What is the impact of fatherlessness on girls or women who grew up without their fathers or the support of their paternal families? Over the years, we have been inundated with research and statistics that speak more to the absence of fathers and how it impacts on male children.
This painted an imbalanced picture of fathers only being important to their sons and not their daughters. Society has created a parallel between the female and male children’s need for paternal parenting. And even when we talk about the challenges that female children face, we hardly discuss the impact of fatherlessness to them.
It is as though girls live happily without their fathers.
In her PhD research paper, Tori Zengel Mora focused on fatherlessness by way of abandonment.
Mora said: “While there are many reasons why a child might not have a father in the home, including artificial insemination, same-sex female parenting, adoption, death, separation/divorce, incarceration, and deportation, abandonment identifies a situation in which the biological father makes a choice not to have contact with his child or children, as distinct from one of the scenarios that does not involve personal agency, such as death or deportation.”
And perhaps the impact an absent father has on a daughter is really different from the one he has on a son. I also want to be careful not to exaggerate how a father’s absence may affect the daughter’s life.
A lot has been said about daddy issues. Sometimes we go as far as labelling a lady’s preferences and choices a result of daddy "issues" when the woman simply doesn’t find a match in her peers romantically.
Another thorny challenge is the trivialisation of how a father’s absence affects their female child. When a male child is crying for his father and wants to be reunited with his father or his father’s family, everybody validates this seeking.
People go as far as talking about how the young man needs to be connected or introduced to his ancestry. The male child will be desperately in need of his "true" identity. Some boys and men go as far as blaming their lack of commitment and infidelities to the abandonment of their paternal families.
Everyone will be supporting them and helping them find their fathers.
But, why do we not afford girls the same safe net and validations when they are looking for their fathers? How is it fair that the absence of a father to a daughter is associated with degrading and dehumanising reactions from society?
For instance, a man will cheat and abuse their partner, and later blame the absence of his father for his own deliberate choices. How on earth did the absence of a father teach someone dishonesty? A woman will date an older man and people will call her all degrading names such as a loose, whore, etc. Why aren't her actions also a result of her absent father? Why are women’s actions trivialised?
We should do better. It is frustrating how quick we are to exonerate men in almost all spheres of life.
Again, we make excuses for the questionable and unacceptable behaviour of boys and men and crucify women for doing the same thing. We ought to treat women and men the same way, especially when the situation affects them the same.
It is these double standards that continue to give patriarchy life and delay our quest for an impartial society that treats men and women equally.
Daughters are also affected by the absence of their fathers. They too struggle with identity issues and they also want to be introduced to their ancestry to be fully recognised and protected by them. Of course, this is for people who believe and acknowledge their ancestors.
We should also credit female children for never making their mothers feel like they are not enough. Girls tend to be more sensitive to their mothers than boys. As boys, we obsess so much over our absent fathers that we make our mothers feel empty. We display an attitude of ungratefulness.
In our quest to help girls and adult women to reconcile with their fathers or their paternal families, maybe we will also open our minds to studying further the phenomenon of fatherless daughters in our society.
As things stand, we are failing females as far as GBV is concerned. Maybe if we prioritise their cry to reconcile with their fathers for paternal families, society could redeem itself where looking out for women is examined.
Fatherless daughters are part of our daily lives. And, irrespective of the reason why the father is not present, many daughters in our society are struggling with growing up without their fathers.
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