Hook Up listener Tessa got in touch with us because she said she has 'daddy issues.' 'It's a way to especially make young women responsible for the abandonment from their fathers.' Help! I think I have 'daddy issues'! 'You don't have daddy issues or mummy issues, you were abandoned or you were neglected or you were hurt in some way.'ĭr Zoe says 'daddy issues' in particular is used to minimise women's needs. 'I think it's a really heteronormative and punitive way to blame the kid for what happened to them when they were growing up,' she told The Hook Up. 'It's not about gender and it's not about age, it's really about somebody who pushes the same buttons as your most difficult parent.' Daddy and mummy issues are cancelledįor a lot of people, 'daddy or mummy issues' are just a way to describe a traumatic or shit relationship with a parent.īut Dr Zoe has an issue with people using those terms, and a lot of other experts do too. Research shows there's no correlation between young women dating older men, and the woman having a negative relationship with her father. Not even in Freud's time.'ĭr Zoe is right. 'But now I think we make the mistake that it's about younger women and older men - and it never was. 'The Oedipus complex was a way people made fun or criticised Freud's work and reduced it to this idea of having daddy or mummy issues.' It's pretty safe to say that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is behind the concept of daddy/mummy issues.ĭr Krupka says it probably stems from his Oedipus complex (the theory that as children we're attracted to the parent of the opposite sex and jealous of the parent who's the same sex as us). 100 bucks says old mate Freud is to blame Strap in - because psychotherapist Dr Zoe Krupka has entered the chat.

So where did these associations come from? Why did popular culture at large gravitate towards throwing issues with parents at any behaviour deemed atypical? And why do we need to stop using them?

Really, we shouldn't be using 'daddy and mummy issues' to describe any of those things. Shit relationship with a parent? You may as well write it on your forehead.īut perhaps unsurprisingly, issues related to your 'rents are way more complicated and unpredictable in the way they present themselves. If you like calling someone daddy in the bedroom, you must have 'daddy issues'.ĭating someone way older? You guessed it: 'daddy or mummy issues.' We need to chat about the terms 'daddy and mummy issues.'Īt the moment, the phrases are used to describe/excuse a whole bunch of behaviours and characteristics that are problematic.

Daddy issues