Over the past decade, researchers from a wide variety of disciplines have begun to include fathers in studies of adolescent development. Topics such as the role of fathers, the perceptions of fathers, the communication styles of father/child dyads, and the effects of father absence or presence, have been examined (Almeida & Galambos, 1991; Bronstein & Cowan, 1988; Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Larson & Richards, 1994; Popenoe, 1996; Shulman & Collins, 1993). As a result of this growing body of research, a rich understanding of the multifaceted nature and significance of fathers in the lives of their adolescent children is emerging. However, there are several gaps in this relatively new body of research that limit the breadth and depth of knowledge regarding father/adolescent relationships. The research has focused almost exclusively on father/adolescent relationships in White, middle-class, twoparent households (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997). Currently, there is little understanding of the relationships that exist between low-income and/or ethnic minority adolescents and their fathers in single-parent or two-parent households. Although there have been a number of researchers who have investigated parent/adolescent relationships in low-income and/or ethnic minority families, such research typically has focused on family life, on parenting beliefs or attitudes (not distinguishing between fathers and mothers), or on mothers only (see Cauce et al., 1996; Chao, 1994, 1995; Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dornbusch, 1991; Valdes, 1996; Ward, 1996; Wilson, 1995; Zaya & Solari, 1994).

Reasons for the lack of research with low-income or ethnic minority adolescents and fathers, in general, might lie with the seemingly implicit assumptions that not only do most of those fathers not live with their children but that most do not have any relationship with their children. Although studies have indicated that many fathers from low-income, ethnic minority communities do not live with their adolescent children (Stack, 1974; Way & Stauber, 1996; Zimmerman, Salem, & Maton, 1995), studies also have revealed that those fathers frequently continue to play an active role in their children's lives (see Earl & Lohmann, 1978; Rivara, Sweeney, & Henderson, 1986; Stack, 1974; Way & Stauber, 1996; Wilson, 1995; Zimmerman et al., 1995; Zimmerman, Salem, & Notaro, 1997). In a recent study of 177 urban, ethnic minority, low-income adolescents, only 37.5% reported living with their biological fathers. However, 65% reported that their biological fathers were involved in their lives (see Way & Chen, 1997). Zimmerman et al. (1995) reported similar findings: 53% of their entire sample of 254 African American, low-socioeconomic status, inner-city, adolescent males reported receiving emotional support from their biological fathers. In addition, more than 50% of the adolescent males living in single-mother households reported receiving emotional support from their biological fathers. Such research has indicated that even nonresidential, low-income fathers are involved in their children's lives. However, the quality of adolescent/father relationships in low-income and/or ethnic minority families is not well understood. In particular, little is known about the ways in which low-income and/or ethnic minority adolescents perceive their relationships with their fathers.

The research literature on adolescents and fathers from predominantly White, middle-class, two-parent households has indicated various relational patterns. Research has shown that fathers often are less involved emotionally, less communicative, and less connected or intimate with their adolescent children than mothers, although those differences have been found primarily for daughters rather than for sons (Apter, 1990; Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Larson, 1993; LeCroy, 1988; Noller & Callan, 1990; Steinberg, 1990; Youniss & Ketterlinus, 1987; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). Adolescents' relationships with their fathers also have been found to involve less conflict than their relationships with their mothers, especially for girls (Montemayor & Hanson, 1985; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Smetana, 1989; Smith & Forehand, 1986). In their studies of primarily White, middle-class adolescents, Youniss and Smollar (1985) found that the majority of adolescents described relationships with their fathers as "distant," "lacking emotional content," and "uncomfortable and withdrawn" (p. 91). These adolescents reported that conflicts or intimate communication with their fathers were rare. The researchers concluded that adolescents' relationships with their fathers should be described as "a `nonrelation' [rather] than as a negative one" (Youniss & Smollar,1985, p. 51 ). Apter ( 1993) concluded in a qualitative study of White, working-class and middle-class adolescent girls that many of them had relationships with their fathers that involved little intimacy or direct engagement. In a review of the research literature on adolescents' relationships with their parents, Steinberg (1990) concluded that fathers appear to have emotionally "flat relationships with their teenagers . . . the father-daughter relationships appears to be the outlier, distinguished by its affective blandness and relatively low level of interaction" (p. 266). Most of the research on fathers has indicated that fathers typically are unavailable for their daughters and sons, and even when the fathers are available, they are less available than the mothers. Furthermore, any feelings of closeness or intimacy between daughters and fathers and between sons and fathers appear to decrease during adolescence (Bracken & Crain, 1994; Feldman & Gehring, 1988; Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Papini, Roggman, & Anderson, 1991; Steinberg, 1988), although this decrease in closeness is not perceived as desirable by the adolescents themselves (Feldman & Gehring, 1988). As a result of those studies, much is known about the quality of relationships between adolescents and fathers in White, middle- class, two-parent households. Knowledge of adolescent/father relationships, however, is limited by the lack of information on adolescent/father relationships in ethnic minority, low-income, two-parent or single-parent households.

