A daddy kink is a sexual fetish for being dominated by an older man. The type of man that people with daddy kinks look for is often protective and caring.
Why Do People Develop Daddy Kinks?
People typically develop daddy kinks because they enjoy taking a submissive sexual role and feel attracted to older dominants seen as authority figures. They may also respect the level of maturity that daddies have. Despite the kink’s name, people don’t typically develop this fetish because they have problematic relationships with their fathers.
What Does it Mean to Have a Daddy Kink?
Having a daddy kink means someone gets aroused by submitting to an authority figure. It is simply a sexual preference like any other that people can explore to make sex more gratifying.
How People Know If They Have a Daddy Kink
People typically know if they have a daddy kink if they feel drawn to older men sexually, romantically, or both, and they want these men to dominate them. They may also get aroused at the thought of calling a partner “daddy”, or their partner calling them pet names usually reserved for children, such as “baby” or “Daddy’s little girl/boy.”
Origins of the Term Daddy Kink
It’s difficult to determine when the term daddy kink originated, but the term daddy has historically sexual connotations. Reports suggest that sex workers began calling their pimps “daddy” as early as 1681. Daddy became slang for a male lover in the early 1900s, according to Dictionary.com. The term was sometimes used as a shortened form of sugar daddy and sometimes simply as a term of affection for any older male partner. During the 1970s, the leather subculture within the gay community began using the term leather daddy to describe the group's desirable older men. A 2019 Fatherly article stated that the daddy kink or fetish has "been going on for multiple decades."
Psychology Behind Daddy Kinks
Sarah Jeffries, a Mental Health First Aid trainer with a master's degree in psychology, said “The psychology of developing a daddy kink can be complicated and opaque, perhaps reflecting a complicated set of entangled personal, interpersonal, and cultural meanings.” She noted that psychological researchers have proposed several reasons why people may develop a daddy kink, such as a craving for security and tenderness, an interest in exploring dynamic roles, a fulfillment of wishes and fantasies, and a means for reclaiming and recovering their identity.
“It is an act of investigating power dynamics and authority in a controlled and consensual means, arriving to a psychologically satisfying place of erotic surrender – or surrender of power,” she explained. “For others, the daddy kink represents an attraction to a safe and tender relationship wherein the unequal power dynamic is explicit and familiar. Daddy, as a title for the top of the power dynamic, carries associations linked to protecting, informing and guiding. He is a space wherein one may submit their Masculinity-Defence (gang/tough guy) work because they’re safe and can afford to appear vulnerable. For others, particularly those with prior trauma in their sexual histories, they may actually experience their daddy kink as a reclamation of sexual agency, and even as a chance to physically and emotionally explore their boundaries anew in a context where they have the power and say.”
How to Explore a Daddy Kink
Jeffries recommends acknowledging a daddy kink, with a partner if attached, and putting a plan in place to make exploring it beneficial. “Honest communication about what one wants, and what one does and does not want to do, or what one would be comfortable doing, is crucial, and should be discussed beforehand with any partners,” she says. “This means talking about consent, or safe words, or whether to stay and talk after the experience.”
The daddy will take the more dominant role sexually. They might decide how they’ll have sex, give their partner orders, or place themselves in more dominant positions physically, such as being on top during missionary sex. Roleplaying is a common element of satisfying a daddy kink. This can be as simple as the person with the daddy kink calling their partner daddy. They could also get spanked if they misbehave. BDSM play can reinforce the power dynamic of a daddy kink.
Read more: 8 Tips for Sexy - Not Silly - Role Play
Some people with a daddy kink keep their explorations to the bedroom while others incorporate it into their everyday relationships. Regular communication can help couples find what works for them and how far they want to go to satisfy a daddy kink.
Daddy Kink Porn
In its 2023 review, PornHub noted that searches for the term “daddy” increased by 27 percent in that year. “Daddy” was the site’s fifth most popular gay category. Platforms such as PornHub have several videos designed to appeal to people with daddy kinks. Websites like Literotica allow people to read and submit erotic stories with daddy themes. Users can search for daddy content using the tags in relevant categories including BDSM, mature, and fetish. Fan fiction sites like Archive Of Our Own have more daddy kink stories inspired by pop culture properties like Bob’s Burgers, X-Men, and Harry Potter.
Daddy Meme
In the mid-2010s, teen social media users, especially those on Twitter (now X) and Instagram, began using the term daddy to refer to male authority figures they respect. Calling someone daddy online suggests the person is so wonderful that the user wishes they would adopt them. There is also a sexual connotation, as people called daddy tend to be attractive celebrities such as Drake, Justin Bieber, and Zayn Malik.
Who Participates in Daddy Kink?
People with daddy kinks are usually submissive by nature. They are often young women or gay or bisexual men, but people of any age, gender, or sexual orientation can participate in a daddy kink relationship. Submissives get into relationships with older men who enjoy being dominant with their partners.
People may enjoy participating in daddy kink because they enjoy playing with a power dynamic, but want more affection than power dynamics such as dominant/submissive and master/slave may provide. As these relationships typically go beyond the sexual, they may also appeal to people seeking companionship and romance.
Connection to Fauxcest
While the dominant person in a daddy kink relationship often assumes the term daddy, they are not roleplaying as their partner's father. That makes daddy kink pairings very different from fauxcest, where unrelated people roleplay as family members. Most people interested in daddy kink are clear to separate it from incest and pedophilia. While daddies may have pet names for their submissive, they would be unlikely to use specific familial terms like “daughter” or “son”.
How Common is Daddy Kink?
It’s difficult to determine how common a daddy kink is, as few researchers have published studies about this topic. Dating app PURE found that 29 percent of its users enjoyed calling their partner “daddy” and 34 percent thought the term was hot, playful, and unproblematic. While this may suggest a daddy kink is relatively common, it’s unclear how many people who accept the term daddy consider they have a kink and whether these users are representative of the wider population.
“While exact hard data on the prevalence of daddy kink is hard to find (particularly given that some academics who study certain forms of non-normative sexuality hesitate to ask people directly about something as potentially incriminating or taboo as the kink for a daddy), at least one thing is often accepted across the field of sexology: that kinks and other forms of non-normative sexual interest are quite common in the human population,” Jeffries said. “Daddies, in particular, seem to have become increasingly more visible in conjunction with or within a wider array of sexual and kink communities, material and social, in the world, both online and off, certainly normalized (arguably ‘sex-positively’ discussed) more than in the past (although what content is disclosed on digital outlets might not wholly reflect wider practices or even population-level prevalence).”
Daddy Kink Aesthetic
Daddies are typically handsome, well-dressed older men. They are usually clean cut, with short hair and a well-groomed appearance, but may have some stubble. While the daddies that teens refer to online are usually men in their late 20s or early 30s, daddies are typically older men in their 50s and 60s such as Brad Pitt, Jon Hamm, George Clooney, and Idris Elba. As such, daddies usually show signs of their advancing years including some wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair.
