Much has been written about the social ills associated with fatherlessness, and for good reason: without a father at home, children are four times as likely to grow up in poverty, twice as likely to be obese, are significantly more likely to be incarcerated and, for female children, to become pregnant as a teenager.
The absence of fathers in communities of all kinds has increased dramatically since the advent of the Great Society programs in the 1960s, but the spike has been most dramatic in the African-American community, where almost 77% of births occur out of wedlock and 66% of children are raised without fathers. Economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, both African-Americans, have written extensively about the decimation of the black family that has occurred partially as a result of incentives created by the Great Society.
The tremendous surge in fatherlessness in families of all backgrounds has sent shock-waves through our political ecosystem. And while the causes of fatherlessness are myriad — irresponsible men, government programs incentivize broken families, the attempted estrangement of sex from procreation, and political parties that demonize masculinity as inherently “toxic” — the effects are not so varied. Broken homes, shattered families, and a culture bereft of meaning seem the inevitable fruit of widespread fatherlessness. If Daddy is not your father figure, someone or something else less desirable certainly will be.
For the men who stick around, the ones who take seriously the charge of raising their children, they deserve our society’s acknowledgement, particularly on Father’s Day. They provide a stayed foundation and role model for children in a way that no federal subsidy, no amount of “pre-Kindergarten education,” and no utopian policy could ever replace.
Society is indebted to them, not because their act is especially heroic- remaining present should be the default for those who impregnate a woman- but because so many men in our current moment shirk from this basic duty, and in turn decimate the lives of their children or cause their lovers to kill the unborn child that they helped create.
Those men who are derelict in their paternal duties are aided and abetted by those for whom the dissolution of the nuclear family is a political endgame. The recognition of the importance of fathers — particularly good fathers — on Father’s Day is a welcome antidote to the anti-familial philosophers of our time. In an age that, as Malcolm Muggeridge once said, “offers sex in terms of sterility…reality in terms of fantasy, and…security in terms of destruction,” there is something wonderfully revolutionary about a man who functions unironically as he ought to — as a father to his children.
To all of the great fathers, mine included, thank you and happy Father’s Day.