The research on adolescents and fathers also has been limited by the almost exclusive reliance on either questionnaire or observational research methods. Missing in the research literature are narrative accounts of the ways in which adolescents perceive their relationships with their fathers. Questionnaires and observational methods have provided critical information regarding the extent to which, for example, adolescents perceive conflict, task sharing, or affection in their relationships with their fathers. Those methods, however, have been unable to detect the ways in which adolescents describe, or make meaning of, their relationships with their fathers. Even self-report methods such as diary studies that involve pagers (see Asmussen & Larson, 1991; Duckett & Richards, 1995; Larson, 1989; and Larson, Gillman & Richards,1997) offer intermittent freeze-frame impressions of adolescent daily experience and do not provide the opportunity to get at the meaning behind those experiences. Narrative methods, such as semistructured or unstructured interviews, are necessary to investigate the ways in which adolescents describe their relationships with their fathers.

Based on the limitations in the research literature, an exploratory, qualitative study was conducted that focused on early adolescent girls' perceptions of their fathers. The girls predominantly were Latina or African American and from low-income, two-parent or single-parent households. The goal for this study was to examine the ways in which girls described their relationships with their biological fathers. Biological fathers were the focus because research with adolescents from low-income families indicated that the majority of these adolescents have at least some contact with their biological fathers (Way, 1998; Zimmerman et al., 1995). Furthermore, a focus on biological fathers allows the amount of time the father has known the adolescent to be held relatively constant across adolescents of similar ages. Girls were the focus of the analysis because the aim of the study was to explore the nuances in perceptions of fathers within a group of adolescents rather than to compare perceptions across groups of adolescents (e.g., girls as compared to boys). This exploratory study was designed to generate hypotheses about girls' perceptions of their relationships with their fathers by listening closely to a small number of girls. From this research, large-scale studies will be needed to test the hypotheses and assess the replicability and generalizability of the findings.

METHOD

Participants

The sample included 20 early-adolescent girls 11 through 13 years of age (mean age: 12.22 years) who attended an alternative public middle school in New York City. The school population consisted predominantly of students from low-income families, 80% of the students qualified for federal assistance through the free or reduced lunch program. Nearly 50% of the entire student body was Latino; the remainder was African American (35%), White (15%), or East Asian (3%). The school was small, with approximately 150 students in Grades 6, 7, or 8. The ethnic diversity of the sample reflected the larger population in the school (6 Dominican, 4 African American, 4 Puerto Rican or other Latino background, 1 half Latino/half White, 1 Jamaican, 1 Bengali, 1 Korean-American, 1 Eritrean, and 1 White). The girls' family structures were diverse as well: 12 girls lived with both biological parents, and 8 girls did not live with their biological fathers. Among those 8 girls, 4 girls lived only with their mothers; 1 girl lived part of each week with her mother and the other part with her father following a joint custody arrangement; 2 girls lived with their mothers and stepfathers; and 1 girl lived with the parents who adopted her when she was 4 years old. With the exception of 2 girls, all of the girls in the study had occasional to regular contact with their biological fathers. Of the two exceptions, one was adopted when she was 4, and the other had no contact with her biological father but had a stepfather who had lived with her since she was 2 years old. We chose to include these two girls in our analyses because they perceived their adopted father and/or stepfather to be their "real" fathers, and these fathers had been in the girls' lives since the girls were young.

Procedure

Students were recruited from advisory groups in the school. Advisory groups are informal sessions led by a teacher or other adult staff person that meet twice weekly. Like academic classes in this school, advisory groups are integrated by grade level, and all students in the school are required to participate in them. Students were asked to volunteer for a study on adolescent/parent relationships. Of the 25 girls who were told about the project, 22 girls agreed to participate. Two of these 22 girls were not included in the present analysis because their biological fathers had died when they were young, and they did not have any father figures in their lives. No information regarding the remaining 3 girls who did not participate was collected. All students who participated returned a signed consent form from a parent or legal guardian. The interviews were held during the school day, lasted for approximately 1 hour, and took place in an empty classroom or office in which confidentiality could be assured. The interviews were conducted by an ethnically diverse group of graduate students in psychology who had been trained extensively in interviewing techniques. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. A pizza party was given for all the girls to thank them for their participation.

Interview

Each student participated in a one-to-one, semistructured interview that focused on their relationships with their fathers. Questions about the adolescents' relationships with their mothers also were asked so that the adolescents' perception of their fathers could be compared with their perceptions of their mothers. If the biological father did not live with the adolescent, the adolescent was asked about a stepfather or "father figure" who lived in the home, if one did, as well as about the biological father. The purpose of asking questions about biological fathers and stepfathers or father figures in the home was to compare adolescents' perceptions of their biological fathers with their perceptions of their stepfathers or father figures. Such comparisons were made to enhance the understanding of the adolescents' perceptions of their biological fathers. The interview protocol included questions such as: "How would you describe your relationship with your father?"; "What do you like about this relationship?"; "What do you dislike about this relationship?"; and "How has this relationship changed since you were younger?" Although each interview included a standard set of questions, follow-up questions were open-ended to capture the adolescents' own ways of describing their relationships with their fathers.

