New Book on Fathers and Daughters

Dr. Linda Nielsen, the president of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, has a new book out, Between Fathers and Daughters: Enriching and Rebuilding Your Adult Relationship. Although I haven't yet read the book, Glenn Sacks has a post up on the book and makes note of "an excellent chapter on the devastating effects that divorce often has upon the father-daughter relationship." He points out a quiz daughters can take to determine if they have picked up negative views of their divorced dad:

The chapter contains a “Divorced Dads Quiz" that every adult child of divorce should take. Nielsen writes:

As for your father-daughter relationship, remember: the negative beliefs that you have about any group of people influences what you remember about how they behaved in the past and how you treat them - even when your beliefs are wrong.

This is why it’s important to ask: what did you, as a daughter, believe about divorced dads at the time your parents divorced. By taking the 'Divorced Dads' quiz, you can see which beliefs were affecting you then – and might still be affecting you now.

Since children mainly reside with mothers after a divorce, it is likely that if a mother says negative things about a father, it will impact the child's view of that relationship strongly. The mother's reality often becomes the child's and they often come to view dad with more contempt and anger than the circumstances might warrant.

If you would like to view the quiz and see if you have false beliefs about divorced fathers in general, you can view it here.