The three studies presented in this paper just skim the surface in regards to what is known about the father-daughter relationship. Indeed, more research should be conducted on this vitally important topic, which will allow daughters to realize that the kind of relationship a girl has with her father does matter as much - and in many ways matters more - than her relationship with her mother.
STUDY 1: William Appleton, MD, 1981.
How does a doctor/writer for the women's magazine Cosmopolitan end up doing extensive research on father-daughter relationships? According to Appleton in his 1981 book, Fathers and Daughters, he became interested in the father-daughter dichotomy when he realized that many of the women who wrote to him with love problems failed to recognize, or did not want to recognize, the relationship that their fathers had on their unhappy adult lives. As more women wrote to him, he decided he wanted to conduct a study, which would detail the profound mark that a father has on his daughter. Even when daughters focused on their relationship with their father, their problems did not suddenly disappear; nevertheless, this study supports the supposition that fathers have weighty and lasting effects on their daughters. Appleton's study is in important because it directly tries to answer what impact a father's behavior has on his grown daughter. Ultimately, he surmises that fathers are important for a daughter's academic life, future career, relationship with boyfriends, sexual and social self confidence, ability to express anger and stand up for oneself, mental health, and feelings about how she looks and what she weighs. .
In Appleton's study, he interviewed eighty-one women and he selected these women at random. Despite the random selection of the women, they were all thirty-years of age, to which Appleton stresses that women of such age are more capable of appreciating the underpinnings of their father's personality.