Data Analysis

To analyze the interview data, two data analysts first read through the interviews with the aim of summarizing the stories being told by the adolescents. The purpose of "narrative summaries" is to condense the interview material into shorter narratives that capture the essence of the stories being told by the adolescents (see Miller, 1991 ). Following the creation of summaries, the summaries were read independently by the data analysts, who looked for themes in the summaries (e.g., sharing activities, protection) (see Miles & Huberman, 1994). Any theme that only one data analyst detected was discarded. Two of the six themes detected in the present analysis were discarded due to a lack of consensus among the data analysts. Following the detection of themes in the narrative summaries, the original interviews (not the summaries) were reread to examine where, when, and how the themes were revealed in the interviews. This process of reading and rereading interview texts to detect themes in the data is a typical qualitative data analytic approach (see Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Maxwell, 1996; Miles & Huberman, 1994).

As a result of that repeated reading process, four themes regarding girls' perceptions of their relationships with their fathers were detected in the interview data. The four themes were (a) girls had or expected to have activity-- oriented relationships with their fathers that involved conversations focused almost exclusively on school, sports, or "the world"; (b) girls wanted "more" from their fathers, yet the "more" they wanted focused on more shared activities and conversations about school or "the world"; (c) girls perceived their fathers as "overprotective"; and (d) girls appeared to protect their fathers. With the exception of the fourth theme, each theme was detected in more than three-fourths of the girls' interviews. The fourth theme was evident only among those from two-parent households who had extremely poor relationships with their mothers (n = 3) or those who lived only with their mothers (n = 4). Subthemes also were evident within each of the four themes. For example, the girls spoke not only about having or expecting to have activity-oriented relationships with their fathers (Theme 1) but also of feeling closer to their fathers as a result of such activities. For the remainder of this article, the evidence in the interviews for each of the four themes (and the subthemes within each theme) will be presented. The four themes are presented separately to reveal the nuances of each theme. Presenting the narrative evidence for each theme detected in the interviews allows for a rich and more complete understanding of each theme.

RESULTS

Shared Activities or "Doing Things" With Dad

The first theme detected in the interview data related to the ways in which adolescent girls spent time and communicated with their fathers. When describing their relationships with their fathers, the girls in the sample tended to focus on the activities they did together-playing sports, games, going to amusement parks, and hiking. They spoke about "doing things," or wanting to do things, with their fathers. In contrast, when they spoke about their mothers, they discussed "talking with;" or wanting to talk with, their mothers. When girls did talk with their fathers, their conversations focused almost exclusively on school, recreational activities, and "the world:' The girls explicitly stated that they did not share intimate concerns with their fathers. These patterns of relationships with fathers transcended the presence of the father in the home and the amount of time the girls spent with their fathers. Whether or not girls lived with their fathers and whether or not they had extensive or occasional contact (but at least some contact) with their fathers, the ways in which they spent time with their fathers and the topics they spoke about with their fathers, were the same.

Sonia, a 12-year-old Dominican girl, lives with her biological parents.' Sonia said in her interview that she believes her relationship with her father is "great" She looks like him, laughs like him, and stated "I'm more like him than my mother . . . he likes a lot of the same things that I do." Sonia is on the swim team, and her father "used to be a scuba diver and a lifeguard"; she used to take karate and her father is "really good at it" too, having learned karate in the Marines. She connects with her father around shared skills and activities, telling her interviewer "I've always been like a tomboy:' In contrast, Sonia connects with her mother through conversations "about everything": "I can talk to [my mother] about everything . . . she can handle me talking to her as a kid and then she'll give me advice."

From her interview, it is clear that Sonia's expectations for her relationship with her father differ from those for her relationship with her mother. When asked what she does not like about her relationship with her father, she responded,

Sonia: I wish [our relationship] could be more than what it is but I'm happy, and I love my father, and he loves me and we always hang out together.

Interviewer: How would you like it to be more?

Sonia: Like I wish I knew him better I know him really good but I don't know what his hobbies are and things like that.

For Sonia, knowing her father better means knowing more about what he does (his hobbies) than how he feels or what he worries about. In contrast, when asked what she does not like about her relationship with her mother, Sonia stated,

Let's say [my mother] is mad or sad and I can see it and I am like "what's the matter Mom" and she's like "nothing just forget it" . . . I'm like, "Mom, tell me, tell me, tell me" and she's like "fine" and then she tells me and I try to help her out.

Different expectations for fathers in comparison to mothers were evident throughout the sample. The girls repeatedly spoke of having and/or wanting activity-oriented relationships with their fathers and of having and/or wanting (even demanding) "talking" relationships with their mothers.

When Anna, a half Dominican/half Puerto Rican 12-year-old who lives with both parents, was asked what she likes about her relationship with her father, she referred to the limits of their communications, saying that, "I can't really speak to him about boys you know." However, she likes that he goes places with her: "He's a person that likes having fun you know, so he's like always looking out . . . for me, and he's always like `wanna go to like Yankee Stadium' or all those places and we have fun together." In contrast, when asked to describe her relationships with her mother, she said,

I don't know what I'd do without her because it's like she's like my second, well my first best friend. She-I can tell her everything everything everything and if she knows I am wrong she will tell me "you're wrong, you should do this or you should do that" but she's always like looking out for me and I like that a lot.

