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October
Your Daughter's Young Adult Years: Money, Sex
& Career and their impact on your
father-daughter relationship - Part 1I
How do father-daughter relationships generally
change from the time a daughter leaves high school
until she becomes a “real” adult? What
usually puts the most stress on their relationship?
And how can father and daughter strengthen their
relationship or overcome these obstacles during her
early adult years?
Changes & Tensions -- - Both father and
daughter need to change some of their attitudes and
behavior in order to create a more adult
relationship with one another during her
college-age years. Unfortunately what usually
happens is that one person is readier to change
than the other. Either dad is treating his daughter
too much like a little girl while she is striving
and wanting to become an adult. Or dad is treating
her like an adult while she is still behaving and
wanting to be treated like a child. Your mutual
struggle as father and daughter to create an adult
to adult relationship usually reaches it peak over
these three issues: his money, her sexual
lifestyle, and her career plans. In
September’s column, I talked about money. Now
let’s turn our attention to sex.
Assumptions about Uptight Dad --- One reason the
daughter’s sexual life creates tension for too
many young women and their fathers is that she
assumes her father is far more conservative and far
more uptight than he actually is. When this
happens, the daughter lies, deceives, and hides a
lot of what’s going on in her life from her
father. And that’s not good for their
relationship. Feeling guilty, she goes to great
lengths to pretend to be the virginal, non-sexual
little girl that she believes her father wants her
to be. Fearing that her father will love her less
or respect her less if he discovers that she is not
an innocent, virginal girl, she may end up refusing
to share anything about her personal life with him
– depriving herself and her father of the
chance for him to be her advisor and ally in
matters of the heart. I am not suggesting that
daughters share the intimate details of their
sexual lives with their fathers. But I am saying
that by time daughters leave adolescence, they
should not be pretending to be sexually innocent
children in order to please “daddy”.
One way of easing the tension is for a father to
let his young adult daughter know more about his
sexual life when he was her age – and to let
her know what his feelings are about people her age
having sex. I’m not saying that fathers should
share the details of their sexual lives with their
daughters. But I am saying that fathers should let
their daughters know that they were not – or
are not - as sexually conservative as their
daughters might be assuming. Although it is true
that most fathers want their daughter to wait until
their late teens before having sex, it is not true
that most fathers want or expect their daughters to
be virgins when they get married. This quiz is one
way for fathers and daughters to get the
conversation started about dad’s beliefs.
Your Father’s Generation: Not Such Uptight
Guys! What do you believe are true about most men
now between the ages of 45 and 60?
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Most were virgins when they got
married.
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Most have been married only once.
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Most waited until their twenties to
have sex for the first time.
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Most married a virgin.
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Most disapprove of people having sex
before marriage.
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Most never drank or smoked cigarettes
as teenagers.
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Most never used any illegal drug.
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Most oppose sex education in the
schools.
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Most want abortion made illegal
again.
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Most believe that interracial marriages
should be outlawed again.
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Total Score (10 possible trues)
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What’s your score? The correct answer is
zero. Not one of these statements is true. Most men
who are now in their 40s and 50s were not sexually
or socially conservative as young men —and
neither were the women they dated and married. Only
10% of the men and 20% of the women were virgins
when they married. Having sex before marriage,
drinking, and smoking were the norm, not the
exception. More than half of those married people
got divorced and 20% of all parents never got
married. Nearly a third of the women were already
pregnant when they married. Most men had three or
four lovers before marriage, and most women had
more than one. Interracial and interfaith marriages
increased dramatically during the 1960s and 70s.
The legal right to terminate a pregnancy, to marry
someone of another race, to keep your job if
you’re gay, and to possess small amounts of
recreational drugs without being sent to jail exist
because dad’s generation created more liberal
laws. In short, there’s not as much difference
as a daughter might think there is between her
father’s generation and her own.
On the other hand, some fathers are more
sexually conservative than their daughters –
and some daughters are more conservative than their
fathers. When that’s the case, do not try to
change one another’s sexual values.
You’re each entitled to your own beliefs
because you are both adults. For the sake of your
relationship, accept each other’s right to
live your sexual life in the way that you have
deemed is best for you. Having to adopt exactly the
same sexual values should not be a requirement for
a loving, meaningful father-daughter
relationship.
©2008 Dr. Linda
Nielsen
See Books,
Issues,
Resources
* * *
It is easier for a father to have children than
for children to have a real father. Pope John
XXIII
Dr. Nielsen
has been teaching, counseling, conducting research
and writing about adolescents and father-daughter
relationships since 1970. A member of Phi Beta
Kappa and the recipient of the outstanding
graduate's award in teacher education from the
University of Tennessee in 1969, she taught and
counseled high school students for several years.
After earning a Master's Degree in Counseling and a
Doctorate in Educational and Adolescent Psychology,
she joined the faculty of Wake Forest University in
1974. Her grants and awards include the Outstanding
Article Award in 1980 from the U.S. Center for
Women Scholars and a postdoctoral fellowship from
the American Association of University Women. For
the past fifteen years she has focused primarily on
father-daughter relationships with a special
emphasis on divorced fathers and their daughters.
Her work has been cited in the "Wall Street
Journal" as well as in popular magzines such as
"Cosmopolitan", and shared through television and
radio interviews..
In 1991 she created her "Fathers
& Daughters" course - the only college course
in the country that focuses exclusively on
father-daughter relationships. In addition to
having written several dozen articles for journals
such as the "Harvard Educational Review" and the
"Journal of Divorce & Remarriage", Dr. Nielsen
has written three books: How to Motivate
Adolescents (Prentice Hall) and Adolescence: A
Contemporary View (Harcourt Brace) which sold more
than 60,000 copies and was adopted by hundreds of
universities throughout the country and abroad
between 1986-1996. Her third book, Embracing
Your Father: Creating the Relationship You Want
with Your Dad was
published in April, 2004. www.wfu.edu/~nielsen
or E-Mail
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