Same sort of situation with me.. I've met my dad but he pretty much abnegated any financial or otherwise material responsibility for me and has been emotionally unavailable all of my life. So my closeness to my mother doesn't directly have to do with the fact that she's the same gender as me, but rather because she's the one by whom I was raised. At the same time, that has very much to do with her gender. I think it's safe to say, though I haven't looked up the statistics, that it's far more common for the mother to be the sole parent than the father.
I'm equally close to both parents... for different things. I seem to get my empathic/creative/communicative side from my mother, and I get my creative/technical/brilliant side from my father. I'm my mother's daughter, and (the family joke is) my father's firstborn son.
Out of my 6 parents (2 biological parents and 4 parents-in-law, due to my husband's parents' divorce and remarriage to other people), I'd have to admit (reluctantly) that I'm closest to my mother, even though she drives me absolutely bonkers. I don't especially like her sometimes, but I guess we're fairly close. Sigh.
O'Dell / Kemp males are typically kind of quiet around each other, possibly because they're resting from the time spent around the highly talkative females. ;)
i suppose the default would be my father, since my mother died when I was 11, but I lived exclusively with her up until about that point... The fact is, however, that I was worlds closer to her than I will ever be to him (we get along fine and he is caring, but we just have a distance). So I chose neither.
I don't consider myself close to either one, but I end up communicating more with Mom because she contacts me more often. I guess we're close in some ways, but I don't pour out everything that's going on to either parent.
It's really hard to say one way or the other; I said I was closer to my Dad because we're very much alike and tend to spend more time talking than my Mom and I do. But there are things I can talk about with Mom that I would never really talk about with Dad. Girl stuff, mostly, but other things, too. I guess I'd say I'm very slightly closer to my Dad, largely because we share more interests and such. Probably if he wasn't my Dad and we were closer in age, we'd be friends. I'm not sure if I'd be friends with my Mom if she wasn't my Mom. Does that make sense?
By the way, I just added you to my friends list, as you're friends with lots of my friends and I've heard you rock. :)
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Never met my father
But we really are close.
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By the way, I just added you to my friends list, as you're friends with lots of my friends and I've heard you rock. :)