NPR: I Want a Guy Just Like the Guy Who Married Dear Old Mom

I Want a Guy Just Like the Guy Who Married Dear Old Mom

Ah, Father's Day. The day when the children who we spend so much time, effort ... and money ... raising, reward us dads with showers of affection and attention. Basically, they let us sleep in on Sunday.

But I've learned that there is a better way to determine how your children feel about you. At least, how your grown-up daughters feel about you. Just take a close look at that guy she's with. (Yeah, I know, you never trusted him from the get-go.)

Women who get along really well with their dads are more likely to seek out guys who look a lot like them. But if that father-daughter connection isn't strong, or if it's a negative one, then they will probably will go after somebody who doesn't look like dad at all. Those findings are from a study that's being published in the July issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Apparently, if you're a good dad, that gets imprinted in your daughters' brains, so they look for a guy who looks like you, thinking, "That old guy did a good job with kids, maybe this guy will, too." But that's about as far as it goes, say the researchers.

"If the guy was a carbon copy of your dad, that would be creepy ... If somebody feels too much like family, you can't see them in a romantic way," explains [Lynda Boothroyd, co-author of the study and psychologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom]. "But a certain degree of familiarity, combined with (the mate) being different in other respects, is actually very, very attractive."

9:29 AM ET | 06-15-2007 | permalink

Comments

BALONEY!! WHERE DO YOU GET THIS RUBBISH FROM?? DO YOU GET A GRANT FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO PUT TOGETHER THIS NONSENSE??
I LOVED MY DAD BUT I DIDN'T FIND MYSELF ATTRACTED TO HIS LOOKS IN THE MEN I'VE DATED OR MARRIED. FIRST BECAUSE DARK AND SHORT MEN ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE OPTIMAL ATTRACTION IN OUR CULTURE AND SECOND HE WAS 50 WHEN I WAS BORN SO AN OLDER MAN WAS NOT ON MY VISTA. MY OPINION IS THAT CULTURE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS PLAY AN EVEN MORE DETERMINING FACTOR THAN "IMPRINTS" ESPECIALLY HERE IN USA.

Sent by MARIA PETTIBONE | 12:54 PM ET | 06-15-2007

Weird- very Freud like, but true however. Your father is the man that a girl looks up to...therefore she categorizes him as the ideal and makes that the goal. Say if a father was a great conversationalist, and always brought up deep topics at the dinner table, then wouldn't his daughter be likely to search for a man just as well spoken and in tune to the events around her because of the nature of her upbringing?

Sent by A daughter | 9:04 PM ET | 06-15-2007

Sorry, Maria, I'm afraid this is no baloney! However, I don't think it's limited to daughters who had good relationships with their fathers. I had lousy relationships with my father (who left when I was six months old) and my stepfather (who didn't want any children, but who fathered five). Yet, I have repeatedly been attracted to men who turned out to be jerks. So I've asked myself WHY?! When I've looked long and hard at these guys, the bottom line has often been that they had characteristics of my father(s) that I was trying, albeit subconsciously, to find in a mate. Whether it was body type, or aloofness, or their particular brand of masculinity, their familiarity drew me to them. I was comfortable in our dysfunction. I now try to figure out early on what it is I'm attracted to, before wasting my time trying to get their love.

Sent by Carol Ledford | 4:56 AM ET | 06-16-2007

My husband looked like my father but I made sure his temperment was different. Yet, I am more like my father than anyone, which says much about my own temperment. Besides my father, I was also influenced by his extended family, my uncles and aunts. I had several fathers in my uncles, who gave me what my father could not. Today, I love my father for what he is, not what I wished he had been.

Of course, we all are influenced positively and negatively, by our opposite sex parent, just as we are influenced by our same-sex parent. But we also seek partners who have traits we admire but don't have, complementary traits.

It's not a simple equation.

Sent by julia | 7:08 AM ET | 06-16-2007

his is so true. Has always been true, No government grants needed.

Sent by my dad's kid | 7:13 AM ET | 06-16-2007

I believe that this has as much to do with self-perception as it does with who is one's father. The fact is that most children are taught by their parent how to view themselves. In a continuation of this pattern, many of them will seek out a mate who thinks of them and treats them in the same way as the norm that their parents developed. An example of this would be the tendency of abused individuals to seek out abusive partners in relationships, which is truly unfortunate and disheartening. But, in this way, the mannerisms of fathers may be sought by daughters due to the comfort and security that they afford.

Sent by Jeff | 2:25 AM ET | 06-17-2007

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