A little over a decade ago, I was a young mother sitting on a playground bench with a group of other women.
As we watched our little ones climb and swing, the conversation centred around parenting – the healthiest ways to raise children, how to avoid pitfalls and so on.
I listened intently, agreeing with many of the sentiments until one of the women said something that caught me off guard.
“All I know is if a girl has daddy issues, she will always be fucked up,” the woman said. And with those words, I instantly went from feeling like I was one of them to feeling like an outsider.
To my surprise, the comment was met with a robust amount of approval. Many shared how their positive experiences with their fathers had shaped them into the people they were today.
The implication was clear: How could you be a good parent when you didn’t have a solid foundation of your own? What they clearly didn’t know was that sitting among them was a woman who, in their view, was destined to be defined by a relationship she had no control over.
I sat silently, feeling increasingly ashamed of my own story and wondering: Could they be right? Was I really different from them? Would they be better parents simply because they’d had a strong bond with their fathers growing up while I did not?
My father was an alcoholic and perpetual deadbeat dad, often absent but verbally abusive when he was present. Over the years, I have listened to variations of that conversation at the playground more times than I can count.
The term “daddy issues” is often linked to the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. But the phrase itself is not a real medical term and is not recognised as an actual disorder.
A quick Google search would lead you to believe otherwise, with countless articles bearing titles like “8 Signs You Have Daddy Issues” and “What Are ‘Daddy Issues’ and How Can You Recognise Them in a Partner?”
Women who suffer from them are said to be clingy, jealous, possessive, promiscuous, emotional and needy, and to always get involved with the wrong partners.
I will not deny that my father’s actions affected me. I developed trust issues, chronic insecurity and a penchant for self-destructive behaviour, a few of the classic hallmarks attributed to girls who grow up with absent, abusive or neglectful fathers. When you are raised in an environment where love is laced with contingencies and judgment, it’s easy to fall into these patterns.
At 19, I dropped out of college and moved across the country to live with my boyfriend. I thought I was running away from my traumatic childhood, but what I really did was run to a relationship that repeated what I had experienced with my father.
My boyfriend often belittled me. When the relationship turned physically abusive, I thought my own deficiencies were the reason. I thought if only I were different, maybe he wouldn’t hurt me.
That feeling stayed with me even after we broke up. I wondered if “daddy issues” would in some way always be a part of who I was.
It was not until I experienced a healthy relationship with the man who eventually became my husband that I began to understand there was an alternative.
I started to see that what was missing was not something in me, but in the quality of the love I was receiving. This shifted the way I saw myself, and helped me gain agency over my life and who I let into it.
When I became a mother, it became even more important to heal the wounds from my past. Through therapy and my writing, I was able to attain a greater understanding of how my relationship with my father shaped me and, more importantly, to identify how I wanted to parent my own children differently, so they understood their worth.
Now, as a 49-year-old woman who has been in a stable marriage for more than two decades and raised two healthy children, I know that the phrase “daddy issues” holds little meaning. What I wonder today is if I – the child of a strong, supportive single mother – had never heard the phrase, would I have seen myself differently?
Would I have believed the truth – that my family was still whole and that I was, too?
I no longer sit in silence when someone tosses out the phrase “daddy issues.” Now, I tell them my own story. When I choose to open up about my history, the question I am asked most often is, “How did you turn out so well?”
The questions I have asked in return are: “Why are we judging women for being affected by men’s bad behaviour? Rather than stereotyping those who had no control over their situations, shouldn’t we recognise and celebrate their power to change the narrative?”
Any form of trauma, however challenging, offers the opportunity for growth, learning and ultimately becoming a stronger person.
As a child, I was forced to navigate a landscape of potential land mines, and I have become an adult who can more easily spot them and deal with them when found.
Instead of negatively affecting my parenting, my experiences make me more aware of and intentional in how I raise my own children. I have a greater sense of empathy. I have learned to use my imagination in a way that I never would have without the times in childhood when I dreamed of different circumstances.
I have learned that I am not defined by an outdated, sexist and misdirected label. It seems more likely that the adults who cause so-called daddy issues are the ones who might never change. My father didn’t. But either way, it didn’t matter — because I could.
Need help? For substance use disorder or mental health issues, call 800-662-HELP (4357) in the U.S. for the SAMHSA National Helpline. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
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