Women and Their Fathers Quotes

“The good father does not have to be perfect. Rather, he has to be good enough to help his daughter to become a woman who is reasonably self-confident, self-sufficient, and free of crippling self-doubt, and to feel at ease in the company of men.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“It isn't just the physical presence of the father that matters- it's his engagement and involvement. An emotionally remote or rejecting or actively punitive father leads to girls' feeling pretty apprehensive around men.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“The psychological absence of fathers can be nearly as devastating as physical absence. When fathers are alive but not a predictable presence actively participating in their daughter's lives the relationship becomes a permanent "maybe.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“One only has to watch aging siblings scrap over the worthless pots and pans and scuffed furniture of a deceased parent's estate- like toddlers over toys- to see how desperate is the need to wrest some last, pathetic, tangible measure of their parent's devotion.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“It helps enormously to have had a loving mother. Mothers can give their daughters permission to love their fathers. Mothers can help their daughters feel good about becoming mothers. Mothers can help daughters learn the value of openness and female friendship, especially when times are bad,”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Happiness" alone does not guarantee mental health and well-being. A tempering dose of disappointment- an occasional taste of frustration and learning that you do recover from it- goes a long way toward producing long-term contentment. Indeed the ability to ride out the bad times without feeling doomed is essential to survival. When happiness is not taken for granted, and when one is acquainted with its opposite it is more easily savored and has more lasting effects.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Parental neglect even in intact families, can have a shattering effect on how daughters- even those with loving mothers- feel about men.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Father absence has been implicated in anorexia nervosa, in which daughters may exhibit literal father hunger by starving themselves.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Lacking older siblings, the oldest or only child identifies primarily with her parents, conforming to their ideals and demands, not the least reason being that she no one with whom to share those demands. Since firstborns try to live up to the expectations of adults- teachers' as well as parents'- rather than that of peers, they are likely to learn more and to bring home better report cards than younger siblings. Thus firstborns pave the way for younger siblings, setting the standards against which they are measured and measure themselves.

Middle children tend to be more gregarious and more dependent on the approval of peers than that of adults. For one thing they have the example of the older sibling- who has the credibility of generational sameness- to guide them in their decisions and to teach them the rules of the family road. An older sister who was grounded for a month for coming home late from a date, for instance, is a lesson not lost on her younger sister or brother.

At the same time younger children are buffered by birth order from their parents' sole concentration. Hence they are treated with more indulgence and are called upon less to take on responsibilities.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“But many more daughters of distant fathers are unable to reach orgasm, or achieve it with consistency with any man. Indeed these daughters have the most trouble in bed: for them, affection and arousal are synonymous with rejection.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“If father and daughter can manage to cross the finish line of her emancipation together- she accepting Daddy's flaws, he viewing hers as opportunities for her to learn and grow- the ups and downs of their relationship and mutual growth can prepare her for the ambiguities of life. The example of the father weathering his own emotional seasons can help the daughter weather her own.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“People who are used to constant attention and flattery become inured to the merely pleasant and become "peak seekers." They expect the highs, and when their unrealistic goals or expectations are not met, they are not simply disappointed, they are devastated.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Children who are accustomed to being treated well internalize that treatment and have a permanent sense of well-being. But children whose every need is instantly gratified and who are constantly praised to the skies do not have the same sense of well-being; rather they may feel despair or rage when that gratification is withheld, or when everyone doesn't glorify them in the same way.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“A well-fathered daughter will seek in her partnerships men who mirror the devoted father of childhood, avoiding partnerships that denigrate or compromise her. Having experienced the real thing when she was very young- having been taught self-reliance, she settles for no less when she is an adult.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Idealizing Daddy is grand when you're five; it's crippling when you're twenty-five or thirty-five. For if you still believe in Daddy's miracles, you may not believe that you can make your own dreams come true. Worse, you may not even be able to formulate them without his guidance,”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“For all children, mothers are their first love, their first acquaintance with intimacy, touch, warmth, tenderness, sustenance. Infancy is a conspiracy between mothers and their babies, a bond that fathers can only helplessly witness, denied the profound pleasure and pain of giving birth.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“The daughter can become the mother's opportunity either to make up for the past and right wrongs or to exact retribution for her losses. The mother's own experience of the long-ago family serves as an overlay to her mothering: Past and present are inextricably intertwined.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Anger is the first step toward emotional healing.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Most people can recall schoolyard confrontations with with bullies. Boys were expected to deal with them by standing their ground and slugging it out, even, as one man told me, "if you knew you were going to get your head bashed in. You had to show you could take it, and you'd die rather than cry."

But for girls, the surest and safest way to avoid being picked on or terrorized is to get the bully to like you.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“A certain emotional frostiness is the heritage of a culture that puts great stock in WASP values: One does not talk about money sex, religion, and above all, one does not expose one's feelings. If a case can be made for the cultural contouring of personality, the Puritan ethic is the culprit in such rubrics as 'Children should be seen and not heard' and 'Never complain, never explain.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“Little children require their parent's unqualified love in order to survive and feel secure. Very soon, however, they need a tempered version of that devotion- parents who can give them the freedom to fail or feel sorrow or taste frustration, to fully experience their own pain and pleasure and learn from them. Therapists call this phenomenon "ownership.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“If you scratch below the glossy surface of many "enviable" marriages, often you'll find a disenchanted wife whose husband finds the landscape of her emotions as uninteresting as the moon's.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life