The belief that the father is the “first love” of a girl is quite widespread, and that her relationship with him will mark her relationships in the future. But what is true about it? How parents influence daughters?
Electra complex vs. affective-sexual development
A good part of these assumptions comes from the popular Oedipus complex in its female version: the Electra complex. According to C. Jung, the author who described this complex, the girls (approximately between 3 and 6 years old) would feel a growing affection and a great interest for their father and a rejection towards the mother.
But nevertheless this theory does not have scientific support (there is no scientific evidence to support it). Jung's observations did appear on the target to detect a change in behavior in girls at those ages, but he did not succeed with the explanation.
In Babies and more, she graduated with her daughter in her arms and 18 years later they both recreated the same photo at her graduationIt is just in that preschool age when boys and girls begin to identify with one sex or another, and as part of that new construction of their identity they begin a fabulous display of all the behaviors and characteristics they perceive or understand (by social and cultural transmission) as "typical of that sex."
The key is that at these ages boys and girls are already absolutely permeable to gender stereotypes, so it should not surprise us that the girls that Jung observed in 1912 "played to be moms," boyfriends and everything that was understood at that time as proper to the female sex. And of course, "If I want to play moms and dads I need a dad ... and I have a mom, because I will play that role".
No, Jung did not take into account the affective-sexual development of preschoolers, nor the fact that girls, like boys, learn from relationships through what they see at home, in the family, but they are also sensitive, as I was saying, to messages loaded with stereotypes that are continuously launched.
How the father figure influences a daughter
What is extracted from the numerous studies that are in this regard is that more than the figure of the father per se, that is, the mere presence of it, What significantly influences girls is the quality of the relationship, if the father besides being present is involved or, in the opposite direction, if the relationship between them is negative. Needless to say, these effects also occur in children, not only in girls, but today, here, I focus on them.
Let's look at some of those studies:
Benefits of a daughter's relationship with a present, affectionate and involved father
- Lower risk of eating disorders.
- Lower risk of suffering from psychological disorders.
- According to a macro review conducted by the University of Guelph, we found better academic results, better coping with stress, higher subjective index of happiness, more social competence ... and a better overall psychological adjustment.
In Babies and more My son prefers his father: how to manage this discomfort generated by feeling rejectedWhen the father is absent, poorly involved or there is a bad relationship
- Increased risk of depression in adolescence
- A lower self-esteem.
- Higher index of risky sexual relations in adolescence and an earlier onset of them.
- Linda Nielsen, an expert in relations between fathers and daughters, indicates that a poor relationship with the father can lead to difficulty in trusting and communicating with men in adulthood.
In any case, it is important that we be critical of these studies, since it is complicated at the methodological level to isolate the variable “presence or absence of the father” or “quality of the relationship with the father”.
Factors such as personality, education, or relevant attachment figures will mark the behavior of girls and boys, so we should not take it as a “single motive”, but as a factor that can favor this or that behavior.
In this sense, there are studies that indicate, as I said at the beginning of this point, that more than the absence of the father, which determines a greater risk, for example, of unwanted pregnancies, is how the separation between the parents occurred, how it was managed , how the father acted… That is to say, the stress and the vital alteration that the girl lived at the moment in which the father “stops being present in his life”.
The relationship with the father does influence future relationships
Yes, it is true: the way in which the father interacts with his daughter, how he speaks to him, what messages he throws at him, how he shows his affection ... all this will mark, when this is an adult, his relationships. But as we have seen, the father is not the only one who marks the girls: the mother and all those attachment figures that the child has will leave a mark without a doubt.
In Babies and more The relationship between parents and daughters has changed: now they talk to them about sexuality and relationshipsA girl is marked with her father, of course, but also that of his mother, or that of his mothers if it is a same-sex couple, or that of his only father in the case of a single-parent home ...
We mark the reference adults for the children, his attachment figures, and not because of a strange and somewhat twisted idea of "first love", but because we are that, models, examples and guides, references and sources of affection. So we better do it right, right?
Photos: Pexels.com
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