Fathers and Daughters: The Father's Contribution to Feminine Identification in Girls as Depicted in Fairy Tales and Myths

The unique significance of the mother-child relationship has been explored for decades. Less has been written about the role of the father in early childhood. In fact, it was a commonly held belief that fathers had little influence on their children's development until the oedipal years. Feminine behavior in girls, it was presumed, was derived chiefly from identification with the maternal figure. The daughter is implicitly female as is her mother; she imitates her mother's behavior, and her primary identification is with her mother. But it is not only the mother who helps to establish a feminine identification; fathers as well as mothers contribute to the development of the female self-concept. According to Leonard,1 fathering provides nurturing affection, guidance, approval, and availability to love and be loved, admired, emulated, and obeyed. Moreover, the father also serves as a model for identification and superego formation.

“Femininity,” Biller wrote, “is a positive feeling about being a female and a particular pattern of interpersonal behavior.”2 It is not merely a question of whether or not a woman enjoys housework or has a career. Biller sees the successful woman, who takes pride in her family and is independent and assertive as well as nurturant and sensitive, as a woman most likely to achieve interpersonal and creative fulfillment. Chodoff has described the traditional picture of femininity as including nurturance, warmth, emotional expressiveness, liveliness, interpersonal awareness, and intuitiveness.3 Femininity, he states, can be viewed either as being a cultural stereotype or as having some actual basis in female nature. Maccoby and Jacklin, in addressing the question, concluded that the child adapts himself or herself through learning to a social stereotype that has a basis in biological reality. Thus “innate tendencies help to produce the social stereotype that the child learns.”4