What Exactly is "Fatherless Behavior"?
A term that plagues TikTok comments ad nauseum still rattles around in my head.
When I was younger, I used to talk a lot about the fact that I’ve never met my biological father. I probably did this because it was the one thing that made me stand out against my peers. Nobody I knew can relate to being born via a sperm donor and artificial insemination. My mother was always a single mom; she didn’t marry or partner with anyone after I was born. A lot of people would suspect that this caused me to develop psychological trauma, but in truth, I don’t think my lack of a father figure caused me any kind of emotional trauma. I have plenty of damage, of course, just not from that particular circumstance of my life. Yet, when I was in college, identifying as a woman and habitually wasting my time with semi-attractive men who didn’t care if I lived or died, I faced accusations, both joking and not, that I had “daddy issues.”
This term is often used to describe women who exhibit attention-seeking behavior, especially towards men, to ostensibly fill the void of an absent father and general lack of affection from men as a whole. It is almost exclusively used as a pejorative to belittle a legitimate response to parental trauma that affects many people in various capacities. Now, I don’t think the phrase “daddy issues” itself should be treated like a slur- it’s not that serious, and there are far more significant issues affecting women today. But I’ve always found it a little frustrating that a deep inner child wound is considered socially fair game to mock, belittle, and criticize with an underhanded insult. The concept of “daddy issues'' and its contemporary sibling phrase, “fatherless behavior,” condemn behavior without addressing its root cause.
It’s easy to say that there would be no daddy issues if there weren’t any bad fathers and end the conversation at that. But I personally think that paternal problems are a pervasive, society-wide problem that can’t be solved on a case-by-case basis. When I talk about this subject, I have to bite my tongue so I don’t recite word-for-word Laura Dern’s impeccable monologue about the role of fathers in Western society from the 2019 movie Marriage Story. That said, I think it’s essential to understanding the next branch of my argument, so I’ll post the full text of it below and link to the clip here. For context, Laura Dern’s character is a girlboss divorce attorney who’s coaching Scarlet Johannsson’s character on what to say during a custody hearing with her soon-to-be-ex-husband Charlie (Adam Driver), when she pops off with the following:
People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell at their child and call him an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We can accept an imperfect dad. Let's face it, the idea of a good father was only invented like 30 years ago. Before that, fathers were expected to be silent and absent and unreliable and selfish, and we can all say we want them to be different. But on some basic level, we accept them. We love them for their fallibilities, but people absolutely don't accept those same failings in mothers. We don't accept it structurally and we don't accept it spiritually. Because the basis of our Judeo-Christian whatever is Mary, Mother of Jesus, and she's perfect. She's a virgin who gives birth, unwaveringly supports her child and holds his dead body when he's gone. And the dad isn't there. He didn't even do the fucking! God is in heaven! God is the father and God didn't show up. So, you have to be perfect, and Charlie can be a fuck-up and it doesn't matter. You will always be held to a different, higher standard. And it's fucked up, but that is the way it is.
It’s a grim outlook to have, but it certainly resonates. Fathers can get away with doing less childcare than their wives but often expect the same amount of praise. It’s the reason why dads go on angry tirades when people post on Father’s Day thanking both fathers and single mothers for their labor. It’s the same reason why many men refer to the time they spend raising the children they created as “babysitting.” I’ll never forget the rage I felt seeing this TikTok of a heavily pregnant woman cooking dinner while her husband asks her to change their child’s diaper as though he’s not perfectly capable of doing that himself. This weaponized incompetence is all too normalized in Western culture. Witnessing and suffering this type of behavior will certainly leave an impact on a child, whose sponge brain will soak up any kind of information about what a father’s role and responsibility should be. Many dads don’t even seem to care about their child’s wellbeing at all; some only seem interested in using their children as pawns in bitter custody battles with their exes. Are we that surprised that this can have a profound impact on a child’s mental development? If they learn that their dads can and should be loved for putting in the least amount of effort, what happens when that effort isn’t enough for the child? That kind of neglect can be traumatic, and if they don’t manage those emotions through therapy, they might act out in self-destructive ways. Some behaviors are more stigmatized than others, of course, and misogynistic attitudes tend to seep through the discourse as women struggle to navigate a world that coddles absent and irresponsible men.