For Anna, her father is a pal or companion, whereas her mother is a best friend and confidant.

When Souad, a 14-year-old Bengali girl who lives with her biological parents, was asked to describe her relationship with her father, she said,

Souad: We don't talk a lot. I mean yeah we talk and stuff but not really. Interviewer: And you would like to change that?

Souad: I don't know if I could I mean I don't think I could but you know it's like . . . we're like the normal Bengali family that's like every family is . . . like the daughter and the father don't talk that much like they talk, you know, like this little connection of love is like everywhere but they don't talk about their problems and stuff. , that's how like every Bengali family is.

Souad justifies the lack of talk between her and her father on cultural grounds, protecting herself and him from the demands of openness that she believes that she should have with her mother. When asked about her relationship with her mother, Souad said, "I don't talk to her a lot about all my little problems . . . I mean she's my mother and all and I'm supposed to but I just don't. I guess I don't feel comfortable talking to her all the time:' Like Souad, the girls in the study appeared to internalize cultural expectations regarding girls' relationships with their fathers and mothers. Girls stated repeatedly that they do not speak to their fathers about personal concerns or issues, yet they do speak (or they should speak) with their mothers about such topics because that is what "girls are supposed to do."

The emphasis on shared activities with fathers and shared intimacies with mothers transcended both the residential status of the fathers and the amount of time daughters spent with their fathers. Mary, a 12-year-old Dominican girl who has lived with her mother since her parents separated 5 months ago, talks to her father every day and sees him frequently-more now than before the separation when he was "hardly home:' In describing what she likes about their relationship, she tells the interviewer that they "go to a lot of places together," visiting family or going to the movies or to amusement parks. Mary says, "I have fun with him." With her mother, however, she emphasizes the secrets they share with each other.

Eva, a 13-year-old Korean American girl who was adopted by White parents when she was 4, is home with her father quite a bit while her mother travels in her work. Eva's father tries to compensate for her mother's absences, but despite the extensive amount of time Eva spends with her father, their closeness is based exclusively on the things they "do together." If she wants an "adventure," or to play sports, he is the parent to whom she goes. Eva plays soccer and basketball and knows that the practice she gets playing with her father will help her games, especially now that she is older and needs to "be aggressive." Eva explains that her dad "knows how to play more than my mom," whom she describes as frequently sitting by her computer. Unlike most of the adolescents in the study, however, Eva expressed acute dissatisfaction with her home situation. She wanted her mother to be more available and supportive.

My father tries to like do things that are fun but it's not like as the same that it would be with my mom ... Like he would take me hiking and I like hiking and all but sometimes it gets like, annoying... I think a mother needs to be there if I don't want to talk to my father or my brothers... As a teenager growing up I think I need a mother just to be there and support me.

According to Eva, even a girl who spends extensive time with her father needs to "talk to" her mother.

When girls did talk with their fathers, their conversations typically focused on school, sports, or "the world." With her nonresidential father, Mary discusses "things I wanna know. Like mostly stuff about school or anything I wanna know. I just ask him." When asked what she likes about her father, she stated that "he's intelligent." Maya,12, whose parents are Eritrean, is accustomed to being cared for by her father at home while her mother works. Although Maya spends more time with her father than with her mother, she only confides personal information to her mother. Yet Maya likes her relationship with her father because he "knows how to explain things" to her. When Souad said "my father is really understanding," she was not referring to the way he understands her but to the fact that "he's been around a whole lot, I guess he understands the society and everything, the surroundings." When Grace, a 13-year-old Dominican girl who lives with both of her biological parents, spoke about her father, she said,

I get along with him very well. I don't speak with him about personal stuff ... We play around, we joke around, and we go to the park and play sports... And if I ask him something about the world... he knows a lot about world history and I ask him and he tells me.

Whether the girls lived with their fathers or not, whether they spent a great deal of time with their fathers or little time at all, their perceptions of their relationships with their fathers were similar. They did things with their fathers and had conversations that were focused on topics that, according to the girls, were not "personal."

The Desire for "More"

Although the girls typically spoke about having "good" relationships with their fathers, they also repeatedly indicated that they wanted "more" from their fathers than what they had. Similar to the first theme, this second theme transcended fathers' residential status. This desire for "more," however, appeared to be constrained by girls' beliefs regarding appropriate father/ daughter relationships.

