No Abuse But Absent Father

I wondered what happens to those girls who do not grow up in volatile environments, just absent fathers or positive male role models. How do they make decisions and choices when it came to men.

In “Love Life: Single Parent Upbringing Affects Children’s Relationships” by Cinthia Sierra, we are provided further analysis from one of her peers. Cinthia, while interviewing peers in her college in a quest to find her own answers regarding male choices in single parent homes, interviewed Monica Luna. Luna says she never noticed the effect an absent father would have on her until it came time to making choices in men.  Luna believes that she did not have a model to compare judgments against and as a result when she dates men she has to start from “scratch”.  While most women who grow up without fathers in the home grow up unaffected but there may always be a fair amount of uncertainty when a new relationship starts.

Jessica, a 24 year old student describes her struggle to find out the difference between imitated behavior and  behavior she consciously chooses to have. She recounts her earlier years.

“My father was absent from the home. It was only my mother and I growing up. I remember being in High School and wanting desperately to get attention from boys. Not that I liked any of them in particular, I just wanted some sort of feeling of validation from them. I did what most girls my age did. I started to dress in the over sexualized manner I knew would garner attention. I had my clothes I left the house with and then I had the clothes I snuck out of the house in my book bag. Girls wanting to get boys or wanting attention by wearing nothing- I didn’t come up with it on my own, It was everywhere. Matter of fact, I think it started with the music videos. I just emulated what I saw and had unconsciously made the decision to be like the girls in the videos. If my father were around, I guess I would have had more direction on what was acceptable behavior when it comes to dealing with boys. I mean I know the basics to look for, to avoid; the big ones like don’t let them hit you, talk down to you,  no violence against you. But how is a teenage girl supposed to act around boys when she has never had someone to give her an intro into the male psyche. Going forward, I won’t lie, I have no idea what I’m doing or what I’m looking for. I hope I find someone who I can have fun with, who loves me and communicates with me. That’s pretty much the fundamentals but it’s hit or miss out there and with each relationship, while men are different, I learn common things about them. It’s sad that I’m just learning this now in college but better now than say twenty years in the future. I hope to get  married with kids in a very happy and fulfilling relationship by then.”

Michelle Hall, Author of “Young Women, Absent Fathers, Abusive Boyfriends”  talks about situations with like Jessica’s. “ Attention is something we all crave” say Hall. If girls get positive attention from their fathers and positive reinforcements then it’s a huge self esteem boost. It makes the individual feel cared for and needed. If that attention is not there and girls grow up without positive fathers then there’s a void. Girls may want to fill that void and get that validated feeling in another way and sometimes those ways are not healthy. In Jessica’s case, she decided to get attention from boys by dressing in a sexualized manner at a young age, in a manner she saw from music videos and television.