The Issue With Daddy Issues
Why we’re ditching the phrase ‘daddy issues’ and the women flourishing regardless of a father’s involvement …
“When I was 19 and still a newbie to the concept of dating, I went on a first date with a boy who texted me an average of once a day. Completely blind to these red flags and at the encouragement of my friends, I managed to get multiple texts back in one day which led to a time and place being agreed upon. He took me for my first Nando’s (I was 19 and naïve in regards to both dating and peri-peri) and as I took my first bewildered steps into butterfly chicken territory, he asked, in received pronunciation, what my parents do for a living. After telling him my mam’s job title and turning the question onto him, he outrightly asked what my dad does and had to admit that I didn’t know. At the time, I hadn’t seen my biological father for over 4 years. He didn’t know my GCSE or A-Level results, or that I got into one of the best universities for my subject, or that I was half way across the country from my Lancastrian childhood home.
Until this point, the red flags weren’t glaringly obvious, and even though I probably wasn’t going to go on a second date, I was pleased to confirm my suspicions that I hadn’t been missing out on much when I grew up in a town without a Nando’s. But, after telling my date that I didn’t know how my father made his living, he looked at me, and with an expression devoid of jest, said, “So, does that mean you have daddy issues?”. Being young, living in a new city half-way across the country to my childhood home, and unaware that I am allowed to remove myself from situations I don’t feel comfortable in, I laughed and brushed it off.
“Let’s stop shaming women and using “daddy issues” as an insult when it was their fathers who failed in the role they committed to.”
Since this initial experience of first-hand shaming, I have become more aware of society’s issue with young women who have no relationship with their biological father. From a family friend calling me “selfish” in wake of her own father passing, to a female housemate asking when my father – who I had never mentioned in her presence – would be coming to visit for my birthday. I noticed discrepancies between the way those without a relationship with their mothers were treated in comparison with me. Large companies would email in March, offering an opt out of their Mothers’ Day newsletter emails as they realised it can be a sensitive time for many. However, come June, no such option was offered to me and I was subjected to countless gifts guides for “The World’s Best Dad!” and guilt that made me doubt the very reasons that I decided to cut ties with him in the first place.
After meeting others at university who also had no relationship with their biological father, and coming across far too many articles that shamed those without fathers, I conducted a project aimed at showcasing women who feel better off without their biological father in their life. I took self-portraits of myself dressed up in my father’s army uniform that he left as well as portraits of each woman involved in the project and paired these with a still life that linked to each individual story. From a shoebox hidden in a mother’s wardrobe that harboured photographs of the very man they’d never met, to the bread maker that my own father left behind, these were visual representations of our father’s abandonment. One story that I told belongs to a close friend of mine. Her portrait was paired with a photograph I took of alphabet spaghetti, to represent a time when she was reapplying for her passport and had to declare that her surname had changed from her father’s to her mother’s, but couldn’t remember how it was spelt. Seeing articles that state that “fatherlessness” in Britain costs every taxpayer £1,541 a year, or that daughters growing up without a father are more likely to be angry and turn to drugs made me realise how the blame is shifted onto the child in the situation. A child or – in the case of my project – a woman who either didn’t have a choice in growing up without a father, or, as was the case in some of the women I photographed, chose to cut all ties with their father to protect their physical and mental health. All of the women I photographed have gone on to be happy, healthy, and successful in their own right.
This isn’t in spite of having no relationship with their father, but in some cases, because of it. Even though Boris Johnson said the children of single mothers are “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive, and illegitimate”, we couldn’t be far from it. We are young women who – contrary to what the patriarchy wants you to believe – didn’t grow up missing out on love, we just received more of it from different sources. From our mums, from grandparents, from the family of friends we surrounded ourselves with. Let’s stop shaming women and using “daddy issues” as an insult when it was their fathers who failed in the role they committed to. Because, as awkward as it can be when a someone who doesn’t know asks what I’m doing for Father’s Day, I can imagine it’s far more awkward for my dad to know he has a daughter that he failed.”
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Thank you so much to the brilliant Natalie for sharing such a powerful and personal story which we have no doubt so many of you will connect with. To see more from Nat, you can find her on Instagram at @nat.bub, via her poetry page at @nat.poetry or read more of her written work here!