Animation project organizers cover fathers-daughters relations in Caucasus

On March 9, at a presentation in Makhachkala, organizers of the project "Fathers and Daughters", designed to break a stereotype about an authoritarian power of a head of a Caucasian family, admitted that the project had also revealed problems in family relations. The distance between fathers and daughters traditional for the Caucasus does not exclude warm feelings between them, believe residents of the region and scientists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

"We hear only negative things about fathers in the media which report that a father kicked out his daughter or suppressed her ... But this is unfair," said Svetlana Anokhina, a journalist and a rights defender, an author of the project.

The activist has noted that in the republic, conversations between daughters and fathers occur extremely rare.

Organizers asked women to write anonymous letters to their fathers. Nine videos recorded after the letters of the project participants were posted on the Internet.

Zamira, who grew up in a traditional Caucasian family, said she had never felt a lack of love from her father. A girl in a Caucasian family feels being absolutely protected, Zamira noted.

In the Caucasus, the younger generation has been brought up by the family model, where everything was divided into male and female spheres, noted Fatima Ozova, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Karachay-Cherkessia Institute of Humanitarian Studies.

"Girls rarely addressed their fathers directly for advice or permission, and they did that through their mothers or grandmothers. There was a distance between daughters and their father, but they always felt his concern. The distance exalted their relationship," Fatima Ozova notes. The scientist believes those traditions are generally preserved, despite the traditional values fade away.

Caucasian fathers always treated their daughters with awe, although they could not publicly express their feelings, stated ethnographer Makka Albogachieva, Candidate of Historical Sciences.