What is "daddy issues?"

“Daddy issues” is a phrase often used by today’s youth to diagnose women who often take up untraditional dating practices or engage in excessive amounts of salacious behavior. In addition, these behaviors are blamed exclusively on the woman’s poor relationship with her father.

In other words, if a girl is brought up without a father, it is likely she’ll develop issues in future relationships and demonstrate a questionable psychological behavior.

What does “daddy issues” refer to?

Consider this theoretical scenario: Jill’s father left her family when she was a young girl. Only her mother has raised her since. As she was growing up, she dressed provocatively and took part in a lot promiscuous behavior. Jill often found herself dating men who didn’t treat her right, yet she stayed until they left her anyways.

Jill would be deemed a woman with “daddy issues.”

Jill’s psychological behavior- the promiscuity, the lack of self-respect, the poor choice in partners- is thought to be the derivative of her father’s absence. It’s also insinuated that Jill’s dependency on men for self-validation demonstrates that she is seeking for the father-figure she never had in her future partners. Therefore, Jill’s seductive way of dress and frequent romantic involvement is a tactic in order to get the (male) attention she couldn’t receive as a child.

What’s wrong with the phrase, “daddy issues?”

Not only is this term offensive to women, but also it discredits the work that many single moms struggle to do on their own. The phrase is also suggesting that women are incapable of becoming respectful adults without also being raised by a man.

Moreover, the phrase teaches girls from a young age that they should depend on a man in order to be respected and well-rounded individuals.

Actions like Jill’s aren’t always dependent on the absence of a father-figure. Yet, society continues to place women in a position of inferiority- blaming their untraditional/taboo/unacceptable behavior on the fact a man wasn’t a constant fixture in their life.

Why is it that a man who acts out-sexually or possessively-isn’t automatically deemed to have “daddy” or “mommy issues?”