Re-posted from The Oregonian, Jan. 17, 2013
“Reading Kevin Renner’s memoir of fatherhood prompts me to say to women, regardless of age, culture, or background: ‘Tell me if and how your father loved you as a child, and I’ll tell you whether or not you have found love as a woman’.”
Charlene Kate Kavanagh, Ph.D., psychologist and author
Moms: Who taught your husbands or partners how to raise your daughters into womanhood? Who taught your own father?
Dads: Who showed you how to do it? Who taught me?
Unfortunately, no one instructed any of us as fathers in this enormously important work, the true work of our lives. Through their presence and even their absence fathers shape how daughters live, work, and love. But of the hundreds of things men learn growing up, how to nurture a girl into a woman isn’t one of them.
Who a daughter gets as the most important man in her life is pretty much the luck of the draw, for better or worse. That luck of the draw fills the heart of every woman with sadness, emptiness, anger and longing; or perhaps joy, confidence, compassion and empathy. Every woman is a daughter, and every woman’s emotional abundance or desperation usually has more to do with her father than any other man in her life.
As a dad with two girls, I wanted to better understand the lifelong impact that fathers have on daughters. I decided that if men really wanted to learn how to be better fathers, they should talk with women. That’s right; men need to learn fatherhood from women, at least if we’re raising daughters. That was my mid-life epiphany. So I took a year-long journey into the hearts and souls of 50 women from 17 countries, ages 29 to 92.
I asked all kinds of women−rich and poor, famous and anonymous, straight, lesbian, and transgender−if they would lock themselves in a private room with me for a long evening or weekend (I am not making this up), and then share with me the most intimate details of their lives and how they were shaped by their fathers.
These women were from Iran, Liberia, China, the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Korea, Saudi Arabia, India, and places in between. Among them were a doctor, a psychotherapist, professional athletes, former executives and the late Oregon Supreme Court justice Betty Roberts. I also met with current and former sex workers, drug addicts, unemployed and homeless women.
I heard stories that were heartwarming and heart breaking. Among them were:
- Katie, whose father was violent and abusive. She lived in a fog of drug and alcohol addiction, working as a stripper, churning through five marriages, giving up her children and attempting suicide three times. Her story ends with a spiritual reconciliation that I never could have imagined.
- Blanca, the daughter of an agricultural worker from Mexico who brought his family to California to educate his daughters. Blanca honored his sacrifice by completing a law degree at Santa Clara University and an MBA at Berkeley. She cried for four hours as we spoke.
- Wendy, who loved her single father so dearly she proposed to him at age four. She cried at his rational explanation about why that wouldn’t work, “Because I could hear that there was a ‘no’ in there.”
- Kim, who is transgender and spent her childhood imprisoned in a boy’s body, and became best friends with her father in adulthood.
- Kara, a two-time member of the U.S. Olympic team, whose father was killed by a drunk driver a week before she turned four.
- Courtney, whose father sexually abused her until age 12, when she turned his German Luger on him.
- Luna, who in her thirties earns her living as a sex worker while raising a daughter and going to school.
I told them that I’d listen until they dropped. Some did. One woman wrote to me later, “I went home and crashed and slept for 14 hours.”
The stories these women shared were essentially the same, regardless of where in the world they grew up or when: Daughters are born with an innate need for the attention, affection and nurturing of their fathers. Some women draw the long straw, getting heroic fathers. Others draw the short straw in their horrific fathers. And others get “the long and the short of it”, as I call it in my book, or those dads who are in between the terrific and tragic.
After hundreds of hours of laughter and tears, their stories and mine became a book, which got me in front of radio, television, and live audiences around the country, where I got to hear from even more women. I learned profoundly important lessons from women about how to be a father. I’ll write about those lessons in future columns.
Most fathers have no idea how deeply they shape their daughters. Through the way they live their day-to-day lives, fathers set their daughters on lifelong trajectories. The woman next to you on the bus, or in front of you at the checkout line, or working with, for or above you became who she is through the luck of a draw.
I wish the world were full of nothing but long straw stories. It’s not. But there’s also a world of potential for fathers to do a better job of influencing the course of their daughters’ lives.
Of the world’s 3.6 billion daughters, perhaps 3 billion of them are old enough to talk. Every one of them has something to say about fatherhood. For the good of fathers and daughters everywhere it’s time for dads to open their hearts and minds to what women can teach them about fatherhood.
Kevin Renner is a public speaker and author of “In Search of Fatherhood: Daughters Praising, Speaking Up, Talking Back.” He invites readers to submit questions for future columns, which run on the 3rd Thursday of each month. He can be reached at www.kevin-renner.com, or at InSearchofFatherhood@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevinrenner, or on Facebook at Kevin Renner In Search of Fatherhood.
