How important is someone's father to their emotional development?

I am the first to admit to having problems with my father. Not everyone's got a perfect relationship with their father. In fact, my best friend's father is mostly MIA, and my closest friends have either weak father figures or none whatsoever. Whether or not this is a running trend in modern day society, the fact remains that surrogate father figures keep showing up. Our generation is actively looking for alternate sources of fatherly parenting. Quite frankly, I'm disturbed.

Recently, I had a chat with someone. I was in a state, really upset about some things my father had done in the past and refused to own up to, and she told me...she told me to turn to the Bible. Here's the thing. I'm not religious. People who talk to me know that. I'm one of those former Roman Catholics who woke up in the middle of mass one day, heard the misogyny and split. And yet, that's the response I got. Something along the lines of how God is a Father and He can be a better one than the one I've got now...because God can totally help me pay for college. (No offense, but I don't see Him depositing any money in my account.) Sorry, it's a no on Sky Daddy. I once invited God to coffee during a prayer and He didn't show up, so his track record's not any better than my father. Who's now religious. Which makes it worse.

Then there's the daddy kink. (Shivers. Crosses myself. Takes out hand sanitizer and drinks it like vodka.) I have never understood this one. Honestly, if I had a shitty father the first time around, why would I want another one? No less, one with whom I'm sleeping with? Give the father figure more power? Why is everyone into incest nowadays? It's bad enough that everyone's sleeping together, it doesn't have to be everyone and their dad.

Lastly, we have this fun trend of calling older men daddy. Whether it's the sexual connotation or because people genuinely want Joe Biden to be their father, it's freaking weird, okay? I know it's the internet, but it's my friends too. And I find myself thinking too, would Biden be a better father? Even now that my father's changed, and is making more of an effort.

Why are we like this?

Perhaps it's the advent of the internet that has made people so much more open to emotional sharing (read my article on that next week), but I refuse to believe this is a universal constant, that we humans are just always looking for a better dad. What happened? I'm either praying for attention, sleeping with a fake dad, or trying to DM Obama on Twitter asking him to come to my graduation.

Honestly, I don't think we need fathers. I've been doing just fine with one parent. As long as there's some male figure in your life who cares (I really don't mean your boyfriend), I think you're fine. But there is clearly some sort of primal urge to fill that vacancy. So I'm sorry to all of you guys, I'm sorry for myself too, that fathers aren't living up to what we thought they would. It's sad, and it's scary to read what people come up with.

But by all means, don't let me kink-shame.