What are father dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience fathers in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about fathers in dreams. See how you feel about fathers now, in your waking life.

When your father is used as a character in a dream and the two of you have recently interacted, it’s likely connected in some way with that interaction. If you haven’t had any interaction in the past week or two, has he been on your mind? Is he affecting your life and decisions? Do you miss him?

Any and every aspect of your relationship with your father can be the subject of dreams. Parental relationships can be the closest and most challenging, and the source of the most dramatic dreams, that can play out like a Shakespearean tragedy.

For example, a young woman has a recurring dream about being forced to have sex with her father. Her mom tells her he is waiting in the bedroom and she has to let him take her virginity. She thinks it’s weird, but everyone in the dream thinks it’s totally normal and no big deal and expects her to hurry up. She feels that it’s her duty, what a good daughter should do, but it makes her so uncomfortable. She goes into the bedroom and they start to undress, and he doesn’t understand why she is so slow, because to him it’s as if he’s brushing his teeth or something. She wakes up in a panic right before getting into bed.

This young woman feels forced into a relationship with her father. It’s how she feels about being pushed into his metaphorical arms. Her parents are divorced and her dad is distant, and her mom makes her spend time with him. The dreamer is being a “good daughter” but doesn’t really like her father and resents being forced to do something she doesn’t want to do. The dream memorably dramatizes the situation as being forced into bed with him. It’s a poignant metaphor.

Or take the example of a young woman who dreams that her father is her kidnapper, and he admits that he’s madly in love with her. The dream flashes back to a scene where her father doesn’t let her date a certain boy, and suddenly she understands his behavior. It’s a way of saying, “overprotective father!” But it’s also a dramatic illustration of her feelings. To her, his decisions sometimes seem like madness and his restrictions feel like being kidnapped. The dream exaggerates, showing it as her father being madly in love with her.

Your father in a dream can symbolize similarity in your personality, character, and life, such as having the same knack for fixing things, the same laugh, or the same tendency to sacrifice yourself or downplay problems. This use of the dream symbolism is especially likely after you or someone else notices the similarities between you and your father.

Perceptions of your father can be the basis of a dream. For example, a young man dreams about being with his father next to a lake, and they see a snake. It’s not threatening or dangerous, but dad grabs a stick anyway and beats it. The snake transforms, with the body of a snake and the head of a dog. The son wants his father to stop hitting the poor creature, but he just whacks away till it splits open.

This dream tells a story about the dreamer’s frustration with his father’s attempts to be helpful. Dad sticks his nose where he isn’t wanted and messes things up. The dreamer wants him to stop trying to be helpful, as pictured in the dream when he wants him to stop beating the harmless creature. It morphs into a dog as a way of saying he’s trying too hard to be friendly, acting dog-like, and overreacting.

Dreaming about your father can relate to what he taught you. Much of adult life can be spent trying to assimilate and reconcile with the patterns programmed into you. Living up to parents’ expectations and example can be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, if your father set a good example, modeling your adult personality on his is good as long as you draw a line between where his life ends and yours begins. On the other hand, the root of personal issues can begin with your relationship—or lack of a relationship—with your father.

Rebellion, addiction, and passivity are a few of many issues that can have roots in your relationship with your father. Dreams shine a light into our personal blind spots, so if something about your relationship with your father is unresolved or causing problems, odds are you will dream about it.

Your dreams can use surrogate characters for your father, such as other males in the family or circle of friends you associate with him, and for the ways you perceive him: coach, police officer, principal, prisoner, and so on.

When the father in the dream does not look like your actual father, you might be dreaming in general about “fathering,” meaning paternal guidance and care. Perhaps you need to be your own father in the sense of providing direction and vision for your life, or by tempering childish behavior and impulses. The conventional image of a father is of someone who provides for the needs of his family, who protects them, who is an authority.

Father is synonymous with masculinity, and your interaction with a father dream character can symbolize your relationship with masculinity in general. People who feel subjugated or abused by masculinity can dream about fighting with fathers or father figures. They aren’t fighting with the person depicted but with what the person represents.

