“Daddy issues” refer to unresolved issues with the father/daughter relationship, which can lead to seeking male approval elsewhere, including in sexual relationships. Positive male input from a father figure can help girls feel more confident and strong, while an absent or abusive father can trigger these issues. Therapy can help reconcile these issues.
Daddy issues refers to something of a slang term for the idea of the Electra or Bernfield Factor complex. While Freud developed the term Oedipus complex, the Electra complex was introduced by Carl Jung. Freud went on to use the Oedipus complex to refer to the idea of a child idealizing the cross-gender parent down to sexual desire and a desire, at least in part, to get rid of the same-sex parent. Such behaviour, when exhibited by females, was a desire to “conceive by the father and kill the mother” or, alternatively, evoked the idea that women entering puberty suffered from “penis envy”, the inability to have a foul.
There is much debate as to whether or not such daddy issues exist, and much debate about the Oedipal complex as a whole. Girls may identify more with their mothers than with their fathers, but boys can too. This may be culturally predetermined or situationally determined. It’s hard to know what a dad at home scenario would do to “daddy issues.”
But often, colloquially, the idea of having daddy issues is more related to the fact that a girl has received inadequate or inappropriate attention from the father figure in her life. An absent father might trigger a girl’s desire to seek male approval elsewhere and, as a teenager or young adult, to do so in a sexual way. An abusive father could seriously hurt a father/daughter relationship. Girls, or young women, may express unresolved father issues by seeking relationships of a sexual or romantic nature with older men, or, alternatively, may replicate their bad relationships with fathers by having abusive partners. Generally, daddy issues mean that a woman remains incomplete and seeks some sort of paternal or familial relationship with mates, which is not the best foundation on which to build a relationship.
Fathers or the constant strong male presence in a girl’s life have a significant effect on self-esteem. This is largely undisputed by psychology experts. Feeling attractive and loved by “dad” (or another strong male figure) can help a girl feel more confident and strong. This isn’t necessarily penis envy, but it appears that girls and women may thrive better in their lives if they have positive male input from a father figure. Without that, girls may express daddy issues of seeking out father figures, or placing even very good men with whom they are in relationships, into positions they really can’t fill adequately.
Daddy issues may therefore be perceived as attempts to resolve issues with the father/daughter relationship, whether it be his complete absence, abuse of the relationship, or unreliability. A woman who goes through life without these problems is often one who has had a secure and loving father figure in her life. Those still working on this can try to make today’s relationships “serve” a need that was not adequately satisfied in childhood and adolescence. This can lead to poor relationships with men in the present and future, until women are able to reconcile a past father/daughter relationship, often through therapy, that is not entirely satisfactory.
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