In the early years of her parents' marriage, when Nicole was a baby, her father "wasn't a picture-perfect father." Nicole, a Puerto Rican 13-year-old who lives with both biological parents, said in her interview that her father used to spend a lot of time at his job or with his friends. Since he has been on workers' compensation with an injured back, he has been home on a regular basis. Their relationship is "not that close but it's pretty close . . . he spoils me a lot," giving her money when she needs it. When Nicole is asked what she likes about her father, she responded that "he's funny," that they share a love of animals, and he "sometimes takes [me] to pet stores:' Like other girls in the sample, shared interests and activities are an important part of what brings Nicole and her father together. Nicole, however, is clear that she wants "more" in her relationship with her father. She is frustrated, for example, that when she and her older sister fight, her father leaves the house and "doesn't bother to argue:' Nicole believes that "instead of walking away from the problem . . . he should help us solve it." In her interview, she admitted that the amount of time they spend together "depends on if he is in a good mood." Nicole stated emphatically, "I want a really close father . . . When I come home, I would like him to take me somewhere, hang out with me more." Nicole's desire falls along familiar lines. However, she does not desire intimate communication with her father and, in fact, said to her interviewer that she does not trust her father to keep her secrets. Although Nicole desires "more" in her relationship with her father, the "more" Nicole desires does not differ from what most of her female peers experienced or wanted to experience in their relationships with their own fathers.

Tanya, a 13-year-old African American girl, lives with her mother, stepfather, male cousins, and her grandmother. Until she was 7, Tanya spent Saturdays with her biological father, and then he "stopped coming" to see her. In a letter to her father, she let him know he had let her down, but he never responded. She remains acutely aware of the absence of her biological father in her life. When she hears her friends describe the places that their fathers have taken them to, "[it] makes me think what it would be like if my real father took me somewhere like that . . . Because I think everybody should know their father, biological father. If he was there to make me, he should be there to take care of me." Although Tanya was the only girl in the sample to have an entirely absent biological father, Tanya's desire to share activities with her father was familiar. Having her father take her places, or do things with her, appears to be, in fact, a part of her definition of a caring father.

However, Tanya has had a "fun," "caring," and "reliable" stepfather in her life since she was 2 years old. She considers their relationship close but is frustrated that her stepfather seems to have a greater rapport with her male cousins:

I have my little cousins in the house and they're boys, so it like makes me feel left out even though I have my mother. Like when he's always chatting about basketball games ... he just chats with them all the time and like when we in the house together he never talks to me, well he'll talk, but not a whole lot. But I notice like when it's me, my cousins and him in the house there's a whole conversation going on. But if I go down and sit in there with them they just stop talking all of the sudden. And I don't like that.

Tanya feels left out of those stereotypically male conversations and wants her stepfather to "talk" with her more. Yet, like Nicole, she does not want to discuss intimate topics with him. When asked if and why she trusts her stepfather, she responded by saying that she trusts him, for example, "to be on time" but then adds, "I can't talk to him a lot because, like, I just can't, it's like, 'cause he's a man and, you know, I'm a girl and all that stuff so I can't talk to him a lot." The conversations that bring mothers and daughters together are the ones that daughters appear to resist with their fathers. Indeed, the girls in the study consistently questioned whether intimate conversations with fathers were even possible.

In interviews with girls who did not live with their fathers, a different type of desire for "more" was occasionally heard. Michele, a 12-year-old African American girl, lives with her mother. Her parents have been separated for 1 year, but Michele feels that her situation is the lucky exception to the rule of fathers who move out: "I have a good relationship with my father, even though he doesn't live with me . . . He calls me every day . . . Like most parents like if they move they don't, you know, like call you or whatever." Even though they live apart, Michele and her father speak about various aspects of her life, "like school or nothing really." She values the simple fact of their contact and their phone conversations but still believes it is not enough. Through tears, she told her interviewer, "He's there for me, but he's not in my house . . . Like I can call him any time but he's not in my house." Unlike the girls who lived with their biological fathers, Michele wants more of her father's presence in her home. Similar to her peers in the study, however, Michele's conversations with her father, which she values greatly, typically are about school and other topics that she perceives as "nothing really."

Girls who had at least some contact with their fathers-regardless of their fathers' residential status-typically expressed satisfaction with their fathers. Nevertheless, couched in their descriptions of "good," "great," or "normal" father/daughter relationships were hints of discontent and the desire for "more" with their fathers. The "more" that was desired, however, was focused almost exclusively on "more" activities and more conversations about school, sports, and "the world."

Fathers Protecting Daughters

The third theme detected in the interviews of the adolescent girls focused on fathers trying to protect their daughters from the dangers of the world. For most of these low-income families living in urban areas, this often meant that girls were kept at home, prohibited from playing in the streets or prohibited from spending the night at friends' houses or having friends come to visit. This fear of the outside world led to conversations between daughters and fathers about rape and other types of assaults that were possible if the daughters did not follow the rules fathers set for them. Arguments often erupted between daughters and fathers regarding the daughters' desire for more freedom, and girls spoke about their fathers becoming increasingly more protective as the girls grew older.