The same idea applies in cases where a male struggles to live up to masculine ideals. Not all males are rough, tough, and burly. Some are sensitive and physically small—and pay a helluva price for it when bullied and discriminated against. Related dreams often involve scenes of violence and gore at the hands of a group of men, which are exaggerations of the feelings and inner struggle of people who can’t live up to an image or ideal.

Father is synonymous in some people’s minds with patriarchy, and struggle with it plays out in dreams filled with struggle and violence involving patriarchal men. Patriarchy expects women to “know their place” and live up to ideals, sparking all sorts of inner conflict in women who try to live up to them, as well as those who don’t or can’t. Patriarchal father figures abuse them in their dreams, sometimes night after night, showing their conflict and feelings. For men, patriarchy expects them to be self-sacrificing and tough, and can be especially hard on men who don’t live up to those ideals.

This pattern of dreaming is especially strong in females who have been abused by a man, especially by a father or someone with that sort of status. They tend to dream recurrently of being dramatically assaulted and abused by men.

Father is associated with childhood. In the image of your father you see your childhood. He’s there from the beginning—assuming that the case with your father. For example, a woman dreams that her deceased father is alive and acts as if everything is all right. But over time she senses that something isn’t right. He looks thinner and weaker. She asks him about it, and he gives the typical dad answer, “I’m fine.” She corners him and asks again, and he says, “I have cancer. There is nothing that can be done.” She begs him to go to see a doctor, but he replies that the damage has been done and there is no point.

This dream is about the dreamer realizing that the memory of her father is slowly fading, and also that her childhood is becoming more distant. Seven years ago he passed away—she was sixteen at the time—and since then she has become an adult. She isn’t his little girl anymore, and has to handle the responsibilities of life without him. The cancer represents time, which is slowly eating away at his memory and her childhood. It’s like she is losing him again—and losing part of herself. She has dealt with the grief and accepts that he isn’t around, but it makes her sad. As she said in her own words, “My dream is about my being terrified of not being a child anymore. My dad is the symbol of my childhood. The older I get, the more it feels like my childhood is dying.”

When interpreting dreams featuring father characters and father figures, also consider traits commonly associated with fathers in general, such as practicality, rationality, sensibility, and respect. You could dream about a fatherly figure when trying to figure out how to get ahead at work, or dealing with a dispute. Oftentimes, the character is presented in the dream as your father but doesn’t look like him, and it doesn’t matter because you accept that character as your father. It’s the archetypal father programmed into you, the father within you.

Your inner father can appear in a dream as your father. But if you don’t respect him, then you are unlikely to dream about him in the role of positive father figure, unless it’s a wish or recognition of his potential. See: Kings

Dreaming about avoiding your father can symbolize avoiding responsibility, sensibility, or practicality—or anything symbolized by a father. Avoiding your father can connect with actually avoiding or doing something against his wishes, rules, or teachings. See: Hiding

For example, a college student about to go on spring break dreams about running around the house to avoid her father, symbolizing that she wants to cut loose while on vacation and knows her father would not approve. Avoiding him symbolizes planning to break his rules.

A young male dreams about his sister covering her father’s lifeless body with a sheet, symbolizing that he knows she is having sex before marriage, and their father taught them that’s a no-no. Covering him with a sheet is a way of saying she’s ignoring his wishes.

In the dreams of men considering starting families, seeing themselves in the role of a father can be a dress rehearsal. It helps to address fears and doubts about their fathering abilities. It’s also a way of planting the seed of desire. Some men who think they never want to be fathers change their minds after dreaming about having children and seeing themselves living the role. Such a dream can be sparked by talk of starting a family.

A final consideration is that father can be synonymous with God. God is “the father,” and early in life your father is a godlike figure.

See also: Cancer, Children, Seeing a dead relative, Family, Guiding, Hiding, Mothers, Parents, Sunny, Testicles

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.