Women are more likely to mess up their daughters, men their sons

[littlekittyhoward]

Pondering this as I watched a TV show - distant/poor mothering has a greater impact on daughters and distant/poor fathering has a greater impact on sons. Is this true? It certainly feels it when I look at those around me - the men in my life tend to be more affected by the relationship they did or didn’t have with their father, and women by their mother. I know men who have pretty perfunctory relationships with their mothers who aren’t particularly affected by it as adults, and same with women and their fathers, but not many who are the other way around.

Is this true in your experience? I’m not talking about serious abuse obviously, more just that sort of perfectly adequate but not very emotionally close parenting that I often see people talking about on here. Just curious if other people have any thoughts!

Just thought of another aspect to this - I know that my mother’s poor relationship with her body image definitely impacted me growing up in a way that it probably wouldn’t have done if I was a boy, because I wouldn’t have related to her in that way. Most of the women I know blame their mother’s for self esteem issues - constant dieting whilst they were children etc. Maybe that’s a generational thing and we won’t be the same with our daughters, I hope so!