CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS ON INTERFERENCES OF EARLY FATHER ABSENCE IN THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FEMININITY

ABSTRACT: In clinical work, we have observed that the loss of the father through divorce has a significant effect on the young girl's developing sense of feminity. This paper briefly reviews the research findings from sex-role devel-opment heory and psychoanalytic heory, and presents clinical discussions of latency aged girls whose parents divorced during their daughter's early and oedipal years. The most common defensive or coping patterns seen in these child patients during latency are identified, with clinical material presented toillus-trate both the existence of these patterns and implications for treatment. In our clinical work with children of divorce, we have observed that female children often react with a profound sense of loss to the depar-ture of the father from the family unit. The plaintive cry, "Why did Daddy leave us? " is not uncommon. We see not only the acute sense of loss experienced by these children, but also the effect of the father's absence on the course of development over time. I The important role played by the father in the development ofthe girl's sense of femininity is recognized in both psychoanalytic theory and findings from studies of sex role development. While the effects of father absence on identifica-1Kalter and Rembar (1981) report that nearly two-thirds of their sample of Children's Psychiatric Hospital patients had experienced parental divorce over five years earlier