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Book Smart: 3 novels explore the father-daughter bond

The Patriot Ledger - 11/10/2020

With the holidays fast approaching our attention often turns to important family relationships. Conversations about the role of fathers usually focus on sons, but recent research shows that the father-daughter relationship may hold more significance for female development than once imagined.

Recent studies have demonstrated that there is significant attachment already evident between fathers and their infant children at nine months. Interestingly, however, girls have been observed to attach themselves earlier and more intensely to their fathers than do boys, even when fathers are shown to be more responsive and prefer interacting with their male children.

While fathers may be more involved with child-rearing early on than in past decades there still seem to be differences in how they engage young children when compared to mothers, which may help us understand the evolving father-daughter relationship. Men, in general, still tend to differ stylistically from mothers in how they engage. Time spent often tends to be more physical, action-oriented, and adventuresome. They focus on encouraging tenacity, mastery and independence. Thus, early on, girls learn to associate their fathers with challenge, excitement and adventure.

As a girl continues to develop, so too does her desire to stay connected to their fathers and continue to receive recognition for developing assertiveness, independence, and competence. It is not surprising then that daughters whose fathers have been actively engaged throughout childhood in promoting their daughter’s athletic and academic achievements and openly encourage self-reliance are significantly more likely to graduate from college, enter more demanding, higher-paying jobs, and seek typically male-dominated professions.

The most frequently raised question, however, is how does the father-daughter relationship influence a daughter’s romantic life and the quality of her relationships with men. While there are many things that a girl learns from her father, it is most importantly, the first male-female relationship where she gains the earliest reflection of herself as a female who is either ignored and discounted or valued, loved and respected. This becomes the foundation of a woman’s emerging self-confidence. Depressive symptoms and low self-esteem in adulthood are common residues of a father’s lack of interest or desertion. Father neglect has been shown to play a significant role in lifelong feelings of unlovability and insecurity.

However, the father is also a girl’s first male role model on how she comes to view men. If he is absent, emotionally distant, or critical he may stimulate fear of abandonment, inability to trust, fear of emotional intimacy, and low expectations for how a woman should be treated. While too little fathering creates significant potential for increased instability in romantic relationships, supportive fathers prevent a daughter from fearing intimate relationships and provide the training ground for being able to share feelings and create satisfying future bonds.

In short, the father-daughter relationship influences how we come to view ourselves, those we will come to love, and holds the potential to influence our life ambitions. The wonderful novels below highlight three fathers who affect the lives of their young daughters in intriguing and occasionally surprising ways.

“The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley: A Novel” by Hannah Tinti is a powerful and genuinely unforgettable story of a man whose profound love for his daughter is threatened by his criminal past. Loo is the apple of her father’s eye and the center of his universe. But Samuel Hawley’s universe has always been filled with desperation and crime. Now after many years of living on the run, Hawley wants to give his daughter a normal life and settle in his late wife’s hometown. He finds work as a fisherman and tries to help Loo fit in small-town life. Yet Loo’s curiosity about her dead mother leads her to uncover the painful truth about Sam’s twelve bullet scars and the demons they represent. The only question remains whether Samuel and Loo Hawley will truly ever outrun the past.

“The Scent Keeper” by Erica Bauerheister is a unique, immersive, beautifully rendered coming-of-age story about a young girl raised in seclusion on a remote island. Emmeline is raised by her father on a remote island and he teaches her about the natural world through the power of scent. Emmeline is told nothing about how they came to live there, nor why he keeps an entire wall of tiny corked bottles each filled with paper carrying a unique scent. What she does know is that she adores her father and won’t push for answers. But as Emmeline grows, so too does her curiosity about events that led them there and about who her mother is. Will her struggle to find her identity and place in the world, ultimately cost Emmeline a life she has come to savor?

“Creatures: A Novel” by Crissy Van Meter is an emotional look at the roller coaster of love and disappointment in a father-daughter relationship complicated by addiction. Evie is raised on an island by her well-intentioned but negligent father on the money he makes dealing a world-famous strain of weed. It is now the eve of her wedding and her mostly absent mother arrives out of the blue just as her groom- to- be may also be missing. With all emotions swirling, Evie reflects on her marital choice and the role of expectations formed by her father and twenty years of devotion, hurt, adoration, and joy.

Book Smart is a monthly column by Nancy Harris, of Scituate, a practicing psychologist and a former instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Book Smart: 3 novels explore the father-daughter bond

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