Anonymous wrote:My dad is as good as it gets. He and my mom have always had a loving relationship and that really set the tone for a happy home life. He was incredibly successful but family was always his #1 priority. He certainly never made every sports event but when he was home he was always engaged with us. On weekends he didn’t play golf or disappear for half the day he just was dad. Now he is devoted to his grandchildren and he has been very generous with all of us. He is also a great advisor. On Monday, knowing I was very stressed with my job and kids he took me to lunch and we just talked it all out. It was like a weight off my shoulders knowing he is there if I need him.

That’s so wonderful. Happy for you.

My dad is as good as it gets. He and my mom have always had a loving relationship and that really set the tone for a happy home life. He was incredibly successful but family was always his #1 priority. He certainly never made every sports event but when he was home he was always engaged with us. On weekends he didn’t play golf or disappear for half the day he just was dad. Now he is devoted to his grandchildren and he has been very generous with all of us. He is also a great advisor. On Monday, knowing I was very stressed with my job and kids he took me to lunch and we just talked it all out. It was like a weight off my shoulders knowing he is there if I need him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a divorced dad. My ex says i was and still am a great dad. I think my ex was a great mom in most ways too. Unfortunately, the interactions between great dads and great moms are not always great. My ex was a pretty bad wife: she was very critical and dismissive and bad at working out disagreements. She was not affectionate at all. I wasn't either after a while. So our kids are growing up with good parents as role models but not with a good relationship role model.

Now I'm dating. Yes, I've noticed that women with bad dads sometimes behave in certain compensating ways. It's a cliche and often true. I also noticed that women with bad moms do pretty much the same thing. Either parent can screw you up or make you feel bad about yourself.
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This is interesting. In many ways, it seems like the standards for being a good or at least not-terrible parent are pretty straightforward and evergreen (give love and attention and calmness, attend to basic needs) whereas it’s less clear what makes a great relationship or partnership, and the standards for this have maybe changed more over time.

Yes, I think it's much easier to be a great parent than a great partner. I think one reason why is that the parent-child relationship seems more obvious to me. As a parent, I brought this child into the world, so I have a responsibility to care for, nurture, teach, and show up for the child. I don't expect much back in return (I get a TON back but I don't expect it) because the child didn't choose the relationship. I'm fine with a lopsided parent-child relationship because it's set up to be that way. Children are born helpless.

Marriage is way more complicated because you are both adults, you are both expected to give something to the relationship and you both expect to get things out of it. Finding the right balance, avoiding long term resentment, finding ways to maintain love well past hose early days of attraction, is much more complex than a parent loving their kid, IMO. Even on my kid's worst day, I don't find it that hard to find love and empathy for her. On my spouse's worst day? It's, uh, much harder. Not impossible, but way harder

Anonymous wrote:I'm a divorced dad. My ex says i was and still am a great dad. I think my ex was a great mom in most ways too. Unfortunately, the interactions between great dads and great moms are not always great. My ex was a pretty bad wife: she was very critical and dismissive and bad at working out disagreements. She was not affectionate at all. I wasn't either after a while. So our kids are growing up with good parents as role models but not with a good relationship role model.

Now I'm dating. Yes, I've noticed that women with bad dads sometimes behave in certain compensating ways. It's a cliche and often true. I also noticed that women with bad moms do pretty much the same thing. Either parent can screw you up or make you feel bad about yourself.
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This is interesting. In many ways, it seems like the standards for being a good or at least not-terrible parent are pretty straightforward and evergreen (give love and attention and calmness, attend to basic needs) whereas it’s less clear what makes a great relationship or partnership, and the standards for this have maybe changed more over time.

This thread reminds me how much I miss my dad. He was far from perfect but he was a great dad and I loved him so much. I miss both my parents extra around the holidays.

Agree. My dad was sexually abusive and likely a covert narc, and my stepdad maintained a years long affair when married to my mom. Definitely impacted my sexuality and ability to relate to men. I have an intrinsic distrust of men, which sucks.

