For more information about the Pro-Life Commission or to volunteer, please contact the Pro-Life Office at (859) 392-1545 or e-mail kkiely@covingtondiocese.org.

Karen Riegler,                                                                                                         Pro-Life Director

June 16, 2008

Last week we paid tribute to all fathers, living and deceased on Father’s Day. It is a good time to recall and affirm the important role fathers have in their children’s lives and especially in the lives of their daughters.

I recently attended a talk given by Meg Meeker MD, who has spent the past twenty years practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine and counseling teens and parents.  She has been a personal witness to the damage and confusion that our toxic culture is having on our children, so much so, that she as written several books addressing this important topic.  One excellent book in particular that I recently read, is entitled Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters. (Available at Borders.) In this book, Dr Meeker makes a very clear, strong and pleading case for fathers to be involved in their daughters’ lives.  She asserts that daughters need fathers because fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life.  In her book she explains, “Your daughter needs the best of who you are:  your strength, your courage, your intelligence, and your fearlessness.  She needs your empathy, assertiveness and self confidence.  She needs you.” A lot of research has been done on the influence father’s have on their daughters:  Here is just a sampling of the statistics listed in Dr. Meeker’s book:

• Toddlers securely attached to fathers are better at solving problems.
• Six-month-old babies score higher on tests of mental development if their dads are involved in their lives.
• Girls who are close to their fathers exhibit less anxiety and withdrawn behaviors

• Girls with fathers who are involved in their lives have higher quantative and verbal skills and higher intellectual functioning.

• Girls with a father figure feel more protected, have higher self-esteem, are more likely to attempt college, and are less likely to drop out of college.
• Fathers help daughters become more competent, more achievement-oriented, and more successful.
• 76% of teen girls said that fathers influenced their decisions on whether they should become sexually active.

Dr Meeker goes on to talk about the grim realities she was discovering in her practice with regard to her young female patients.  She sites the fact that popular culture is selling sex to our teens, resulting in skyrocketing rates of teenage sexually transmitted diseases and clinical depression (which she also considers a sexually transmitted disease).  She started collecting data about these harsh facts and here is what she discovered:

• Three to four million teens in the US contract a new sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year. 
• Nationwide gonorrhea rates are highest among girls ages fifteen to eighteen.
• Nearly one in four sexually active teens is living with an STD at this moment
• HPV causes 95 to 99 percent of all cervical cancer.
• 45 percent of African American teens and young adults test positive for genital herpes.  

Dr. Meeker hopes that you are shocked by these statistics, because she wants everyone to recognize that we have a very serious problem on our hands.  But the good news is that fathers have an influence, even if you think you don’t.   If you want your daughter to refrain from being sexually active as a teenager, you need to tell her why and how.  You need to stay in the fight for her innocence and her mental and physical health. Dr. Meeker emphatically states that, “It’s a fight you can- and must win.”

Daughters take cues from fathers from everything from drug use, drinking, delinquency, smoking and having sex, to self-esteem and moodiness.   Even if a father thinks that he operates on a totally different plane than his daughter, and even if he sees that time spent shows no meaningful impact on her, the clinical fact as stated in this book, is that fathers are giving their daughters the greatest of gifts, your time and involvement.  Your daughter will view this time spent with you vastly different than you do.  She will absorb your influence.  Be it good or painful, the hours and years a father spends with his daughter-or don’t spend with her-change who she is.

In her conclusion, Dr Meeker eloquently says: “One day when she is grown, something between the two of you will shift.  If you have done your job well, she will choose another good man to love her, fight for her, and be intimately connected to her.  But he will never replace you in her heart, because you were there first.  And that’s the ultimate reward be being a good dad.”