My Dad's Influence On Me My dad has been the ruling figure through my whole life. He is the one who has set down the rules, and the one who has enforced them. Of course my mother has also played an important role in my upbringing, but it has always been my dad who I look to for structure. The rules and regulations put down by my dad always seemed arbitrary and unfair to me. I did not see the reasoning behind his decisions. This impasse in views led us to have a tense relationship in which there were many fights through my adolescent and high school years. It is only now, when I am so near the time of leaving our house to go to college, that I am starting to understand wh