About Us

The Daddy Daugh­ter Dance in Philadel­phia was re-invented by Joel Austin, President/CEO of Daddy Uni­ver­sity Inc. www.daddyuniv.com . Daddy Uni­ver­sity is a male par­ent­ing edu­ca­tion com­pany that uses infor­ma­tion, ser­vices and prod­ucts to empower fathers through the bar­ri­ers of parenting.

The Daddy Daugh­ter Dance is the Annual fundraiser event for the National Father­hood Fes­ti­val a 501c (3) (pend­ing) orga­ni­za­tion. The Fes­ti­val is a free con­fer­ence for all fathers, all ages, all sects, all reli­gions and back­grounds. www.fatherfest.com

The Annual Daddy Daugh­ter Dance, estab­lished in 2008, is a mean­ing­ful way for fathers and daugh­ters to spend qual­ity time together. Often we, as par­ents, get so caught up in the day to day of pro­vid­ing for our fam­i­lies we miss the spe­cial moments.  The DDD helps recap­ture the unique­ness of the bond between a Daddy and his lit­tle girl(s). This is a mag­i­cal night when a father is a fairy tale king and his daugh­ter is the princess of leg­end.

We strongly believe that this bond has a life chang­ing effect on both the dad and his daugh­ter, regard­less of their age.  Over the years, we have had fathers bring their daugh­ters of only a few months to well into their 40’s. The bond between a father and daugh­ter is like no other and when this bond is fed with pos­i­tiv­ity it has a life­long effect on the daughter’s future rela­tion­ships.

The orga­niz­ers and sup­port­ers of the DDD use this bian­nual event as a cat­a­lyst to reduce instances of vio­lence among teenage girls, decrease teen preg­nancy, decrease domes­tic vio­lence, decrease domes­tic abuse, and give women, young and old, the abil­ity to iden­tify and avoid poor rela­tion­ships in their per­sonal and pro­fes­sional lives.

The event also con­nects Fathers/ Father-figures to the pow­er­ful role they play in the lives of their daugh­ters as well as their sons. This event with your sup­port, the Daddy Daugh­ter Dance will con­tinue to be a unique oppor­tu­nity to shed a bright light on a rela­tion­ship that is crit­i­cal to our community.

RESEARCH

Many are con­vinced that the rela­tion­ship between moth­ers and daugh­ters is the most impor­tant parental rela­tion­ship. While the rela­tion­ship is cer­tainly valu­able, the con­nec­tion that a female has with her father in many ways mat­ters more than the one with her mother (Nielsen, 2001). Due to this, research on the affects of a young-adult daughter’s rela­tion­ship with her father is of value. There­fore, research was con­ducted on young adult women deter­min­ing if or what was the rela­tion­ship between father/daughter rela­tion­ships and the daughter’s roman­tic rela­tion­ships. Each young woman com­pleted sur­veys regard­ing attach­ment style in the rela­tion­ship with her father, her sat­is­fac­tion level regard­ing the rela­tion­ship with her father, and her com­mu­nica­tive adaptability.

UW-L Jour­nal of Under­grad­u­ate Research VI (2003)

Father/Daughter Rela­tion­ships: Effects of Com­mu­nica­tive Adapt­abil­ity and Sat­is­fac­tion on Daughter’s Roman­tic Rela­tion­ships. Jes­sica Katorski