Caring dads play an influential role in their daughters’ lives. Sociologists call it the ‘father effect,’ a strong connection between nurturing fathers and mentally healthy kids.

Girls’ confidence levels drop a staggering 30% between ages 8 and 14. Sometimes dads are better at noticing this than moms, especially when moms struggle with confidence themselves. Also, changes in the perceived quality of the relationship between dads and daughters can have a very positive impact on girls’ self-esteem.

A strong father-daughter relationship has many benefits; young women with emotionally invested dads get higher grades and salaries and are more resilient.

Taking risks in a safe environment can build your daughter’s self-confidence by teaching her how to behave in challenging situations. Healthy risk-taking behavior will also give her valuable life skills and teach her resilience.

Research tells us women tend to be more risk-averse than men. And men dominate the most dangerous jobs. So why the variation in risk aversion? Evolutionary reasons could be at play: society needs to keep girls and women safe, and parents socialize kids accordingly by telling boys to face fear and girls to be careful.

However, all children need to take risks for their development, and risky outdoor play (like climbing trees) will boost social, emotional, and physical growth. 

In other words, you will boost your daughter’s self-confidence tremendously by not treating her like a delicate flower but rather like a warrior in training.

Encourage her to take risks. Here’s how:

Showing your daughter how to deal with failure will positively affect her self-esteem. Messing up and working out how to recover will make her more resilient and help develop grit and perseverance.

Girls get an influx of estrogen between the age of 8 and 14, contributing to a confidence drop of 30% and a fear of failure. Further, 15-year-old girls experience higher fear of failure than boys and a correspondingly lower level of life satisfaction. So how can we combat this?

Let’s see what science says. An insightful paper analyzed grant applications, capital start-up investments, and, indeed, terrorist attacks to predict the failure or success of an undertaking and found only the winners learned from their mistakes. People who worked smarter rather than harder succeeded eventually.

Here’s how to help her be smart about failure:

Encourage your daughter to widen her prospects by exposing her to typically male-dominated activities and jobs. Help her gain confidence in aiming for a career she may not have considered otherwise because of her gender.
Again, here’s when the solid father-daughter relationship comes into play. Daughters who enjoy unwavering fatherly support do better academically and are more likely to graduate and enter into STEM positions.

Caring dads don’t just influence daughters; they make the world better too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, actively wanting to break down gender barriers tends to be higher on the agenda of fathers of girls rather than boys.

Research shows girl dads increasingly support equal-pay policies and anti-discrimination laws and are less likely to reinforce traditional gender roles. Also, CEOs with daughters tend to run companies with smaller pay gaps than other CEOs.

Societal change, however, starts at home, and if you want your daughter to achieve her dreams, follow these steps.

When you listen to your daughter, she will feel heard, respected, and valued. Knowing you’re interested in her opinions, thoughts, and dreams will help her build a positive picture of herself, giving her the self-confidence that what she thinks and says matters.

Growing her confidence is not the only benefit of listening to your daughter; there are many others:

Active listening is easier than you think. The main thing is to stop doing what you’re doing and devote your full attention to your daughter. Then:

Caring dads enrich daughters’ lives, but we don’t always consider how. Focus on how you can help her build her self-confidence and self-esteem by encouraging risky play, curbing her quest for perfection, listening to her, and igniting a STEM spark.