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Book Review - Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, by Warren Farrell. Putnam Publishing Group, December 2000.
Some of the greatest novels - War and Peace, Crime and Punishment,
The Red and the Black, Bread and Wine - exist around the essential
struggle of the Grand Dichotomy. Warren Farrell's latest book,
Father and Child Reunion, due out January 8, 2001, [SEE NOTE AT BOTTOM, IT MAY BE OUT SOONER] is not a novel;
it is fact that lives that great struggle between the two opposites
of fatherhood - its absence and its presence.
Over nine years ago, when I had not been able to see my daughter for
over two years, I was in the depths of despair, torn between the
pain I knew my little girl would suffer through an
intense and continuing custody battle and the pain of her growing up
fatherless. Right about this same time, her mother called me up
to talk to our daughter. She had not eaten in four days
"because her friends were making fun of her because she did not have a
daddy." I was staring the devils of the day and the devils
of the night in the face. I was ready to give up completely.
Warren Farrell gave me a set of statistics from a proposed chapter in
his book The Myth of Male Power (the chapter was refused publication)
- straight information, cold and undeniable facts about the effects
on children from growing up fatherless. He told me simply:
"know this and if you still want to give up, you can." No one had
ever given me permission to give up before, no one had told me that I
had a choice. And once I knew the hard reality of
fatherlessness, I could not give up. The choice was easy. I have
custody of my daughter today.
Father and Child Reunion is the culmination of thirteen years of
research and at least nine years search for a publisher.
Applaud the courage of Tarcher-Putnam.
This book is the most important compilation of the effects of
fatherhood on children that anyone interested in family,
fathers or children will ever find. It has a most generous set of
footnotes citing authority, sources, and studies that allow the
reader to think with essential truth.
There are many arguments about why there is so much fatherlessness in
America, in the world today. We need to get beyond the why.
This book goes right to what happens because there is so much
fatherlessness. The problem demands a solution.
What is that solution? Understand the cost of fatherlessness and
make it as profitable for children to have that essential relationship
with his/her father as it has been for the child not to have a
father. The costs are horrendous - drugs, alcohol, suicide, crime,
prisons, prostitution, divorce, more father absence.
It's a vicious circle, and there have now been a few generations to verify the
extent of the problem.
Warren Farrell has taken a few bold steps beyond the identification
of the problem. He has come up with some thought provoking and
challenging solutions. Real life solutions. Things
we can all do starting today, every day in our own homes with our very
own families. Before further problems surface.
While the problem still has a solution.
Anyone who has a father or a child should read this book. Anyone who
has a father or a child needs five copies of this book to anyone
who doesn't have it. Anyone who has a father or a child must
give copies of this book to their priest or minister, to their teachers and
congresspersons, to every judge and attorney in town, and to their doctors.
Organize a book-fest for the sake of every child who has drawn a breath
or will draw a breath in the future. It is that important.
My child has a father. Make sure every child you know has one too.
Larry Hellmann, President
National Congress for Fathers and Children
9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 907
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Note: You can purchase a copy of this book on-line from Barnes & Noble. According to their web page, the book should be available starting December 6, 2000.
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