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November
Uplifting Father-Daughter Stories
Dads, I thought you might like to share some
uplifting stories about famous “real
life” daughters who gave their fathers the
credit for their becoming such successful, well
known women. With so many negative portrayals of
father-daughter relationships on TV and in movies,
we need to share more of these positive
father-daughter stories with our daughters and
step-daughters.
If your daughter enjoys music, let her know that
Joan Baez, Selina, and Judy Collins were all
“apples that didn’t fall far from the
tree”. Baez’s father emigrated from
Mexico, earned a doctorate from Stanford in
physics, and became a Quaker and pacifist who quit
his job in the defense industry. Judy Collins’
father, an Irishman from a musical farming family,
became legally blind at the age of four. But he
overcame his handicaps to start a dance band and
radio show – and to teach his daughter to sing
and play piano. Selena, (the famous Mexican
American singer who was tragically murdered by an
angry fan club member) learned to sing and play
guitar from her dad when she was five. He
eventually became her bus driver and manager of her
band.
Moving from music to sports, has your daughter
heard of Nancy Kerrigan who won the silver Olympic
medal in skating in 1994? Her dad worked several
jobs to pay for Nancy’s training as she was
growing up and he did all of the housekeeping too
because his wife was almost totally blind.
Or if your daughter is interested in
women’s rights, does she know that Susan B.
Anthony’s father was a progressive Quaker who
believed in equality for men and women. When the
school refused to teach his daughters math because
they were girls, he started schooling them himself
at home. Is it any wonder Susan grew up to fight
for women’s rights and the abolition of
slavery? The same is true of Harriet Beecher Stowe
who wrote against slavery in Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. Her dad was a minister who publicly
protested and preached against slavery while she
was growing up.
If your daughter has never heard of any of these
famous women, I’m sure she knows this name:
Oprah. But does your daughter know that when Oprah
was a teenager – very troubled, failing in
school, and having had a child out of wedlock (who
died) – she went to live with her father and
stepmother. Oprah says it was her father who turned
her life around. After she became rich and famous,
she set up a scholarship fund at Tennessee State
University in her father’s name to honor
him.
Let’s do more positive story-telling as
another way of strengthening father-daughter
relationships.
©2010 Dr. Linda
Nielsen
See Books,
Issues,
Resources
* * *
It is easier for a father to have children than
for children to have a real father. Pope John
XXIII
Dr. Nielsen
has been teaching, counseling, conducting research
and writing about adolescents and father-daughter
relationships since 1970. A member of Phi Beta
Kappa and the recipient of the outstanding
graduate's award in teacher education from the
University of Tennessee in 1969, she taught and
counseled high school students for several years.
After earning a Master's Degree in Counseling and a
Doctorate in Educational and Adolescent Psychology,
she joined the faculty of Wake Forest University in
1974. Her grants and awards include the Outstanding
Article Award in 1980 from the U.S. Center for
Women Scholars and a postdoctoral fellowship from
the American Association of University Women. For
the past fifteen years she has focused primarily on
father-daughter relationships with a special
emphasis on divorced fathers and their daughters.
Her work has been cited in the "Wall Street
Journal" as well as in popular magzines such as
"Cosmopolitan", and shared through television and
radio interviews..
In 1991 she created her "Fathers
& Daughters" course - the only college course
in the country that focuses exclusively on
father-daughter relationships. In addition to
having written several dozen articles for journals
such as the "Harvard Educational Review" and the
"Journal of Divorce & Remarriage", Dr. Nielsen
has written three books: How to Motivate
Adolescents (Prentice Hall) and Adolescence: A
Contemporary View (Harcourt Brace) which sold more
than 60,000 copies and was adopted by hundreds of
universities throughout the country and abroad
between 1986-1996. Her third book, Embracing
Your Father: Creating the Relationship You Want
with Your Dad was
published in April, 2004. www.wfu.edu/~nielsen
or E-Mail
* * *
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