What happens to a little girl who grows up without a father? Can she ever feel truly loved and fully alive? Fatherlessness afflicts nearly half the households in America, and it has reached epidemic proportions in the African American community. Jonetta Rose Barras knows from personal experience the traps and the fury of being a black fatherless daughter, and she makes her own life story the heart and soul of her book, alternating chapters of spellbinding memoir with the stories she has gathered from women all over the country.In this groundbreaking volume, Barras identifies the "fatherless woman syndrome" and discusses the research that confirms that fatherless daughters are far more likely to suffer from debilitating rage, depression, abuse, and addictions, they tend to seek "sexual healing" through promiscuity or anti-intimate behavior and often end up fearing or despising the men whose love they crave.
Passionate and shockingly frank, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL? is the first book to explore the plight of the African American community's fatherless daughters. Like Hope Edelman's New York Times bestseller Motherless Daughters, this brilliant volume gives fatherless daughters the knowledge that they are not alone and the courage to overcome their hidden pain.
