Growing up without a parent can negatively affect a child’s ability to achieve happiness in their lives. There are many reasons for parents not to be present in a child’s growth, whether its due to death, an illness, divorce, or lack of time due to their jobs. All of these reasons have their own effects on children. The effects occur in the children’s personality, which could often be negative such as having: low self-esteem, lack of ability to socialize, inability to maintain relationships and so on. When the children’s personality is affected negatively, their ability to achieve happiness diminishes. This is the case with women who grew up with the emotional absence of their father. Research shows that women are specifically damaged in their ability to have healthy love relationships due to the absence of their father at some point in their life. Women are likely to have unhealthy love relationships due to insecurity: caused by the emotional absence of a father throughout childhood.
The benefits that a woman misses by the emotional absence of a father in her childhood are management of emotions, encouragement of risk taking, competition and more. According to the article “Growing Up Without A Father: The Impact On Girls and Women.” By Bravada Garrett-Akinsanya. Fathers are essential for girls in their child development because they provide with a different type of nurturing. They focus more on teamwork and competitiveness. This different type of focus has an effect on the girl’s ability to manage emotions, intelligence and academic achievement. Fathers also are essential to provide with a sense of what self-control and teaches it to girls. Therefore if a girl does not receive this during her childhood development, when she grows older she will have difficulties with her personality by being insecure, having low self- esteem and being unable to recognize her self-worth.
Girls need to be taught by their father about men so when they grow up to women, they would be able to acquire healthy relationships. A blog that was posted in website “Love-Life Learning Center” created by Dr. Tom Jordan and his wife whose professions are in the field of psychology: states that fathers need to nurture their daughters in order for them to have a secure sense of themselves as individuals and as desirable women. However, if fathers do not provide with this type of nurturing then the daughters will have grief and will search for the missing father’s love somewhere else. A father also has the responsibility of advising their daughters about how men are, what they value, how they get to respect women and so on. This is how a daughter would have information in order to be able to look for their ideal man in the future. Although, if daughters cannot acquire this information and nurturing from their fathers due to their absence then they will fail to cultivate healthy relationships leading them to develop negative characteristics.
Not receiving the adequate nurturing and information of a father will lead a daughter to grow into an insecure woman. According to a paper named “ Fatherless Women: What Happens to the Adult Woman who was Raised Without her Father” By Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D. She confirms that a girl sees her self-worth reflected in a father’s behavior towards her. Therefore a woman who was raised having a positive relationship with her father will be self-confident. However, the woman who lacked of someone to assure her self-worth will have a low self-esteem. Hence, making it more difficult for the woman with low self-esteem to overcome obstacles throughout her life. Moreover, Kortosch explains three types of love relationships that adult women would have if they experienced the emotional absence of a father. The first one is called “The multi-faceted arena of relationships” this is the type of relationships where women who don’t have a sense of validation for themselves tend to look for it by having sex with men until they think they found the “right” one that makes them feel accepted. The second one is “Marrying “Daddy” which is the type of relationship where women seek for older men wanting to find the father figure they never had. If the lover recognizes that the woman is going to go through a transformation that will make her into her own older woman, from daughter to woman then their relationship will be successful. However, if the man doesn’t recognize this transformation or doesn’t want to then he will respond negatively to the woman and make her feel silly and even more less confident about herself. That would show that he just wanted to take advantage of the naïve, young woman he married to. The third type of relationships is “Avoiding engaging emotions” which is where women just avoid getting involved their emotions with men and so they decide to focus instead on their careers, taking care of others by serving them, serving to god, to their sister’s sons and daughters and so on. Also prostitutes who involve their body with men but not necessarily involving their feelings at all. Last but not least the woman who ends up having relationships with those who are married and which is convenient to her because she never really wants to commit either anyway.
Works Cited
Akinsanya, Brevada G. “Insight News.” Insight News RSS. N.p., 03 Nov. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Jordan, Tom. “Absent Father & His Daughter’s Love-Life.” LoveLife Learning Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.
Kortsch, Gabriella. “Fatherless Women: What Happens to the Adult Woman Who Was Raised Without Her Father?” Trans4mind. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.