Your Daughter's Adult Years: Money
How do father-daughter relationships generally change from the
time she leaves high school until she becomes a “real” adult?
What usually puts the most stress on their relationship? And
how can father and daughter strengthen their relationship or
overcome these obstacles during her early adult years?
Changes & Tensions Both father and daughter need to change some of
their attitudes and their behavior in order to create a more adult
relationship with one another during her college-age years. Unfortunately
what usually happens is that one person is readier for the change than the
other. Either dad is treating his daughter too much like a little girl while
she is striving and wanting to become an adult. Or dad is treating her like
an adult while she is still behaving and wanting to be treated like a child.
Your mutual struggle as father and daughter to create an adult to adult
relationship usually reaches it peak over these three issues: his money, her
sexual lifestyle, and her career plans. Let's talk about money.
Money usually causes so much tension between fathers and
young adult daughters that I devote an entire chapter in my book
to ways to resolve these problems. The tension stems from the
fact that most fathers and daughters have different feelings and
expectations about the role that money should play in their
relationship at this point in her life. Use this quiz to assess
yourselves:
Banking on Dad? How do you and your father feel about these
matters? In addressing the following statements, use 0 to mean
“absolutely not,” 1 to mean “maybe,” 2 to mean “probably,” and 3
to mean “definitely.”
After I graduate from high school, my father should:
Dad / Daughter
___ / ___ continue to pay all my educational and living expenses.
___ / ___ loan me money instead of telling me to get a bank loan.
___ / ___ pay for my graduate school education or part of it.
___ / ___ pay for most (or all) of my wedding.
___ / ___ set aside some money for me as an inheritance.
___ / ___ let me live at home for free after I’ve finished school and have a job.
___ / ___ help me to make a down payment on a house.
___ / ___ pay for most (or all) of my first car.
___ / ___ pay for my health and car insurance until I finish my education.
___ / ___ offer to give me money when he sees that I’m financially stressed.
___ / ___ Your scores (30 possible)
There are four different combinations of scores that create problems in your relationship.
-
If daughter scores higher than 20, she’s still banking on dad to take
care of her financially and to bale her out of financial scrapes like
he did when she was a child. If dad’s score is just as high as
daughter’s score, then the two of you agree that it’s okay for dad to
be the piggy bank and instant cash machine. You two probably don’t
disagree very often about financial issues. Still, your financial
arrangement has a down side that you may not have realized yet –
feelings of obligation and entitlement, as we’ll soon discuss.
-
If a daughter scores above 20 but dad scores more than 5 points lower
than she does, there’s probably a lot of tension between you two. Dad
wants daughter to be a financial grown-up, but she’s still behaving
like a little girl. The greater the difference in your two scores, the
greater the tension.
-
If a daughter scores less than 10 but dad scores more than 20, she
wants to be financially self-reliant, but he wants her to continue
depending on him for money. Maybe dad feels she won’t need him for
anything any more once she’s on her own financially. Or maybe he’s
afraid that he won’t be able to influence her decisions any more now
that she isn’t taking his money any more.
-
If both of you score somewhere between 15 and 25 points, you are still
having trouble deciding what your financial relationship with each other
ought to be—and that detracts from your relationship.
In terms of what’s best for your father-daughter relationship, the best
combination is when both of you score less than 10. This means both of
you are glad that the daughter is becoming financially self-reliant.
Although daughter may turn to dad for advice when she’s in a financial
jam, she won’t expect or ask him to give her money—and he won’t feel
that the loving thing to do is to give money. But since many daughters
and fathers aren’t in this group, financial issues often detract from
your relationship.
Let’s start with this “golden rule”: “Those who have the gold make the
rules.” Daughters and fathers have to understand that when she accepts
the “gold” from her father, there are usually strings attached—strings
that may be invisible at first but eventually become heavy ropes
around both your necks. For instance, she may consider the money dad
gives her to be a “gift”, but he might consider it to be a “loan”—money
that he expects to be repaid when his daughter can afford it. Other
times you both agree that it is a loan, but it’s not made clear when
the money is supposed to be repaid. At some later date dad may feel
taken advantage of because daughter hasn’t repaid a dime when she
clearly has the money. Resentment can also occur if dad gives or loans
money to another child, without making the same gift or loan to his daughter.
But the biggest risks involve obligation and entitlement. Depending on
how dependent the daughter is on her father’s money, she may feel
obligated to do things she doesn’t want to do—little things like
spending time with dad when she really doesn’t want to or big things
like going into a career she has no interest in because dad footed the
bill for her expensive college education. While a daughter may feel
obligated, a dad may feel entitled—entitled to have a say in how his
money is spent: what school his daughter should attend, what jobs she
should apply for.
As fathers or as daughters, we need to recognize the way money affects
our relationship and to communicate honestly with one another about
our feelings, our beliefs, and our expectations.
These excerpts are from
Embracing Your Father: How To Build The
Relationship You Always Wanted With Your Dad by Dr. Linda Nielsen.