Protection by fathers not only focused on the dangers of the "outside" world but also on the risks of relationships with male and female peers. Kimberly, a 12-year-old White girl, whose divorced parents live a few blocks apart and have a joint custody arrangement, lives with her father for one half of each week. While discussing her father, Kimberly described an incident when her father became aware that a friend of hers, who was visiting her at her father's home, was treating Kimberly badly. Her father's response, which Kimberly said she appreciated, was to advise her about confronting her friend. Her father's protection of her comes in the form of advice-giving and problem-solving. Anna's father protects his daughter in similar ways; however, Anna seems less appreciative of his protective techniques. If Anna's father learns that she has a problem with a classmate, her father "comes right that day or the next day and he starts talking to that kid hard." Anna thinks "he should like calm down a little bit you know what I'm saying?" Her father's style of protection appears to embarrass her. She and her father have a "nice relationship . . . [however] I can't really speak to him about boys you know 'cause he's really jealous, he's a jealous father." If she expresses interest in a boy, "he can get really mad and say `what are you talking about, you are too young.' " Although Anna was the only girl in the study who perceived her father's actions in seemingly romantic terms ("he's really jealous"), her perception of her father as protecting her from boys was common among the girls in the study.

Grace and her friends are very much aware of the ways in which their lives and bodies are changing as they become young women. Instead of helping her to feel secure about her emerging sexuality, Grace's father's protectiveness seems to feed her anxiety about sex. She and her father

talk about important issues, like rape and all that stuff, but not about sex ... If there's something on TV he turns it off because he thinks that I'm too young to know about that. But I guess he's trying to protect me ... but I don't think that's protection, because he knows I'm 13 and when I'm 14 and I'm gonna be in high school and he knows I'm gonna have to learn it one way or the other.

Grace believes that adolescent girls will "learn about sex one way or another" so parents should discuss those topics with their daughters. Although, at times, the girls appeared to appreciate their fathers' protection, the girls also believed their fathers' "overprotection" prevented them from learning about important aspects of their lives.

The protectiveness of fathers was evident in different kinds of daughter/father bonds. Whereas Anna and Grace claimed to have positive relationships with their fathers, Chantal, a 12-year-old Dominican girl who lives with both biological parents, described her relationship with her father as a "Hi/bye" and "hello/goodnight" kind of relationship. She said, "I don't like anything about our relationship . . . I can't tell him anything." When asked how her relationship with her father has changed since she was younger, she responded, "he's more overprotective now." Her father's "overprotective" stance might be at the root of why she perceives their relationship to be poor. Chantal's mother, in comparison, is described as "fantastic." She understands Chantal and respects her choices:

Make believe I tell my father that I have a boyfriend, he'll probably stop speaking to me. He'll probably say I am too young for this and that and that. And my mom would probably say. . . "be careful," you know, that I could have one but that don't I think that I should give it more time? If I say no, she's gonna say, "all right, then just be careful and watch out what you do" . . . And my father will make a big fuss about it.

For Chantal, her father's protectiveness exists in the absence of understanding, whereas her mother is perceived as more understanding but also less protective. These protective efforts by fathers, in fact, might be acts or declarations of love, but their daughters do not interpret their efforts that way.

In addition to the quality of the daughter/father bond, girls' own senses of their emerging sexuality also seemed to influence the way fathers' protective overtures were perceived. Sarah, a Jamaican 12-year-old who lives with both of her parents, spends many afternoons and evenings alone with her father-doing her homework, reading, eating dinner-while her mother works at night. Sarah's relationship with her father is characterized by a great deal of closeness, but she reported that one of the few sources of disagreement between them revolves around the length of her skirts. Her father does not want her to wear "short stuff" and, inclined to agree with him, she claimed that she "doesn't like wearing short stuff either." However, she likes some skirts that he does not permit her to wear. Sarah's negotiations with her father regarding what is and is not acceptable behavior are much less explicit than Grace's father's discussions of rape or Anna's father's "jealous" outbursts. Sarah's father tells her "about boys, and what they're like":

Sarah: ... boys looking at me and all that stuff, and be don't really like that, until I'm like older.

Interviewer: Why do you think that is?

Sarah: I don't know be said I'm too young.

Interviewer: Too young for what though?

Sarah: I don't know, I don't know his opinion 'cause be doesn't tell me.

Sarah understands that her father wants to protect her, but the details of why, or from what, are unclear. However, Sarah sees herself as needing her father's protection from boys and seems to appreciate the protection provided by him.

Daughters Protecting Fathers

There was evidence in the interviews not only of fathers protecting daughters but also of daughters protecting fathers. Unlike the previous three themes that were evident across the entire sample of girls, this fourth and final theme was evident only among the girls from two-parent households who reported having poor relationships with their mothers or among girls living only with their mothers. Those girls spoke about taking their fathers' sides in family arguments or wanting to live with their father even when their fathers had a history of neglectful or abusive behavior. Juliet, a 13-year-old Dominican girl who lives with both of her parents, said in her interview, "I trust my father more [than my mother] . . . It's like he cares more about me than my mother does. 'Cause any time I need to talk to him he's open . . . He doesn't have to like put a stop to it or ignore me or anything." If she could, Juliet would leave home because there's "too much conflict [with my mother]." She might get her chance. Her father might take a job out of state, and if he does, she intends to go with him.

