Tips for improving your father-daughter relationship

Hey, dad, want to get closer to your daughter? Find something to do together.

A new study by Baylor University researchers puts participation in shared activities at the top of the list of pivotal moments in the father-daughter relationship.

The study included 43 fathers and 43 daughters who were asked to identify a crucial moment of change in their relationship. The most frequently mentioned turning point, for both fathers and daughters, was participating in a shared activity. Second was the marriage of the daughter.

"One that popped out the most was sports," said study coauthor Mark T. Morman, a professor of communication in Baylor's college of arts and sciences. "Dads can help coach or help them practice or just come to games."

Morman said, though, that it doesn't matter what the activity is. Just doing something together strengthens that bond.

"One father told me about going to choir so he could be with his daughter," Morman said. "Another father told me he got in a play with his daughter, and they were together every night for eight weeks. So it's not really what they're doing, just so they're doing something together."

The Baylor researchers refer to this father-daughter bond as "closeness in the doing," as opposed to the mother-daughter bond, "closeness in the dialogue," which is based on sharing and talking.

She names three areas where the quality of the father-daughter relationship has a greater effect than a mother-daughter relationship.

The first encompasses academics, money and career — and independence.

"Even though we are a less sexist society, data show in most families the father has the job that makes the most money, is more challenging, the job that calls for greater negotiation with the world of work — and he's the one teaching the girls these things," Nielsen said.

In addition, "before the age of 5, it's the father who is doing the more challenging play, doing more risk-taking, who's less likely to help the daughter out when she's in a little jam. The mother is babying the daughter; the father is teaching them to be more self-reliant, more ambitious and more successful, to be at the top of their game. That's what fathers do better than mothers."

And that, she said, translates into success in the academic arena, which means better-paying jobs and the development of leadership skills.

"He builds up, gives you confidence to feel 'I am lovable; men should find me lovable,' " Nielsen said. "If she believes that, she won't take junk from other men. If she doesn't feel that from her father, she'll pick junk in whom she dates and who she marries. She'll always be looking for that support she didn't get from her dad."

The third way girls benefit from a good relationship with their father is health; daughters who have good relationships have fewer emotional and psychological problems, Nielsen said.

A father who wants to improve his relationship with his daughter needs to find an activity they can do together, Morman said.

"It sounds simplistic, but the study overwhelmingly points to activities being very important factors," he said. "A lot of times, men are anxious or a little hesitant to engage their daughters because they perceive what's going on with mom and daughter — an emotional, dialogue-driven, disclosing thing. Dads think, 'I can't do that.' So what I say is, find something to do together."

Nielsen goes a step further. She said dads shouldn't be leery of doing "non-dad" things. When girls become teenagers, fathers often back off, deferring to the mother. It should be the opposite, Nielsen said, with the mother standing back and letting the father-daughter relationship continue as it did when the child was 8 or 9. That, though, may mean bucking norms.

" 'Eww, that's weird; my dad wants to go off with me like we used to.' Why is it weird? Because society has told us. Why is it weird for you to go prom-dress- or shoe-shopping with your dad once in a while? 'Eww, that's weird. That's a mother-daughter thing.' Why? There's no reason for it at all. It's just the script. And once you buy into that, it's hard to get back."

It's obvious a father has a big impact on his daughter's development, but it also works the other way around, said Nielsen.

"Research shows that having daughters versus having sons changes a father's political and social values," she said. "Research is showing that men who have girls become more politically and socially liberal, versus those who have sons and not girls.

"There are so many issues that affect daughters: reproductive freedom, the right to choose, equal pay. They've studied male voters in the U.S. and Britain, and they show that men [with daughters] change from conservative to more liberal in their voting."

A key is one-on-one time, when father and daughter can be together with no other family members infringing on their time. And once you're together, talk. About real topics, not just the superficial stuff.