DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL: The Unspoken Bargain Between Fathers and Their Daughters

One of the unfortunate consequences of Nancy Friday's success with My Mother/ My Self has been a stream of imitators attempting to illuminate all manner of parent/child relationships: mother/son, father/son, and now father/daughter. Folk wisdom would supply you with most of the pseudo-psychosexual conclusions available here: daughters are wooed away from infant dependence on mother by daddy's aura of mystery and playfulness; father and daughter strike a kind of bargain exchanging her obedience and dependence for his love and protection: with adolescence, and the daughter's need to grow, come hostility and rebellion against the earlier bargain; and father sees suitors as potential rivals. There is brief mention of incest as a kind of aberration to be pitied, and some consideration of special situations--divorce, handicapped children, lesbianism (somehow intimately connected with father, but how?). Throughout, the authors--a father and daughter--rely on quotes from interviews, on their own memories, and on quotes from three New York City psychoanalysts sharing the same pseudonym; they offer almost nothing in the way of genuine insights or innovative thinking. Little that's new, in sum, and even less that's interesting.