By Meg Meeker, M.D.

• Toddlers securely attached to fathers are better at solving problems.
• With fathers present in the home, kids manage school stress better.
• Girls with doting fathers are more assertive.
• Daughters who perceive that their fathers care a lot about them, and who feel connected to their fathers have significantly fewer suicide attempts and fewer instances of body dissatisfaction, depression, low self-esteem, substance use, and unhealthy weight.
• Girls with involved fathers are twice as likely to stay in school.
• A daughter’s self-esteem is best predicted by her father’s physical affection.
• Girls whose parents divorce or separate before they turn twenty-one tend to have shorter life spans by four years.
• Girls with good fathers are less likely to flaunt themselves to seek male attention.
• Fathers help daughters become more competent, more achievement-oriented, and more successful.
• Girls with involved fathers wait longer to initiate sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy.
• Girls who live solely with their mothers have significantly less ability to control impulses, delay gratification, and have a weaker sense of conscience or right and wrong.
• Kids do better academically if their fathers establish rules and exhibit affection.
• Teen girls who live with both parents are three times less likely to lose their virginity before their sixteenth birthdays.
• 76 percent of teen girls said that fathers influenced their decisions on whether they should become sexually active.
• One in five Americans over age twelve tests positive for genital herpes.
• 46.7 percent of students (girls and boys) will be sexually active before high school ends.
• Engaging in sex puts girls at higher risk for depression.
• 11.5 percent of females attempted suicide last year.
• 27.8 percent of high school students (female and male) drank alcohol before age thirteen.
• Parent connectedness is the number-one factor in preventing girls from engaging in premarital sex and indulging in drugs and alcohol.