How Fathers Influence Their Daughters' Careers

When it comes to women's career paths, dad's influence plays an increasingly weighty role.

In Photos: Celebrity Fathers And Daughters

Last Father's Day, President Barack Obama published a column in Parade magazine about every father's most fundamental duty: "Show their children, by example, the kind of people they want them to become." 

He praised his own daughters for their poise and patience while reflecting on his own promise to them to be the kind of father he had never had. At 11 and 8, first daughters Malia and Sasha are already showing signs of taking cues from their father. Both are involved in community service projects, including filling backpacks with school supplies, toys and healthy snacks for children whose parents are serving overseas.

All children are shaped by their parents and/or other caregivers, of course, but when it comes to women's career paths, dad's influence plays an increasingly weighty role.

According to a 2009 study from the University of Maryland, women are three times as likely to follow in their father's career footsteps these days than they were a century ago: Only 6% of women born between 1909 and 1916 went into their father's business, compared with roughly 20% of Gen X and Y.

Why the increase? The American Psychological Association says that the changing economic role of women has greatly impacted the role of fathers in their children's lives. Women now comprise over 50% of the workforce, leaving fewer families than ever in traditional "women raise the children" households. Fathers are now spending more time with their children than ever, and experts say that a "father's love" plays a much different role in childhood development. Most specifically, that it develops a child's sense of place in the world.

By Meghan Casserly and Caroline Howard, 06.14.10, 07:30 PM EDT
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Reader Comments

Dr. Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, is a firm believer that a father's influence is a major factor--if not the single most important one--in the development of women. "A father has authority with a capital A," says Meeker, who says she was influenced by her own father to go into medicine. "From the first years of a girl's life her father is larger than life. She looks up to him, and for the rest of her life she craves his admiration, his respect and his affection." Meeker believes that if admiration, respect and affection are present and reciprocated in the father-daughter relationship, they are the recipe for a successful woman.

These trends by themselves don't tell us which force (paternal, societal or otherwise) is pushing and pulling daughters down one career path or another. But they do tell us today's dads are spending more time with their children--and their daughters are paying attention. Continue on to our photo gallery of 10 successful daughters who have followed in their father's footsteps. Some might even go so far to say daughters who have eclipsed their dad's careers.

In Photos: Celebrity Fathers And Daughters

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