How fathers of daughters can help women make more money

How fatzu sichs of daughters can help women make more moneyHow fathers of daughters can help women make more moneyThough researchers havent isolated the correlation, data suggests that girl who grow up with present, loving fathers are more likely to hold down high paying jobs later in life. Why? Income correlates with specific traits understood be produced by strongfather-daughter relationships. And its leid just about hugs. Its about men challenging their daughters to challenge themselves.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreWe know what factors are related to women making better or worse income, and each of those factors is directly linked to the quality of her relationship with her father, says psychologist Linda Nielsen, who has studied father-daughter relationships for decades (and wrote a textbook about them). Its her graduation rates, her interest in STEM jobs, her assertivene ss, her willingness to accept challenging, difficult, and scary tasks, and the sense that youre responsible for what happens to you. She gets all that from her dad.Its worth elending thatdata indicates these effects are the strongest among daughters without brothers, suggesting that fathers may take an instinctually gendered approach that does girls a disservice. However, Nielsen suspects that those are old findings and may no longer apply in a more equal labor market. This means todays daughters may be benefiting more from their fathers attention - and that this may lead to more success.Nielsen broke down how men can help girls learn to challenge themselves.Good Dads Raise Girls Who Go to School LongerLoving fathers increase their daughters earning potential in part by increasing their daughters academic potential. Girls with good dads have higher high school graduation rates and are more likely to attend college as well as obtain masters and doctorate degrees.Some fathers go as f ar as to influence daughters participation in extra curricular, particularly youth sports. But most dads take a competitive approach to education regardless that helps influence higher levels of achievement. Typically this leads to making more money, Nielsen explains.Education is strongly and clearly linked to future income, she says. The better relationship she has with her dad, the more likely she is to receive the maximum amount of education.Good Dads Raise Girls Who Chose Higher Paying, Less Traditional CareersAccording to Nielsen, at least part of the pay gemeinsame agrarpolitik can be attributed womens socially driven attraction to careers that are more flexible, and higher paying male-dominated industries like technology are anything but that. And yet there seems to be one clear exception to this emerging in more recent research - girls with fathers who take on more household chores are more likely to pursue jobs in more aspirational, less traditional fields. Authors of the study hypothesize that when daughters see their fathers doing the laundry and vacuuming, they learn that women dont have to be the ones doing the housework all the time. They can be engineers as well.They see the dads doing womens work and theres a link between that and their future career choice, Nielsen explains, noting mothers who take on less traditional roles may have a similar impact. It makes perfect sense. If you see your mom doing yard work and fixing the car, youre going to have a different attitude that if you never saw her doing masculine stuff.Daughters With Good Dads Welcome ChallengesFathers are more likely to expose daughters to difficult tasks they often cant accomplish and teach them how to overcome challenges and tischsetbacks whereas mothers tend to want to step in to help, nurture, and soothe. Data suggests dads take more of a hands-off approach. And self-management can lead to the management track.Mothers will think, why would he give them that task, its just a baby? Well thats the whole point, Nielsen explains. Hes teaching her you can be frustrated, thats how you accomplish things, challenges can be frustrating.Usually seen as an early form of tough love, dads create what psychologists call endeavor of excitement, or a celebratory feeling when a person succeeds in spite of a challenge. When dads get excited for their daughters doing the hard time over and over again, the more they will get excited for themselves when hes not in the room. Theoretically, she will seek out more challenges if they feel good.Daughters With Good Dads Are More Likely to Ask for a RaiseAnother factor we know is linked with income is how assertive are you, Nielsen says. Are you assertive enough to ask for a raise? That assertiveness is learned mainly from the father, not the mother. Dad is teaching her to speak up.Scientists believe that a fathers biological role as a parent is to model healthy forms of aggression for their children. Like being competitive in th e right context, assertiveness represents a form of healthy aggression, and daughters benefit from this throughout their professional lives.Daughters With Good Dads Dont Wait for Things to HappenThe main reason girls with good dads are assertive and less risk-averse is because their fathers helped them develop what social scientists refer to as locus of control - the extent to which they believe theyre in control of what happens to them. Put another way, dads instill a greater agency. Their daughters know that theyre the agent of what happens to them and theyre not going to just wait around for what they want.This is where its key to separate engaged fathers from enabling ones. Of course, there are dads who continue to bankroll their daughters lives into adulthood, and theyre not raising women who get higher paying jobs. However, loving dads who set limits and resist the urge to rescue their daughters all the time foster a sense of personal responsibility and empowerment. And the b iggest mistake well-intended fathers make is doing this too late. Parents often assume agency is modeled when girls are in seven or eight, but studies shows children actually develop it between the ages of one and three, through challenging forms of play, roughhousing, and time spent with their dads. This a critical window of time when they learn not only that they can do it themselves, but also that theyre going to have to.Youre not a princess, youre not daddys little girl, you can do it yourself because Im not going to always rescue you, Nielsen says. You need to be self-reliant and self confident. That comes from the dad.This article first appeared on Fatherly.