Where Does Your Daughter Fit in the Family Structure?
Woman to Woman
Being a daddy's girl has been an accepted position for a daughter more so than a mamma's boy, reported Perry Buffington, Ph.D. Still, Buffington identifies some very famous mamma's boys who did alright for themselves and obviously were not hampered by the attachment to their mothers. These notables include Douglas MacArthur, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.
Keep these two rules of thumb in mind:
- Most experts agree, "How a child is treated is more important than birth order."
- A daughter's treatment garnered within the family framework affects how she views her mother and the opinion she forms of her mother.
Significant factors in determining her place in the family structure are whether or not the daughter is the prize child, the one that gets blamed, the one who is in trouble all the time, the favorite, the ally, the friend, the confident, the enemy, the competitor, or "Daddy's girl."
What it means to be a daddy's girl is to have an attachment to that parent and model oneself after him. Normally young girls who do this form not only a strong emotional connection with their father but accept his ethic of achievement without abandoning their femininity. The affects of father-daughter relationships are peppered throughout this guide.
Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Mothers and Daughters © 2001 by Rosanne Rosen. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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