How a Father Influences His Daughter

A father’s relationship with his daughter shapes who she will become. The father-daughter relationship is an important place, if not the most important place, for daughters to develop appropriate foundations for self-confidence and self-worth.

A daughter’s relationship with her father is her very first male-female relationship. From that relationship, little girls develop their first impression of themselves as a female. Among all the emotions they might experience with their dads, at the very least they develop a sense of whether they are valued or discounted by men, and why. Daughters regard themselves as they think others regard them, especially her dad.

If a daughter receives plentiful affection and reassurance from her dad, she will mature into a woman with a healthy capacity to love herself and others. On the other hand, if a daughter isn’t given loving affection and reassurance by her dad, it is hard for her to believe a boyfriend, even a husband, when he tries to give her comfort and reassurance.

Too many dads mistakenly believe that if he isn’t a negative force in his daughter’s life, then he is in the alternative, a positive force. That belief is simply wrong. Being silent, and worse, indifferent, is being absent, and absence is just as negative and hurtful to little girls as is a strike or insult.

Dad, your conduct, perhaps more than any other influence, determines the woman your daughter will become. Step up to the responsibility and raise her carefully, and lovingly.