Fathers are disappointed in the birth of a daughter. A man, asked how many children he has, will normally omit his daughters altogether from the count. People often bemoan the trouble of bringing up daughters only to see them pass to someone else just as soon as they become useful, at the point at which a son not only remains to help his household himself but provides the occasion for recruiting a further worker. Moreover, daughters are not a man's business. All small children belong to the province of women, and growing girls remain so.
Nevertheless, most fathers are affectionate towards their daughters. Little girls sometimes come into the men's sitting rooms with their brothers. I have seen men cuddle and kiss their little daughters in public, and I have also seen them taking very firm action against disobedience. Later, a father watches over the propriety of his daughter's behaviour, and is the main party, through intermediaries, to the negotiations for her marriage. He should spend at least the equivalent of the marriage payment on her trousseau, and people almost invariably insisted that they were out of pocket after the marriage of their daughters (p. 186).
After marriage, a girl returns home at intervals, and a good and comfortably placed father will make her annually a gift of clothes. I was told that a husband may leave the entire provision of his wife's clothes to her family, though clearly this is not invariably the case. If she is wronged by her husband's household her father will receive her. If she is ill, she returns to his house for care. A stern father may refuse to let his daughter use his house as a refuge from her husband. Two cases of this kind in Elbashï were said in the recent past to have led to suicides, though in both the history was a complicated one. But whether affectionate or not, a father and daughter are not intimate in the way a father and son can be intimate, because their socially prescribed fields of interest and activity are wide apart.