My father was a vindictive, abusive, toxic man and to call him 'childish' is an understatement.
I am using the past tense to describe him not because he is dead, but because he has never been present for me or my family.
Sometimes, when I walk down the street and see a child playing joyfully with their father, or when those heartwarming scenes of family reunions after years of military service appear on TV, I’m reminded of his existence. I stand there watching the scene, the little one hiding behind the slide, and the dad calling out to find them.
My father, I remember him for his emotional absence and emptiness of soul. He always demanded everything from my mother after their separation, and put my little sister and me through hell, bouncing back and forth like pinballs between one psychologist and another.
“Your father is a good man. What has he done to hurt you? Why don’t you want to visit him, at least on weekends?”
“You’re lucky to have a dad, you know? There are children who don’t have one at all.”
Our ‘no, thank you, I’d rather stay with mom’ was never worth anything. And so, from a young age, I learned that my ‘no’ held no value. That what I think doesn’t matter much. That there are always worse situations than mine, and my feelings are not valid. That there are duties towards others. That you have to please others. That you have to make an effort to do things you don’t want to do and not complain. And today, I still have to come to terms with it.
Grieving a parent who is still alive, leaves a person with a deep scar, that will inevitably ache. This is what some may call ‘Daddy Issues’.
‘Daddy Issues’ (n.): the Emotional and/ or Psychological impact that an abusive or absent father has on their children. It can affect trust, self-esteem, and relationships with men, starting from an early age, and persist indefinitely.
The absence or abuse from a parent is obviously going to hurt and leave a wound to the child, teen, and the future adult within them.
Labeling certain behavioral patterns with this term, is an extremely simplified and sometimes stigmatizing way of addressing complex psychological dynamics and it should be used with sensitivity.
Unfortunately (just Google it,) over the past decades, Daddy Issues have become a “women problem”: yet another excuse to ridicule girls, this time by leveraging their hypothetical mental struggles. And yet again, its roots lie in misogyny, like a “joke” among the boys, implying the woman’s dependence and obsession with a male figure.
You can observe this phenomenon in the staggering amount of insults via social media that so many women get at any minor sign of mental instability, misogynistic memes, heartless accusations, and so on.
The term “Daddy Issues” was conied, therefore, with the primary (but not the only) purpose to negatively label and ridicule the victims of these abuses. Daddy Issues come with a long series of “symptoms”, varying depending on the severity & duration of the trauma and the victim’s personal experience. They often appear to be issues such as trust, attachment, self-esteem, or relationship difficulties.
There is a whole culture and community built around Daddy Issues: young girls with absent fathers in movies or TV series, whom inevitably impacts their romantic and sexual relationships; songs depicting the struggles of abusive fathers; books and other art forms used to talk about, discuss, and represent the toxic aspects of fatherhood.
They harness it as a means to express their struggles uniquely and find solutions to their problems and needs. Through this community, people are learning to turn what was once a label into a source of empowerment and understanding, ultimately finding their own paths to healing and growth.
It takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
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