Understanding Father Daughter Relationships

There was a worrying time a few years ago when I realised with a shudder that there was another girl in my husband's life.  She'd been around for a while but I’d started noticing how desperately she was vying for his affection and subtly doing all she could to prevent the two us from having any kind of physical affection, certainly while she was around.  Effortlessly beautiful, she gazed at him with startlingly blue eyes, casually flicking her blonde hair in a coquettish way while using her long tanned limbs to clamber all over him.  But before you commiserate that my marriage was in crisis, I have to be honest, the perpetrator was in fact Iona, our four year old daughter who had become increasingly obsessed with her Daddy.

It struck me as we lay together in the weekend sun, Ludo, her five year old brother contentedly trying to befriend dragon flies while Iona lay on my husband, Ben's, chest, head in her hands, gazing into her father’s eyes, playfully picking out the grey hairs on his beard, stroking his face and nuzzling his chest.  Whenever he casually attempted to kiss me, she raced between us, squealing to get his attention like a jealous teenager.  

When he was around she had not got eyes for anyone else, least of all me.  In some cases this played in my favour; Ben had the delight of wiping her bottom, lugging her around when she was tired of walking and attending to her frequent personal crises such as when her favourite toy was lost.  But I did find this a little unfair; she’d spent nearly ten months growing in my uterus, stretching my once taught tummy so that it resembled a slab of jelly rather than anything approximating a washboard.  

In the boring days, before she could walk, talk, charm or allure, she treated me imperiously, like an unpaid servant, screaming with fury if I did something she disliked and insisting that only I hold her the whole time, resulting in a, not insignificant, back injury.  But when she had acquired bucket loads of charisma and in spite of the hours of storytelling, games and conversations we have when Ben was on his frequent travels, as soon as he was back, I was cast aside like some boring old toy.

I googled 'Why do daughters…' and before I could get any further it pre-empted me with 1. ...hate their mothers 2. prefer their fathers 3. dislike their mothers.  Clearly I wasn’t the first mother to feel the cold shoulder of her daughter.  Indeed the psychoanalyst Carl Jung theorizes that this all stems from the female version of the Oedipus Theory.  The Electra Complex, (rather alarmingly named after the Greek myth in which Electra seeks to kill her mother in order to protect her father), Jung theorises, is when a daughter competes psychosexually with her mother for ‘possession’ of her father.  As I read on, horrified by my findings, I started to wish I’d never consulted Dr Google.  Thankfully I was reassured to read that what I once regarded as sweet, now terrifying behaviour is a key developmental stage of normal sexual identity and did not mean that I should fear for my life.

Freud and Jung’s ground-breaking psychoanalysis have plenty of critics and many believe that while there is some evidence to support their theories,  with their psychosexual theories of penis envy they might possibly be taking it a step too far from reality.  I sought an alternative opinion from Emily Samuel, a psychotherapist working at the Yale Study Centre in New York and she agreed that Jung’s theory might well be too radical and that to understand this behaviour properly you need to take into account social and cultural factors.  

Today, many fathers are away and spend less time with their children.  But they are arguably nowadays more hands on and when they sweep in for short bursts of time, it’s all about fun.  At bath time it doesn’t matter how much water is splashed out of the bath or whether you eat ice cream for breakfast, because it’s sporadic.  By contrast the mother is often the one insisting that teeth brushing happens daily no matter what and that chocolate spread is only for the weekends (ironically when Daddy is home).   It’s desperately unfair for us mothers, but frankly I was relieved that Iona’s Daddy adoration did not mean she was turning into a scheming, matricidal child.

Finally I came across a piece of research that put my mind at rest.  A study by the University of Durham found that little girls who are exceptionally close to their father end up marrying men who are similar.  Emily Samuel agrees.  “Children will often seek to replicate the strong attachments and formative relationships they have as children later on in their lives.”  And with that I realised that I am a good mother.  I chose a man who relishes fatherhood with every bone in his body.  Although he’s often absent, the way he bursts through the front door, desperate for a hug with his family, earnestly listens to the children’s stories and experiences and delights in every moment he gets to spend with them makes it obvious that his two children are the most precious things in his life.  

The days when their Daddy is around are always full of energy, joy and exciting things.  He returns with elaborate tales from exotic places and spends hours recounting his adventures to his two enraptured groupies.  Sometimes they are joined by their friends, expanding Ben’s fan base further.  Their friend Eva is so enamoured with Ben, that she has started referring to him as ‘my love’.  So it’s no wonder that Iona wants nothing to do with me when this incredible person is around.  But if she ends up choosing someone as kind, committed and generous as her father to marry, then I’m happy to bear the burden of having to compete with my daughter for my husband’s affections.

Marina is the co-founder of The Bump Class, providing expert led antenatal courses to women in the run up to the birth of their babies.  She also produces and presents The Parent Hood, a podcast in which she has a series of conversations with experts on all aspects of parenting, from pre-conception to the teenage years.  

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