examples of couples inher family, then again, I think it can be overcome, but she might feel like she was cheated a little compared to friends with two parents I guess?

These are just assumptions and conjecture, I am not familiar with any stats or theories on the topic.

I grew up with out a dad and I have intimacy issues because of it. I’m also afraid of men.

I’ve got an opinion. But I’m careful because this seems like a loaded question.

Being @KatawaGrey ‘s mom, I’m very interested in this question. I wrestled with that question a good deal when she was growing up. @Linda_Owl , We don’t learn how to parent solely from the example set, I was able to extrapolate things from my mother’s parenting, and learned a lot about what not to do. I agree, as some others have said, that it’s much more about what kind of person the absentee father is, and how the mother reacts in her parenting style to the fact of the absentee father. There is no cut and dried set of behaviors to expect from a woman simply because her father was absent or deceased or unknown.
C’mon, @mattbrowne , don’t be shy, you live too far away for anyone to seek you out and give you a poke in the snoot.
Edit to add: Ultimately it’s about human relationships, after all.

I’ll give a little more detail, my wife didn’t meet her father until she was 21yr. He simply told her that it was to late for them to start any type of relationship. She had her twin sister, her drug addicted mother, and the mother had gone through 2 abusive boyfriends in the household. I know that at least one of the mothers boyfriends was physically abusive to her mother and would call my wife & her sister sluts and whores when they were around 12 too 14yrs old. To make matters worse she was raped at the age of 15 by a boyfriend. She is now 31 and we have 2 daughters of our own. She is a good mother however at times it seems her only form of communication is to yell, unfortunately thats primarily the way she communicated with her own mother. In addition her mother passed away exactly a year ago at the age of 56. But her need to seek approval from men has recently caused a bigger issue when a coworker started to send inapropriate photos of himself to her. In turn this has cause a great strain on our marriage. I grew up with both my parents and have very high morals, lately i’ve been buying into the saying nice guys finsh last and if thats the case in another 20yards behind them.

Your situation is much more specific than your question would suggest, I’m glad you clarified it It sounds to me that this is much more about your wife’s particular issues than fatherless daughters.

@JilltheTooth, thats why I asked the initial question. That was the 1st major blow to her growing up, so I want to know how much weight it truly held

@fullaquestions her family is so dysfunctional it is probably hard to blame one thing more than the other.