4 Types Of Pain Daughters Experience After Fatherhood Abandonment

There is a 2007 study from Deakin University in Australia about fatherhood wounds. Nine women, between ages 22-46, who had been raised by their biological mothers and who had experienced fatherhood abandonment due to parental relationship breakdown participated in the study. Four themes that captured the participants’ lived experience living with fatherhood abandonment were revealed in this study. I included those themes below and some quotes from the participants.

If you experienced fatherhood abandonment, you may be able to relate to one or more of these themes. If you are a father, do you see yourself in any of these examples?

1. He Always Let Me Down

“It was almost as if, he thought that his job of raising me had ended when he left the family home and that really sort of hurt me deeply. Like I saw my sister and my brother being raised with two parents in the home and then Dad sort of left the home …It was just another source of hurt for me really, yeah just felt totally abandoned then … he didn’t have any desire to spend any time with me or even really get to know who I was.”

2. All Men Are Bastards

“I was never going to be married ... never going to be tied down. All men are bastards ... every other guy I had in my life were bastards ... so every guy that came into my life has lived up to the expectation of all men are bastards. ... I suppose I had no other role models … I still don’t trust men, I don’t really respect them, I always think the worst of them and they have to prove themselves.”

3. Have No Feelings Of Closeness

“I can’t remember my father except from what I see in photos. ... My paternal grandmother; she showed me photos of times when we were young and he [father] was mucking around giving us piggybacks and I just thought I was actually shocked, and thought oh my goodness- there was a photo of him cuddling me and I just thought that’s really - it just really shocked me - a foreign concept that my father could actually have that close relationship with me and I have no feelings of closeness.”

4. I Don’t Want To Hate Him Forever

“I have kind of a little bit, come to terms, now that I don’t need a daddy anymore… if you saw us together now, you would go: ‘wow they are close’. Because we talk about whatever he wants to talk about. I have let go of that kind of need for him to hear me…”