[supafamous]

https://apple.news/A-HThIc1hQqmO96RzYYnSag
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2...divide/684466/

Really good read about the gap that exists between fathers and daughters - 28% (!!!) of daughters are estranged from their dads (in the US). Sons aren't far though and I can understand that - I'm way closer to my mom than my dad (I'm not really close to either though).

I'm very aware that my daughter shares more with my wife than she does with me - my wife is more nurturing for one thing and my hearing loss make it more challenging for my daughter to talk with me (it's why I carry her a lot now so she's closer to my ears). I'm told the balance does shift as children get older but I'm very mindful of being present for her and stuff like this is a good reminder - I very pointedly have regular daddy-daughter days and have optimised my semi-retired life around her schedule.

Evidence of a dad-daughter divide crops up in more recent research on families, too. Fathers and daughters are more likely to become estranged than other pairs within the nuclear family. According to a 2022 study of national longitudinal data, roughly 28 percent of women in the U.S. are estranged from their dad; that’s only slightly higher than the 24 percent of sons estranged from their father but significantly higher than the 6.3 percent of children of any gender estranged from their mother. Even in cases where contact isn’t completely cut off, father-daughter relationships tend to be less close than other familial bonds.

In a 2010 study, adult daughters reported feeling less comfortable discussing personal issues with their father than they did with their mother, and relying on their dad for “instrumental support” rather than emotional care. Linda Nielsen, a professor at Wake Forest University who has studied father-daughter relationships for much of her career and written five books on the topic, has called it the weakest parent-child relationship. Of course, plenty of women have a close and loving relationship with their father. But the research is clear: Many do not.

...

As kids reach high school, the discrepancy in how much time dads spend with their sons versus their daughters balloons. The 2012 study found that by age 17, girls were averaging less than 30 minutes a week one-on-one with their dad, while boys got more than an hour; fathers and teen daughters hung out less than any other familial combination. Part of the time gap seems to stem from the fact that teen boys tend to want to spend more time with their dad, and teen girls largely gravitate toward their mom. But Will Glennon, a writer who interviewed hundreds of fathers for his 1995 book, Fathering, told me that many dads also distance themselves from their adolescent daughters.

Most of the fathers he spoke with were uncomfortable watching their girls go through puberty. That stage felt volatile, and the dads had “no idea” what their daughters were dealing with—so they withdrew. This was a reaction that Glennon said he understood: He’d also struggled when his daughter was a teen.