Closeness in father-adolescent daughter relationships: a South African study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research indicates that close father-child relationships contribute to the well-being of adolescents. However, most studies on closeness have been conducted in the northern hemisphere on adult relationships of White, middle-class population groups. The aim of this study, therefore, was to explore constructions of father-child closeness in a different setting. Informed by social constructionism, an exploratory-descriptive research design was used to investigate constructions of closeness and father-daughter closeness in 15 family units (n = 45) consisting of adolescent daughters, fathers, and mothers living in low-income, rural communities in South Africa. Individual interviews were conducted with each participant and thematic analysis was used to analyse the resultant data. Three overarching themes and six subthemes were identified. Our findings show that the participants associated father-daughter closeness with daughters’ comfortability to share personal information with fathers. However, most of the daughters in this study did not feel comfortable to do so. We identified the maintenance of traditional notions of fathers as authority figures, as well as fathers resorting to authoritarian behaviours when faced with adolescents exhibiting risky behaviour in adverse socio-economic environments, as two factors that created distance between fathers and daughters.