It's very common these days to see kids growing up in single parent households due to their parents' divorce or separation, but especially girls growing up without fathers. Studies have shown that girls who are raised without a solid father figure in their life end up with emotional issues that can affect their relationships with other men, as well as an increased risk of incarceration, mental and emotional issues, drug and alcohol abuse and a distorted view of how a relationship should work. So why are so many girls growing up without fathers? Divorce rates continue to rise every year. Currently about 50% of marriages end up in divorce. People are having kids and their relationships don't work out and then some men are just not fit to be fathers. With that cycle of failed marriages and relationships that thought process gets passed down to their daughters and in effect can warp their sense of what a family should look like.

But living in a single family household isn't always as awful and horrible as people seem to think it is. Single mothers are just as capable of playing the role of mother and father. As a child of a single parent household I can definitely relate that my mother did an amazing job as raising me by herself. She has taught me so many valuable lessons but that especially of how a man should treat me and how a healthy relationship should work. Would my life be so much better had my father stuck around? I don't know, but it would have been different for sure.

There's no use in dwelling on the negative or how much better my life would have been had he been here. I do know that I am forever grateful for how I was raised. We always had a roof over our head and food to eat even if it was something I hated. As a kid I was totally ungrateful and thought if my father had been there that we would be so much better off. and then as I got older I went through that period where I despised my father and wished he wasn't my father. But now at 19, I can see that you can't force someone to be something they aren't capable of being and I'm totally content with that. I don't have a relationship with my father and I don't hate him for not being around, I understand why he wasn't and that's okay. It's always been okay and my mother has always done above and beyond to provide for me whether that meant her working multiple jobs or going back to school to become a nurse. I have plenty of friends who have grown up in single parent households and are strong and happy women. It takes more effort and time but you can be mentally and emotionally secure without a father figure to rely on.

So my end point being, being a father girl isn't the end of the world. Don't let what someone else did decide how your life will turn out and how your relationships work. You can be just as even minded and successful as a girl with both of her parents around. Being angry solves nothing, but making peace with how you feel about the issue definitely will make you feel better.