At xoJane, Helena Andrews, a contributing editor at The Root, rejects the idea that an absent father makes for a promiscuous daughter. She disagrees with a Texas Christian University study that came to that controversial conclusion.
Obviously the study and research and so forth are all sort of bogus, as most of the smart women who analyzed this breaking news have already pointed out. The sample size was too small and too homogeneous. The crowd was mostly religious, which could easily affect subjects' perception. Not to mention the fact that someone thinking about the warm and fuzzies they got skeet shooting with dad might not be able to immediately switch gears and start thinking about that other kind of skeeting. Because gross.
But beyond this study's glaringly obvious overreach, I've often contemplated how my father's habitual disappointment has affected my sexual resume. Doing my own mental and totally anecdotal survey, I would say most young girls fall on either side of the Serena van der Woodsen scale of "daddy issues."
For every girl who sought sexual attention from guys because their father wasn't around to do whatever dads do, I know a ton (myself included) who were so afraid of male attention, seeing as how foreign it was, that they avoided it at all costs.
Read Helena Andrews' entire piece at xoJane.
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Helena Andrews is a contributing editor at The Root and author of Bitch Is the New Black, a memoir in essays. Follow her on Twitter.