What gender or species?
Some women have probably done better not having had a father figure at all, than having had a really bad one.
If a girl has a strong, independent, hardworking, loving mother to teach them how to be the best that they can, and there are a lot of single mothers out there that fit this category! ...as opposed to a mother who cats around going to the bars looking for men and sleeping with any tom, dick or harry that wants them for a night, stays with a man who abuses both the mother and the children, collects permanent welfare, does drugs, ignores the girl....the girl is going to do fine, provided the crappy father had little to no influence or presence in the girl's life.
Sometimes, a mother can counteract a father's behavioral influence on the children and sometimes she can't, just as sometimes it's the father that's the positive influence instead of the mother. It's much more difficult in today's world, when judges are more likely to give both parents equal time with the children, to protect children from the less than stellar parent.
The personality and behavior of both parents have a great impact on a child - regardless of the sex of the child. The difference is that a girl will consciously, AND unconsciously, look for men that are like her father. The better the father - in all aspects of his life - the better the daughter's choices in boys/men. Women tend to retain many of personality and behavior, etc, of their mothers unless they are determined to be "different" from their mothers. It could be that because a woman's "role" in society has changed so much since WWII and even more so in the last 30 years, that external forces have had such a much greater influence on women than men. The external influences have had both positive and negative impact on women.
Men will tend to treat the women in their lives the way their father treated their mother, and/or the way their mother taught them to treat women. Men are also likely to acquire many of the traits of their fathers...good and bad...and will keep both of those traits unless some external influence - mother, other family members, friends, teachers, etc. - alter the man's behavior prior to teenage years, as most people's (male and female) personalities are formed by the time they reach 13 or 14. To change after that point in life...requires some pretty strong influences.
I would think a well written book about the influence a father has on his daughter's life and how to be a
positive influence on the daughter - regardless of the political leanings of the author - would be a good thing for a man to read.
