Saturday morning, more than 450 people filed into a Charlotte church meeting room – male and female side by side, with palpable tension between some pairs. Nearly eight hours later, the females clutched roses presented by their workshop partners, and each man had draped an arm affectionately around his girl’s shoulders, held her hand or offered a hug as an expression of love and commitment. And not a single beribboned ponytail got mussed.
A father’s influence
Many people attend workshops to fix or strengthen marital relationships, but not many give thought to strengthening the ties between fathers and daughters. Yet, that was the aim of Charlotte’s first Father-Daughter Summit, held Saturday at Calvary Church on Pineville-Matthews Road.
The program, organized by the National Center for Fathering, sprang from research-based evidence showing how fathers have profound influence on their daughters. Despite that influence, the center’s director, Ken Canfield, emphasizes that fathers tend to distance themselves as complicated issues arise when their daughters reach adolescence and young adulthood.
Attendee Rick Brightwell of Matthews made plans to participate with his 14-year-old daughter, Mary, because he believes he gives his 7- and 11-year-old sons more time than he gives her. “I think I tend to treat her like my sons,” he said.
Brightwell considered the summit a chance to learn what’s going through Mary’s mind. “Now that boys are becoming more of an issue (in Mary’s life), we need to bridge the gap a little better so she makes good decisions at this stage and is more able to accept the decisions we (her parents) make,” he said.
Local concern, nationwide relevance
From Matthews and Charlotte to Kentucky and Tennessee, summit participants came to Calvary Church’s Crown Room with a common goal of improving their relationships, whether healthy or strained. Unlike Brightwell, many summit attendees come from divorced families in which the daughter’s exposure to her father is limited.
Larry Taylor, father of 16-year-old Meredith, knows the issue from both sides. He and his wife divorced 15 years ago; he lives in Matthews while Meredith lives with her mother in Rock Hill. Taylor says his relationship with Meredith is great – “she’s a tremendous kid and we have an incredible dialogue” – but he realizes how difficult the situation can be for other divorced fathers who have limited custody. Eight years ago he formed Genesis Family, an organization that provides support for single-parent families. His work at Genesis has put some stark statistics in front of him.
One in three children in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region is growing up in a single-parent home, according to census data from 2000. Taylor elaborated the implications: “Suicide rates double, dropout rates double when you talk single-parent families, and that may involve an absent father or a noncustodial father,” he said.
Especially with daughters, the adverse effects of a single-parent home can materialize in pregnancy rates, Taylor pointed out. “A daughter who doesn’t get self-worth from her father will search for it from other males,” he said. Studies bear out that conclusion: adolescent girls from fatherless households have increased likelihood of engaging in promiscuous behavior and become pregnant out of wedlock. Their risk of becoming young, unwed mothers is three times greater than that of girls whose parents stay married.
“Regarding the father-daughter relationship, it’s mainly about how daughters are going to approach other relationships with men. If they don’t get that attention and that solid foundation from a father figure, they will go somewhere; they will get it somehow,” Taylor said.
Taylor attended the Father Daughter Summit with Meredith to benefit their own relationship and to glean knowledge for use at Genesis Family. He hopes to provide tools and support to prevent noncustodial fathers from feeling disengaged.
Leaving better than they came
After the summit, Lee Setzer and his daughter Erin, 16, agreed that they were on the way to alleviating the strains that divorce had placed on their relationship. Lee said he truly learned the importance of the relationship. “We’ve been through some tough times, and today’s experience showed us some ways to cope with what we’ve been through in the last year and a half,” he said.
Lee left the summit having learned how important his involvement is. “Erin lives with her mom so I really have to maximize my time with her; the loudest message I got from the summit is to call every day, to really get as involved as I can and also to pray every day to lift her up.”
Erin said she enjoyed the father-daughter dialogues that followed the breakout sessions. In one, father and daughter filled out assessments of their relationship and then met to discuss their interpretations. Erin described a second breakout exercise in which father and daughter write a letter to each other in private and then meet to share their letters in person. “I think we understand each other better now,” she said.
Lee agreed. “Today really solidifies our relationship,” he said.
