From Save the Males by Kathleen Parker

A World Without Fathers

For a fuller understanding of where fatherlessness leads, one need look no further than the African American community, where 70 percent of babies are born to unwed mothers. It is probably not a coincidence that young black men occupy a disproportionate number of prison cells. Or that among African Americans, 91.4 percent of expulsions from prekindergarten are boys. Where there are no fathers, in other words, the probability of dangerous boys increases. The profound hunger for male identity and the male fraternity to which all males long to belong leads to the predictable gang phenomenon where exaggerated male behavior - macho and misogynistic in the extreme - is acceptable and encouraged.

Unwed motherhood, a relatively new trend in the African American community, is a function not so much of feminism as of good intentions and culture. Through welfare programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, begun in 1935 as part of the New Deal and predicated on a no-man-in-the-house policy, the U.S. government inadvertently made unwed motherhood profitable and father abandonment predictable. Welfare reform in 1996 under the Clinton administration was aimed in part at ending this counter productive effect, but the damage had been done. Between 1950 and 1996, the percent of black families headed by two parents dropped from 78 percent to 34 percent. Compare this with 1890, just twenty five years after the Civil War, when 80 percent of African American households were headed by married couples. In the 1960s, only 23 percent of black babies were born out of wedlock.

Today's out-of-wedlock birthrate is also tied in part to cultural trends specifically within the African American community, where young people aren't encouraged to marry, though recent surveys show that 77 percent of black adults ages nineteen to thirty-five say they would like to get married. Yet fatherhood is considered so passe that the name "baby daddy"-usually used for the ghetto caricature of an unwed father-has gone mainstream. Novelist Maryann Reid found this trend so disturbing that she wrote a book, Marry Your Baby Daddy, and founded a nonprofit organization, Marry Your Baby Daddy Inc., aimed at getting African Americans to marry each other. Promising to pay for the wedding ceremony, Reid raised $90,000 in goods and services from local businesses and went looking for ten couples to sign up. Her phone began ringing immediately. Most callers weren't women fantasizing about the dream wedding, but men in search of family. Imagine that.

Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, Reid noted that some women among hundreds she interviewed for her book reported that their men-once marriage became a real possibility-became more responsive, took more initiative in household matters, and were suddenly more interested in their future. When men were treated respectfully, and likewise held responsible for civilized behavior, they seemed to respond in kind.

I don't mean to suggest that men can be trained to behave, though come to think of it, that's what civilization is mostly about channeling male energy in ways that benefit the larger society and shift self-interest toward the common good. Anthropologist Margaret Mead noted that a civilization is gauged by whether it can socialize men to become fathers. Although we're no longer fending off saber-toothed tigers-and women are no longer helpless against marauding tribes (at least not in the United States, at least not for now) generations of civilized societies have concluded that two-parent families are best for children. David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America, points out that men, given their inclination toward promiscuity and "paternal waywardness," are not ideally suited to fatherhood. "Because men do not volunteer for fatherhood as much as they are conscripted into it by the surrounding culture, only an authoritative cultural story of fatherhood can fuse biological and social paternity into a coherent male identity.

"Anthropologically, human fatherhood constitutes what might be termed a necessary problem," he writes. "It is necessary because, in all societies, child well-being and societal success hinge largely upon a high level of paternal investment: the willingness of adult males to devote energy and resources to the care of their offspring."

If teaching men to be fathers so that women and children can thrive is our aim, one might ask, what would be the goal of unteaching men to be fathers? Not only do we no longer value fatherhood, but we also have effectively released men from a cultural identity that tied them to a higher moral purpose. Relieved of that purpose - and otherwise marginalized - men are not likely to respond in ways that are going to please or profit women.

Wherefore Art Thou, Father?

The future of fatherhood hangs in the balance as other cultural currents have combined to cast doubt on the necessity of fathers in the child-rearing equation. The push for same-sex marriage, even if advanced for the right reasons (commitment to significant other and equal rights under the law), necessarily devalues the contribution of at least one parent, most often the father, given women's superior advantage in procreation. The past decade or so has produced several books and studies aimed at "proving" that children can get along without Dad. The piece de resistance was a 1999 study published by the American Psychological Association, "Deconstructing the Essential Father," which made the case that male fathers are, well, not essential. Is there any other kind, you ask? During saner times, this would be a rational question, but today fathers come in all flavors, and the male heterosexual kind seems least in favor.

Anyone can be a father, according to authors Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach, psychology professors at Yeshiva University in the Bronx, New York. The two researchers weirdly blame "neoconservatives" for the push to make heterosexual fathers seem essential, while asserting that gay and lesbian parents are just as good as the old patriarchal model. Although kids do need parents-in fact, as many parents as possible-they needn't be biological, they say. No agenda there! No, wait, there is an agenda, and the authors honorably admit it.

"We acknowledge that our reading of the scientific literature supports our political agenda," they write. "Our goal is to generate public policy initiatives that support men in their fathering role, without discriminating against women and same-sex couples. We are also interested in encouraging public policy that supports the legitimacy of diverse family structures, rather than policy that privileges the two parent, heterosexual, married family."

"Privileges"? The world has become profoundly strange when the idea that children need both a mother and a father has to be defended, or when "privilege" is used as a verb to mean marginalizing "diverse family structures." Generally, I have avoided discussing same-sex marriage and other gay and lesbian issues except where impossible to ignore. One book can tackle only so much. But when biological fatherhood is dismissed as little more than an optional lifestyle choice, passivity is not an option. Biological fathers do matter, and they are essential and children do take their cues from their parental relationships - not exclusively, but in important ways that ensure psychotherapists will not be found in food stamp lines. Nevertheless, Silverstein and Auerbach insist that what matters is only that a child have a quality relationship with reliable parent types.

As one raised among enough parent types and an extended family large enough to qualify for at least one congressional seat, I am something of an authority on this matter. Parent types are lovely, but parents are better. If we define "essential" as meaning you can't get along without, then the authors are right. Will boys still grow up to be men without a biological father on the premises? Yes, but mere survival isn't our standard for a healthy childhood. Can stepfathers do the job as well? As a stepparent, I would never insist otherwise. But the real targets of such research are the heterosexual father and the idea that a "traditional" family model of married mother and father is the best configuration for healthy children.

We know a mother and father are best, yet we seek ways to prove otherwise in order to ratify our personal preferences. That's fine as long as we admit it, but to insist that there's a "good" reason to minimize the importance of fathers is plainly about agenda and not about children. I'll concede that loving families do not necessarily have to be blood kin. "Love" is the key word, and most of us are lucky if we have one solid adult who loves us unconditionally. That doesn't mean, however, that just one should be our goal. It is worrisome that we seem content to set the family bar according to the least we can do rather than the best we should aspire to. That we fail sometimes, or even often, doesn't mean we were wrong to try or that we should accept failure as inevitable.

To try to prove that fathers are unnecessary is a dubious goal on its face. There's ample evidence supporting the commonsense understanding that father involvement benefits children both immeasurably and in measurable ways. Children with involved fathers are better students, more self-assured, less likely to get in trouble, and, not least, they know who their father is and, therefore, who they are.

That's not nothing.