Kathleen Parker: Obama should tell men to man up

Submitted by Mastodon on Tue, 2012-12-18 19:56

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of my great hopes for a Barack Obama administration — and thus one of my personal disappointments — was that he would use his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of a two-parent family, and especially of fathers, to children's well-being.

Few understand better than the president the value of a present and involved father. Much of his literary work and his examined life pertains to his own absent father. By his example, he has certainly demonstrated his own commitment to parenting — and his family is a source of pride for all Americans. But the true story of fatherlessness in this country can't be repeated often or forcefully enough.

This is not a new story.

Children who grow up without fathers tend to fall into patterns of destructive behavior — from drug use and truancy to early promiscuity, delinquency and, in too many cases, incarceration. Children raised in fatherless homes are also more likely to grow up in poverty, which is no fault of their mothers but is a fact.'

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"Men, be men. Marry the mother of your children. Be a father to the children you sire. Go home and stay there."

I have generally found Parker to be sympathetic to men, though this column is less so. The problem with the advice is simple: it expects individual men to be able to do what she says. A lot of men would love to go home to be with their children but can't.

Blaming men individually does not solve the problem, which is this: society has made no commitment to fathers. Without that societal commitment, and the legal protection it would provide, the individual man can do little.

The problem a society always faces is not giving a child a mother--that's easy. The problem is giving a child a father, a man committed to providing for and raising his children as a co-equal to the mother. The solution was marriage--because there is no other solution. Problem is, today's marriage laws no longer protect the father's right to be with his children. As a result, we have single mothers and absent fathers. We can expect no other result because there is no other possible result. Until society as a whole makes a commitment to fathers, lecturing fathers does no good.

The individual man can do little to change this without the commitment of society to giving children fathers. Today's society has made no such commitment. It's made the opposite commitment. Today the government spends vast resources getting single motherhood and divorce to work; it spends almost none getting marriage to work. And without marriage, we have single mothers and absent fathers--because no other result is possible.

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Submitted by el cid on Wed, 2012-12-19 21:42