"Your negative beliefs about divorced fathers made it harder for your dad to maintain a good relationship with you. You might have been duped years ago to believe these negative things about divorced dads.

"But you don’t have to be duped now. You can open your eyes to the realities that divorced dads face. Then you can explore with your father what actually did happen at the time of his divorce."

Dr. Linda Nielsen, the president of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, often writes about fathers and daughters. Her latest book, Between Fathers and Daughters: Enriching or Rebuilding Your Adult Relationship has an excellent chapter on the devastating effects that divorce often has upon the father-daughter relationship.

The chapter contains a “Divorced Dads Quiz" that every adult child of divorce should take. Nielsen writes:

As for your father-daughter relationship, remember: the negative beliefs that you have about any group of people influences what you remember about how they behaved in the past and how you treat them  - even when your beliefs are wrong.  

This is why it’s important to ask: what did you, as a daughter, believe about divorced dads at the time your parents divorced.  By taking the 'Divorced Dads' quiz, you can see which beliefs were affecting you then – and might still be affecting you now.

The quiz is below. I wonder what answers the adult or teenage children of the fathers reading this would give?

Divorced Dads: Bad Guys?  When your parents got divorced, what did you believe about divorced men?

True or False?
 
____ Most divorces happen because the man falls in love with another woman.
____ Most divorces happen because the husband is abusive, alcoholic, or emotionally unstable.
____ Many divorces happen because the father committed adultery.   
____ Fathers generally lose interest in their children after a divorce.
____ Financially most fathers are far better off than mothers after divorce.
____ Mothers are usually more depressed than fathers after their divorce.
____ College educated mothers are rarely angry about money after divorce.  
 ____The husband is usually the person who wants the divorce.
____ Most divorced fathers do not make their child support payments.
____ It is extremely rare for a mother to prevent the father from seeing the children.

____ Your Score (10 possible true)

Nielsen writes:

What’s your score? Hopefully, zero. Not one of the statements is true...but the higher your score, the more likely it is that your negative beliefs about divorced fathers made it harder for your dad to maintain a good relationship with you. You might have been duped years ago to believe these negative things about divorced dads. But you don’t have to be duped now. You can open your eyes to the realities that divorced dads face. Then you can explore with your father what actually did happen at the time of his divorce.

To order the book or to learn more, click here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am and is filed under Fatherhood, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Parenting, American Coalition for Fathers & Children (ACFC). You can trackback from your own site.