"paternal affection" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use this phrase in any context where you want to describe a father's or father-figure's love or care for someone. Example: "Despite his often strict demeanor, John's father showed him a great deal of paternal affection, always making sure to attend his son's baseball games and offer words of encouragement."
Greeting the seniors with "paternal affection," he began by bestowing upon them a lofty title.
There is still this paternal affection that for me is the most important".
He could best profess paternal affection from afar and preferred distance to close range.
With Francis longing for paternal affection, she pursued every means she could come up with of trying to locate Bob.
Whatever paternal affection he might feel, whatever the shame that comes flooding back, he doesn't spare him.
The relationship between maternal and paternal affection, reported in adulthood, and personality was examined using a genetically sensitive research design comparing differences between monozygotic twins.
Let's see: good name recognition, a devoted father to his daughters - a little overly doting in his paternal affections, maybe, but a king nonetheless, with his own fool to keep him company.
His paternal instincts of tenderness, affection, and nurturing asserted themselves.
Does her submissiveness, or non-assertiveness, or craving for paternal or male affection even at the cost of her own dreams and desires, arise from the distance or the neglectfulness of her father?
As Gloucester, Geoffrey Freshwater seems more briskly avuncular than deeply paternal in his affections, so Edgar's devotion to his father, in spite of his mistreatment, doesn't have the radiant beauty it should.
Thomas, older than Henry by 15 years and celibate, may well have felt, at least initially, a quasi-paternal or elder-brother affection, mingled with admiration for Henry's talents and charm.