When asked about the ways in which her relationship with her father has changed since childhood, Juliet reveals that her father was unfaithful to her mother and that "now he's trying to make up for it." Her father left home for a year and a half after that event occurred. Her initial description of this incident, which took place when she was 9 or 10, was vague. When pressed to recall that time, she said, "I felt like, I was like damn, he left? How could he do that? I thought he loved us." When her father returned,

Juliet: He expected everything to be all nice but it wasn't ... It was so hard for him to come back and to expect us to love him ... I was happy that he came back but then again a part of me said "Why am I hugging him?"

Interviewer: And bow has your relationship changed since he's come back?

Juliet: We try to ignore it like it didn't happen, but like you can forgive but not forget things.

Juliet's father is the preferred parent, but Juliet perceives him as imperfect as well. With some reservations, Juliet has accepted her father, hugging him even as she feels that he has breached her trust in him.

Grace, who was described previously, said that in contrast to her relationship with her mother, with whom she argues regularly, she is "really close" with her father. "Well, he's afraid to talk to me about sex, too, but I understand that, you know, because it's hard for fathers to speak to his daughter about sex." Although her mother, she said, fails to meet her responsibility as a mother by refusing to talk with Grace about sex, her father is shielded from blame because "he is a man." Grace's father gets angry at her, "but not that much" and they have "a lot in common," whereas she and her mother "have nothing in common." Yet when asked about what she likes about him, she was hard pressed to give a response. After a long pause, she said, "Like what do you mean?" When the interviewer restated the question, Grace explained how when she was younger her father used to hit her when he got angry, "but now he doesn't."

Her relationship with her father has the aura of "no conflict." In truth, however, the content of her engagement with her father appears limited, and she seems afraid of him. As with Juliet, Grace's father is held up as the parent who is "closer" and more trustworthy. In homes in which girls felt alienated from their mothers or felt that their mothers "didn't even care" about them, fathers consistently were granted preferred status, despite their flaws.

There were examples, however, of girls who protected their fathers even when their relationships with their mothers were close. Those girls lived only with their mothers and had biological fathers who had been, or were, neglectful or abusive. Tina, a 14-year-old half Latino and half White girl who lives with, and is very close to, her mother, recently met her biological father for the first time 2 weeks before the interview. Although her father had been absent from her life for 14 years, she described the relationship in positive terms: "we get along really good." She was surprised to find that "I could talk about anything, not anything but we have a lot in common." Her idealized representation of her relationship with her father stands out among the other girls' narratives and suggests that Tina was protecting her father, and perhaps herself, by not elaborating on her feelings regarding his long absence. Tina also might fear that if she were to express negative feelings toward him, he would leave once again. Aria, a 14-year-old African-American girl who lives with her mother and stepfather, says "I love my (biological] father, but it's not good." Her mother "kicked him out of the house" when Aria was younger because he was not treating Aria or her mother or sister properly (he was "mentally abusing us"). Her "love" for her father seems to stem more from a desire for his love than from her own experience of love for him. Unlike Tina, however, Aria did not idealize her relationship with her father. She openly discussed all the harm he has done in the family. Yet, she appears to protect her father by professing her love for him instead of rejecting him.

DISCUSSION

Listening to girls from low-income, ethnically diverse families speak about their fathers, old and new patterns regarding father/daughter relationships were heard. The first theme that was detected (i.e., doing things with dad) has been repeatedly noted in studies of fathers and adolescents (Apter, 1990; Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Steinberg, 1990; Youniss & Ketterlinus, 1987; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). In a qualitative study of White, working-class and middle-class adolescent girls' relationships with parents, Apter (1993) found that relationships with fathers tended to focus on shared activities, whereas relationships with mothers tended to involve shared intimacies. The girls in the present study similarly indicated that their fathers were their sports or hiking partners, as well as their "teachers." Girls did not turn to their fathers to discuss intimate topics and suggested that, in fact, it would be inappropriate to do so with "a man." Their mothers were the ones with whom they spoke about such topics.

In contrast to previous research, however, the first theme also indicated that girls were not less engaged with their fathers than with their mothers, they were simply engaged in different ways. The time spent with fathers doing things, or involved in shared activities, were the ways in which girls engaged with, and felt close to, their fathers. In contrast, talking with their mothers was the way in which the girls connected with their mothers. Their standards, in fact, for "close" relationships with fathers (e.g., doing things together) appeared to be what enabled the girls to feel close to their fathers in the first place. The girls wanted activity-oriented relationships with their fathers, and those are the types of relationships they typically had and genuinely seemed to enjoy. That pattern of relationship was evident whether fathers lived outside the home (e.g., Mary) or were at home caring for their daughters while the mothers were at work (e.g., Eva). Neither household composition nor the shifting of caretaking responsibilities from mothers to fathers appeared to change the nature of those deeply ingrained patterns of relationships. As long as fathers had contact with their daughters, their daughters described the content of their contact similarly.

