Land of Our Fathers 5-6-10

Anderson, South Carolina

A friend of mine describes a delightful tradition at the girl’s boarding school where she teaches; May Ball in which seniors are escorted to a formal dance by their fathers and have their first dance with the man who has been a major source of inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment in their lives. For better or worse, girls will learn to relate to the men in their lives, especially their husbands, from the model lived out by their fathers.

In the mid-twentieth century with the advent of television, fathers were depicted as strong benevolent beings who assumed protectorate roles with those in their charge, individuals who had moral and ethical bearings that provided a sense of guidance and safety to those who trusted them. Weekly series such as Lassie, Sky King, The Rifleman, Gun Smoke, Bonanza, Leave it to Beaver, and The Brady Bunch” portrayed men in a positive light. Even Hollywood blockbusters of the 1950s and 60s portrayed men as bigger than life.

In 1995 David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America presented a sobering analysis of social consequences accruing for children growing up without fathers in their homes. Blankenhorn describes “consequences of this radical departure from virtually all human history” as the most urgent social problem in America. He points out incisively that no culture can be found in which large numbers of mothers abandon their children, yet finding cultures in which large numbers of men abandon their children is easy – America being foremost among these. Why this constitutes the most urgent problem can be summed up by this cogent statement. “In a larger sense, the fatherhood story is the irreplaceable basis of a culture’s most urgent imperative: the socialization of males. More than any other cultural invention, fatherhood guides men away from violence by fastening their behavior to a fundamental social purpose. By enjoining men to care for their children and for the mothers of their children, the fatherhood story is society’s most important contrivance for shaping male identity.”

America has rewritten its cultural scrip and has made substantial ‘progress’ in a large social experiment to discard fathers and forge ahead without them. The National Centers for Health Statistics reported in May 2010 that forty-one percent of all mothers in 2008 were single. In some areas, singleness among mothers is greater than eighty percent. A survey by the National Science Foundation found forty-two percent of Americans believe one parent can raise a child just as well as two. Restated, nearly half of Americans are essentially saying that men are unnecessary in the socialization of children.

Children would beg to differ. Judith Wallerstein gained national prominence in 1989 with her longitudinal study on the consequences of divorce, Second Chances. She followed children for twenty years, assessing the consequences of them losing their fathers to divorce. Almost universally, children were adversely affected in every possible way with boys faring worse than daughters. Judges rarely remove daughters from custody of their mothers. Boys almost universally lose regular access to their fathers. Another twenty years of work by Wallerstein only confirms her earlier findings – there are no winners in divorce. America has a divorce rate than has few rivals in the world. America has few rivals when it comes to violence, social fragmentation, mental illness, and existential angst. Benevolent fathers really do guide males away from all manner of violence.

In recent decades men have been portray by media as nerds, impotent, even cognitively compromised – in daily parlance, as little more than fools. Weekly series are virtually devoid of positive characterizations of men as positive role models. Blankenhorn clarifies cultural scripts regarding men who are portrayed as unnecessary fathers, old fathers, new fathers, deadbeat dads, visiting fathers, sperm fathers, stepfathers and nearby guys. All of these scripts are pejorative at best.

A recent program on travel safety in our local travel club was presented by the sheriff’s department. During the course of this the presenter revealed our small own to have 854 documented gang members and gang affiliations. This number would be unbelievable from any other source than law enforcement. Our small, once bucolic, town has a whole unit assigned to matters pertaining to substantial gang activity.

As Wallerstein found out in her interviews with fatherless boys, others including law enforcement officials, have found out that boys demand a sense of belonging and accountability and will go to any length to get it. Boys as young as eight desperately need a role model of some kind and a sense of identity. They will submit to the precarious and dangerous gang culture in order to find it. The adverse consequences of gang participation are well known. When fathers abandon their children, they are casting them to the winds, so to speak. They make an ipso facto decision to let the nearest gang raise their boys. These boys wont be taking their daughters to May Ball in twenty years. Many of them will be incarcerated or interred.

Down the street from me in the modest corner house, many years ago a man lost his wife and the mother of his son and daughter to a very nasty course with cancer. What Bill did not lose in his grief was his sense of responsibility as a father. For twenty years I have watched him raise his son and daughter successfully, as Blankenhorn would say, ‘by fastening their behavior to a fundamental social purpose.’ Bill’s son graduated from Annapolis and is now successful as a well-performing naval flight officer; soon to be married. He learned how to treat women by watching how his father treated his sister, herself most successful in life, trained as a specialist nurse in one of our medical universities. It is safe to say the gangs down on the south side of town would not have steered Russell to successful matriculation at Annapolis or Karen to successful completion of her medical training.

Nearly half the country may now think guys are little more than sperm donors and unnecessary relational baggage, but I myself am inclined to stay with the consensus of all human history. Guys, stick around, you just might get asked for the first dance.

Train up a child in the way he should go; Even when he is old he will not depart from it.