From Fathering Daughters to Doddering Father

Abstract

In this article, I consider some of the dilemmas and challenges of a male therapist working with female adolescents, in counterpoint to those facing the father of adolescent daughters. There is a conventional wisdom that female adolescents need female therapists; I argue that this kind of thinking is related to the common phenomenon of fathers withdrawing emotionally from their daughters when they reach adolescence. I draw out some implications of what it might mean to father an adolescent daughter if one does not accept the conventional wisdom.

Notes

¹Perhaps we are working our adolescents into the ground academically to try to keep them away from high-school sex.

²Note how I am using the words man and woman to refer alternately to a fact and a feeling about oneself.