Divorce: don't discount dad, you'll deny your daughter

Ladies, as difficult as it may be to process, you need to understand dad's involvement in a daughter's life even after you are divorced is essential, particularly during the stage in which your daughter learns to develop her sense of "voice", during the ages of eight to 12.  In fact, extensive studies by qualified experts have proved it.  Should you like to investigate this theory further please feel free to pick up a copy of Meeting at the Crossroads, by Brown & Gilligan.  Not only is it a didactic read, the fair minded research study upon which it was based tracked a study group of girls over a ten year period of time as they developed their voices from the ages of eight to 12 and beyond into adult hood.  The study group consisted of girls from differentiating societies and socioeconomic backgrounds.  Essentially,  the study concluded:

Adolescence is an exceptionally difficult time for female children and it is also the time frame in which our daughters learn to develop their voice: 

For over a century the edge of adolescence has been identified as a time of heightened psychological risks for girls.  Girls at this time have been observed to lose their vitality, their resilience, their immunity to depression, their sense of themselves and their character.  Girls approaching adolescence are often victims of  incest and other forms of sexual abuse." Brown & Gilligan.

Thus, the successful development of a girl's voice is not only crucial to her healthy mental development overall, but how strong a female's voice becomes also depends largely upon what type(s) of female influences she is surrounded by and the type of role models her closest female relatives are.  The theory is that if a girl is surrounded by strong, "healthy" female role models, she will successfully learn to develop her own voice.  If she is not, however, she could learn to "downplay" or "minimize" her feelings, and therefore not learn to express them for a multitude of reasons (more than likely due to a heavy influence of co-dependency).   Men tend to be less co-dependent than women. Therefore, their strength, "stance" and fortitude about such issues as not being fearful of  "standing one's ground" and their comfortableness with speaking up "in spite of the crowd" is more unshakable. In fact in this writer's own self help recovery book it states:

" . . . Co-Dependency is a big topic today. It is estimated that 1 hundred million Americans suffer from Co-Dependency, 85% of that codependency market is female."  Moving Forward, A Handbook Designed for the Divorced Individual.

Therefore, it is important that dad play a significant role during these years.  Not only can he teach your daughter how to effectively use her voice while teaching her to eliminate co-dependency issues, in strengthening her voice he may actually help minimize her victimization by society until she is able to master the task, herself.   If you think about it honestly, you may conclude that prior generations of our female role models (mothers, grandmothers, and aunts) , were co-dependent (this arose out of the fact that there used to be such  "traditional" roles for women)  and often not only did they, themselves, put a huge emphasis on the notion that a woman's identity was based upon how well she raised her children and/or how well she "kept a house" so did society.  Thus, the more Co-Dependent our closest female role models were and are, the more likely our daughters, will never learn to develop their voice because they are too preoccupied with the "niceties and politeness" in communication, feel uncomfortable about really saying what needs to be said and do not say what needs to be said because they are too busy worrying about hurting other people's feelings.  No parent, no matter the gender would like to see this occur.  Studies have also shown that should a pre-adolescent/adolescent girl not be allowed the development of her voice, the suppression of same simply gets carried over into adulthood and contributes to the reasons why many women file for divorce from marriage because they feel in the marriage that they have/had no "voice", either.

Dr. Linda Nielsen wrote an extensive article in the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, related to this topic which also  has some supportive information and facts about how both you and your daughter can benefit from dad's involvement:   The article is extremely large, however.  Thus, a reference to the link for you has been indicated at the bottom of this page so that you might be able to peruse it "at your leisure".  Should you decide to read the article you should first have an understanding that while  "trends" in psychology may vary percentage-wise throughout the years, realistically, time does not change the "constant" or "principled patterns" of the foundational aspects of psychological theories and how they apply to the life span.

Whatever your gender, this writer would like to offer you a piece of advice when it comes to court appearances throughout your divorce and at any type of  attendant post divorce proceedings.  Never, ever, go into a Court of law in front of  a Judge and proceed to bash an "ex-spouse" based upon "his" or "her" gender.  Why?

1. A  professionally "healthy" bench will not tolerate that type of behavior and in fact, this writer actually heard a Judge admonish an audience member with the statement:  "Divorce is not about 'gender' it is about the end of a relationship!  Besides which, I don't want to hear any of that nonsense.  It's simply counter-productive to parenting".  Should you decide to forge forward and ignore this writer's advice, however, just be prepared to be "called out" for it.  
2. Your relationship is over.   If you were blessed enough to have had children  in your  marriage keep in mind, that they should be first and foremost your concern. Yes, this writer understands that can be an extremely challenging "pinnacle" to strive for when dealing with a difficult ex.  However, being more "active" and less "reactive" in problem solving is a strong life skill you can teach a child, no matter the gender!

Divorce is an extremely traumatic event for everyone particularly children.  Therefore, it is extremely important that we see and apply the benefits of having the opposite gender in our lives still because, frankly, we should be able to set aside our "gender" biases in order to raise our children. Stop and think about it: if you set out to "devalue" the other parent based upon their "gender" are you not really teaching your child that life issues are not about communication, but rather simply about "gender"?  More significantly, should you take this type of stance with your child; unbeknownst to you, you may be unconsciously setting your child up for failure by building in "gender biases" at too early an age when they haven't even had the opportunity to experience a love relationship.  Children of divorce struggle enough with anxieties and fears about their own potential future love relationships, why discourage them that much more?

 "The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher." - Robert Brault.

For more information see: for Dr. Linda Nielson's study about the outcome of discounting dad which may be directly located @ http://www.wfu.edu/~nielsen/divorceddad.pdf.

Article image photo courtesy of www.wtv-zone.com