My Dad was present but a total dick. I did not want to date a man with my Dad's temper.

Anonymous wrote:I won the real jackpot. I am relatively intelligent with an easygoing and resilient temperament.

My parents were both mentally ill abusive nightmares but they don’t get to decide my destiny. I do. I’ve built a wonderful life starting with a major disadvantage. I don’t really sit around reliving the past or being traumatized by it. But I think the real advantage was something I was born with.

A lot of wisdom here! Once you’re a parent you realize inborn temperment is absolutely critical!

My dad is awesome. He's smart, funny, kind and very quietly spiritual. My mom never evolved as a person and my siblings and I think she's emotionally stuck at the age she was when she got married, which was very young. She has a lot of narcissistic traits. Alas I ended up marrying someone whose temperament was like my mom's, only worse. I definitely won the dad lottery but it didn't help when I chose a spouse. After a lot of work on myself not to repeat old patterns I realize the person I'm with now is much more similar to my dad.

My family was truly middle class and yet my siblings and I have the generational wealth of growing up with great parents

I’m a guy but I see so clearly how my 2 younger sisters took it for granted that any man should treat them with love, generosity, respect and humor. And if he didn’t, then he had no place in their lives.

As a result, they both married the same kind of guys almost 30 years ago, and have now raised daughters with the same expectations of the men in their lives.

I will note that neither my dad nor my brothers-in-law have ever gone in for a second of the “Girl Dad” stuff which seems weirdly gendered to me. Do you really have to call attention to the fact that you think it’s some kind of special achievement to treat a daughter with the same respect and affection you would treat a son?

At any rate, my parents are still thankfully around and there will be 24 of us when my siblings, our spouses, our kids and now even the couple of spouses and kids they have all get together tomorrow for Christmas. I think my father does view himself as “the richest man in town” and we are all beneficiaries of that wealth

The reason absent and/or abusive dads are a bigger problem than absent/abusive moms is that there are just more of them.

Obviously someone with an absent or abusive mom is also going to have challenges in life. But the absent dad, or the mean dad with rage issues, is a trope because it happens too often.

Both of my parents were physically abusive and absent in different ways (my dad was just not around much, my mom had untreated depression and just withdrew from us and was emotionally absent a lot). But my mom was still way kinder and more present by a lot. As a mom myself now, there are still some positive parenting skills I learned from my mom, for instance.

My dad just never had any interest in me at all except to rage at me if I inconvenienced him. I use to think I'd processed that and gotten over it via therapy in my 20s. Now in my 40s and a parent myself, I've had to come to terms with it again in deeper ways.

My husband isn't like this but I do think he has the same tendencies as my dad. It's just it's 2025 and social expectations are different. I think if my DH were a dad in the 70s or early 80s, her do a lot of the same stuff my dad did.

I'm a divorced dad. My ex says i was and still am a great dad. I think my ex was a great mom in most ways too. Unfortunately, the interactions between great dads and great moms are not always great. My ex was a pretty bad wife: she was very critical and dismissive and bad at working out disagreements. She was not affectionate at all. I wasn't either after a while. So our kids are growing up with good parents as role models but not with a good relationship role model.

Now I'm dating. Yes, I've noticed that women with bad dads sometimes behave in certain compensating ways. It's a cliche and often true. I also noticed that women with bad moms do pretty much the same thing. Either parent can screw you up or make you feel bad about yourself.
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The best thing Ive ever done is give my daughter a great dad.

Its worse for the men with bad dads. They don't know how to grow up to be good men.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t like the correlation people make between their Dads and men they date/marry, I think it’s so weird.

I don't like the correlation either, not necessarily because I think it's weird though, but because I just generally don't think it's accurate. The benefits women reap from having a great dad have to do with having at least one stable parent providing you with a happy home life IMO, I don't think there's anything Freudian to it.