I earnestly believe that the concept of daddy issues exists to blame primarily women (not that men can’t have difficult relationships with their fathers, but the notion itself is often painted in a misogynistic light) for the resulting psychological damage of their fathers’ subpar behavior. It’s yet another tool to control and shame women for the ways they choose to conduct their lives and express themselves. Adults are responsible for healing their own childhood trauma, of course, so I’m not advocating that anyone simply blame any toxic behaviors of theirs on a difficult relationship with their father. I just want to interrogate the image of “fatherless behavior” and how it can obscure real pain that deserves to be addressed.
Thinking back on my college days, I understand why someone who didn’t know me well might come to the conclusion that my lack of a father figure left me with emotional scars. I fit the stereotype. An outside observer would notice that I dressed provocatively in the goth subculture, and was covered in tattoos and body piercings. These are, in case you weren’t already aware, traits and behaviors that are commonly associated with women who have “daddy issues.” Yet I don’t believe I did all these things to attract the validation of men. Doing so would imply that I wanted to stand out against the crowd to catch their eyes, but frankly, I dressed and styled myself like most of my peers did. The spaces I moved in were full of alternative people, though most of the men who pursued my friends and me were non-alternative men who fetishized the “freaky goth girlfriend” archetype.
With all that said, I definitely had a reputation for promiscuity, and that tends to be the nail in the coffin for the daddy issues accusations leveraged against women. Those who prioritize the pursuit of sexual and romantic affections of men are considered compulsive. Their desire for intimacy is seen as pathologically derived, rather than operating from a desire to build connections with others and learn more about themselves.
Within those interpersonal relationships, stereotypical daddy issues can present as an anxious attachment style and/or a fear of abandonment. This, of course, is suggested to reflect the trauma of an absent or emotionally unavailable father. The logic is that because some women have damage from their own fathers leaving them, they’ll become nervous and insecure when their male romantic partners behave distantly from them. I consider this association to be conceptually linked to the misogynistic understanding of borderline personality disorder, a heavily stigmatized mental illness for which fear of abandonment is also a diagnostic criteria.
The “anxious attachment” assumption, I find, can function as another manipulative tool meant to make women responsible for men’s inconsistent and unavailable behavior. That isn’t to say that any discussion of abandonment anxiety is automatically a form of gaslighting, but I am always suspicious of those who unilaterally condemn a woman’s behavior in a relationship with a man as mere insecurity, or, worse yet, “daddy issues.”
Straight women who sleep around are pursuing intimacy with men, sure, but the fulfillment they find in those relationships: a sense of belonging and a willingness to be vulnerable are ungendered facets of one’s own self esteem. A lot of people sleep around because they’re unhappy with themselves. They think that sex can fill that void, but after the act itself is done, their negative self-image still remains. Promiscuity, it could be argued, is less about the men that women choose to engage with and their purported connections to their father wounds, and more about their desire to regulate themselves and to be treated with affection. That’s a human need, and it’s one that people have to contend with for their entire adult lives.
Both parents hold equal responsibility for giving their children opportunities to develop healthy self-esteem in childhood. Of course, this achievement might still result in participation in casual sex culture, but maybe not for the reasons I listed above. Some folks just like sex with no strings attached, no emotional wounds necessary. Some folks like to get tattoos without it being a cry for help. Some folks who endured parental neglect suffer silently, not signaling their traumas to anyone despite being in desperate need of help. If we’re going to destigmatize the behaviors, we also have to address their origins, and that means acknowledging the reality that our parents can do a lot more damage to us than we realize.
What is “fatherless behavior?” It’s the actions of a person who’s been hurt in ways they might not understand, because the surrounding culture constantly shifts the blame elsewhere. It’s a desperation for a type of love that has been historically denied from girls and women. It’s a call to action for men to do better. It’s a sign that there is something missing in our lives- and we have to use the best possible tools if we want to find it.