Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters & Food

The title of the book caught my eye while I was looking through an eating disorders booklet. The author managed to put into words all the confusion and heartache a girl can go through if she does not have a positive relationship with her father. I had no idea how important the father/daughter relationship was or how deep the emotional scars can be by not having a good one. I would highly recommend this to any daughter who has eating issues and a problematic realationship with her father or any parent trying to understand their daughter's eating disorder. I simply cannot say enough about how this book has positively affected my life.

This is a brilliant book on the connection between a father's relationship with his daughter and the manifestation of her body image into adulthood. Time and time again it has been proven that the absence of a loving emotionally healthy and nurturing relationship with a father substantially increases a woman's risk for a variety of self-esteem issues, including weight problems. The father is the template to which a woman relates to men, sees herself in interaction with men, and perceives her values with men, and men often are seen as the world given the patriarchial overtones in society and commerce. In this book, Dr. Maine concentrates on how the father can be instrumental in protecting his daughter from the onslaught of emotionally-driven complications in body image. Often when a young girl is pursuiing thinness it is out of a need for attention. In adolescence this is acute in its unconscious desire for a man's attention with the blossoming of hormones and puberty. Mass media tells young girls that love is only possible through physical appearance. If a young girl has no concept of uncondition love from the one and only man who she needs it from - her biological or adoptive father (NOT a stepfather, they are actually dangerous to stepdaughters) ... she will be indoctrinated by the belief and it will be her sense of reality that only her body and its state of perfection guarantees performance-based ego-centric love. Dr. Maine outlines the role of fathers, what they can do, and gives them brilliant advice in this book on how to love their daughters and protect them from the illusions of the world. BRAVO! Once again ... daddy's girls get all the breaks. It is as if only the father can guarantee immunity from predatory men if he sets a high standard in his daughter's mind. The predatory nature of a mysoginist culture is often a culprit behind why women are literally dying to be thin just to get bread crumbs of shallow attention for undeserving men. Only women who have their father's unconditional love stand a chance at being firm and rooted enough in that love to see the myth and lie that being thin is the passage way to being appreciated.

This book makes sense to me. Focusing on a systems approach has brought the clairity and peace of mind I have needed. This book does not place blame on fathers but forces us to look at our parental figures as part of a bigger picture. I honestly feel this is one of the best books I have ever read. Relatives and friends of mine are eager to read read this book. Thank you Dr. Maine!

There are so many self help books about the father wound. Most of them leave me intellectually stimulated but emotionally empty.This book is different. Dr. Maine speaks plainly and emotionally in this book. I haven't read all of it yet, but the parts I have read captured my feelings about my father perfectly. It explains his role--or lack thereof in my life--and it fosters me in my quest to mourn the void that I have inside due to his neglect and emotional absence. The best part of the book is the statement that we must accept and change the role that society has foistered onto men. Men have been required to distance themselves from their emotions and to not have deep and intimate attachments. As such, when they become fathers, the experience requires intimacy on a much deeper level than they are accustomed to and often, they fail. In healing the father wound, we come to realize that it's not just ourselves that must heal, but our fathers also. Because it is by encouraging men to heal and reconnect with themselves that they will ultimately reconnect with us.Buy this book. Share with your friends. Tell anyone who will listen. Get healed, be free and do what we should have been doing all along with our fathers: enjoy one another.

This book is different from most eating disorder books because of its focus on the father. It really gives you a new perspective on how fathers are actually involved in a daughter's life without actually doing anything. As a recovering anorexic and bulimic, I found this book helpful in opening my mind up about the complex interactions that helped form my problems. Understanding the root of the problem makes solving it easier (but still not that easy)