The second theme detected in the interviews was that the girls spoke about wanting more from their fathers. They typically wanted their fathers to spend more time with them or to communicate more than they did with them. Yet, dissatisfaction with fathers did not lead the girls to want more from them than what they perceived as typical of father/daughter relationships in general. The girls had relationships with their fathers that were defined by shared activities and interests and nonintimate conversations. Girls, in fact, often indicated that they prevented the relationship from treading new ground by avoiding intimate topics. Sarah stated that she does not talk to her father about "girl stuff" because "he mostly don't know about that kind of thing." Similarly, Tanya perceived a limit to how much she can trust her stepfather because of his gender: "I can't talk to him a lot, because, like, I just can't, ' cause he's a man." Souad had difficulty imagining that she and her father might be able to talk more than they do (which is only minimally): "I don't know if I could, I mean I don't think I could." Girls seemed to prevent themselves and their fathers from having relationships in which intimate concerns could be shared.

The first and second themes detected in the interviews raise questions about the individual and contextual factors that lead girls to restrict the possibilities in their relationships with their fathers. Especially when girls spend extensive time with their fathers, what leads them to restrict their conversations to a particular set of seemingly nonintimate topics? What leads girls not to trust their fathers with their personal stories? If girls trusted their fathers more, would girls even want to share their intimate stories with their fathers? What are the implications of these relational patterns for girls and for their fathers? Finally, in which ways do fathers' own expectations and desires limit or expand the possibilities for their relationships with their daughters? Qualitative and quantitative research with larger groups of adolescent girls and fathers is needed to address such questions.

The third and fourth themes detected in the interviews were that fathers were perceived as overprotecting their daughters from a dangerous and hurtful world, and daughters appeared to protect their fathers from criticism and from their own negative feelings. Much of the research literature on Latino families has focused on the protection by fathers of their daughters (Shorris, 1992; Valdes, 1996). The present study also found that fathers appeared to grow increasingly more anxious and concerned about their daughters' safety as their daughters grew older. In the absence of intimate conversations, setting limits on their daughters' behavior might feel like a way for fathers to engage with daughters around meaningful issues. In addition, as girls grow older, fathers might become less inclined to demonstrate physical affection toward them. Consequently, protecting their daughters might become the fathers' way of expressing love for their daughters. The fathers' protective, or, as the girls stated, overprotective stance, was a central source of conflict and, perhaps, connection for these girls and their fathers.

The girls from two-parent families who had poor relationships with their mothers, and the girls who were from mother-only households also appeared to protect their fathers. They were reluctant to criticize their fathers even when their fathers clearly had engaged in problematic behavior. For Grace and Juliet, the regular involvement of their fathers in their lives might be related closely to why they feel protective of them. When many of their peers do not have relationships with their own fathers, Grace and Juliet simply might feel appreciative that their fathers are involved in their upbringing. Consequently, they protect their fathers, especially when their relationships with their mothers are so troubled. Tina's and Aria's protection of their fathers, in contrast, seems to stem from the wish that they had their biological fathers in their lives, rather than from their personal experiences with their fathers. Having lived without fathers for a large part of their young lives, Tina and Aria were less protective and more willing to discuss openly their fathers' problematic behaviors than were Grace and Juliet.

Yet, all the girls' protective stances were tinged with ambivalence: Juliet admits to feeling discomfort when hugging her father, aware of his infidelities; Grace struggles to describe what she likes about her formerly abusive father after she has just stated that they are "very close"; and although Aria claims to love her father, her love is set against her description of the ways in which he "mentally abused" her family. Girls seemed to be protecting their fathers from their own negative feelings and protecting themselves from wanting, but not getting, more from their fathers. Expecting more from their fathers might mean risking disappointment or, as Tina and Juliet have experienced, abandonment altogether.

This exploratory study of a small group of early adolescent girls is a necessary first step in understanding the nuances and complexities of girls' relationships with their fathers. The study raises numerous questions about daughter/father relationships that should be investigated further. However, there are numerous limitations to the present study, including the small sample size, the exclusive focus on girls from low-income families, the concurrent nature of the study, and the use of only one type of research method to investigate a complex research question. Further study should examine larger samples of girls and of boys who are more diverse ethnically and socioeconomically than the sample in the present study. From such research, the replicability and generalizability of the patterns detected in the present study could be assessed. Longitudinal studies also are needed to examine which patterns of relationships between adolescents and their fathers emerge over time. The themes detected in the present study might be unique to the early adolescent developmental period. Studies that focus on fathers' perspectives of their relationships with their adolescent children also are needed to examine if and how their perceptions correspond to their children's perceptions. Finally, studies should integrate questionnaire, observational, and interview methods. Important information is acquired with each of those methods, and methodological integration would enhance greatly the understanding of adolescent/father relationships.

With the rapid growth of mother-only households, there is a temptation to continue to focus almost exclusively on relationships between mothers and their children. Yet, the girls in the present study clearly indicated that their fathers-irrespective of their residential status-played critical roles in their lives. Fathers who lived with their children, as well as those who did not, were shaping the ways in which their children thought about themselves, their relarelationships, and the world at large. The values in society were evident in, and transmitted through, the relationships adolescents had with their mothers and fathers. Researchers should continue to explore the relationships between adolescents and fathers so that a greater understanding of adolescents, fathers, and the values and norms of the society in which these relationships take place is possible.