Anthropologists who have studied the issue cross-culturally tell us that, around the world, effective, hands-on fatherhood requires two basic foundations.  The first is that the father co-resides with children. The second is that the father is in a working partnership with the mother.  We humans have a name for just such an arrangement. We call it “marriage.”   

But on Fathers Day 2008, marriage in the U.S. is a troubled institution. More than one of every three children born in the U.S. today is born to a never-married mother. About 40 percent of all first-time births are to unmarried mothers. The United States probably has the highest divorce rate in the world.  More than 40 percent of all first marriages in the U.S. are likely to end in divorce, and the divorce rates for second and third marriages are higher than for first marriages. As a result, more than half of all U.S. children will spend at least a significant part of their childhoods living apart from their fathers.

Consider this detail. In 1965, in a famous speech at Howard University, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson called for a “War on Poverty.” While the underlying sources of U.S. poverty are multiple and overlapping, the president said, “perhaps the most important” is “the breakdown of the Negro family structure.” Today in the United States, the breakdown of white family structure – the disintegration of marriage among whites – almost exactly matches the level of marriage breakdown among African Americans in 1965, a level that was viewed at the time by the federal government as a national emergency and the main reason for a significant anti-poverty mobilization!

Was President Johnson right to link marriage trends to poverty trends and to trends in overall child well-being? We can now definitively answer yes to that question. Here's why.

In the 1970s and well into the 1980s, most U.S. family scholars insisted that child well-being is not substantially or causally related to marriage and family structure. A few dissidents argued that it is. The disagreements were intense and passionately felt, and the stakes were high. The Institute for American Values, the think tank that I founded with some colleagues in 1988 and currently direct, was created primarily as a place for scholarly dissidents on this issue to meet and collaborate.

Today, scholarly opinion on this question has shifted dramatically. One of the main intellectual struggles of the past generation is now largely over. It is over because one side won. Especially during the late 1980s and the 1990s, as new research findings poured in, and as the weight of evidence became for most people increasingly clear and one-sided, yesterday’s fighting words gradually became the new scholarly conventional wisdom. Marriage matters. Marriage significantly influences individual and societal well-being. Most importantly, the health of our children is strongly linked to the health of marriage, primarily because marriage is what makes effective fatherhood possible. 

Today some scholars, especially those who dislike marriage, mourn and criticize this shift. (They have become the new dissidents, many of whom cut their teeth by accusing others of being nostalgic for the 1950s, but who today are more than a little nostalgic for the 1970s.) Marriage enthusiasts like me welcome the shift. But almost no one denies that the shift has occurred and that it has important consequences, not only for scholars, but also for policy makers and the larger public debate.

The scholarly turn-around is not the only trend to warm the hearts of today’s marriage enthusiasts. For the first time in decades, there is some encouraging demographic news. Divorce rates are modestly declining. Rates of unwed childbearing, after increasingly sharply year after year for decades, leveled off considerably from about 1995 to 2003, although a troubling rise was reported for 2004 and 2005. Teen pregnancy rates have declined dramatically. Rates of reported marital happiness, after declining steadily from the early 1970s through the early 1990s, have stabilized and may be increasing. By far the gladdest tiding is that, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of African American children living in married-couple homes rose by about four percent. Among all U.S. children, the proportion living in married-couple homes has apparently stabilized and may have increased slightly in the late 1990s.

For three decades, marriage advocates have been grumbling that everything is getting worse. Some of us can’t break the habit. But we need to. Some things have stopped getting worse. A few things are even getting better. As if on autopilot, most of us still say: “We have to turn the marriage trend around.” But the trend may already be turning around! For the time being, at least, we may have the wind at our backs.

There is more. In the mid to late 1990s, what many of us call a “marriage movement” emerged in the United States. Today that movement is led by a growing and diverse group of educators, counselors, service providers, public officials, researchers, community organizers, religious and civic leaders, and others. It cuts across political, racial, gender, and class lines. The movement’s core shared goal, as more than 100 of its leaders wrote in a joint statement in 2000, and reaffirmed in 2004, is “to turn the tide on marriage and reduce divorce and unwed child bearing, so that each year more children will grow up protected by their own two happily married parents, and so that each year more adults’ marriage dreams will come true.”  If there is a more important challenge facing our society on this Fathers Day, I do not know what it is.

Cutting edge research shows religion positively affects men in their role as husband and father

In a report just released by the Institute of American Values, researcher Don Browning addresses the question: Is Religion an Answer? Marriage, Fatherhood, and the Male Problematic, by the Institute of American Values

"One of the most important consequences of the family revolution of the last half-century—a revolution marked by dramatic increases in divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabitation—is that ever larger numbers of men are becoming disconnected from family life. From New York to New Orleans, from San Francisco to Seattle, more and more men in the United States are living apart from the children they helped to bring into this world. This growing disconnect between men and families has been aptly called the “male problematic” by University of Chicago theologian Don Browning."

"Scholars, policymakers, and civic and religious leaders concerned about the rise of the male problematic in modern America have speculated that religion in the United States may offer at least a partial answer to the male problematic. Browning has argued that one of the historic achievements of Judaism and Christianity is that they succeeded to an important degree in integrating men into families and the lives of their wives and children."

"This brief provides an array of evidence indicating that religion is an answer to the male problematic—that is, the tendency of fathers to become detached, emotionally or physically, from their children and the mothers of their children. I find that fathers who are religious, and who have partners who are religious, are—on average—more likely to be happily married, to be engaged and affectionate parents, and to get and stay married to the mothers of their children. As a consequence, religious fathers and husbands are much less likely to fall prey to the male problematic of late modernity."

"What accounts for the family-oriented effects of religion on family men? First, the rituals and preaching men encounter in religious institutions—from baptisms to Father’s Day sermons—underline the moral responsibilities that bind them to their wives and children, endowing them with a sacred character. In the last twenty years, churches—particularly evangelical Protestant churches—have focused more of their family rhetoric on men in an effort to encourage them to take a more active role in the lives of family members.[11] Second, religious congregations also provide men with multiple opportunities—from worship to youth groups—to spend time with their wives and children. This time often allows men a chance to get to know their family members better and to signal how much they care about them.

Third, the social networks in churches tend to be family centered, and these networks offer informal and formal support for norms that sustain marriage and family life. For instance, fathers experiencing difficulty in disciplining a toddler can turn to their religious networks in search of advice and encouragement, thereby becoming a more effective parent. Similarly, studies suggest that churchgoing encourages sexual fidelity, in part because church-based social networks monitor the behavior of their members.[12] Finally, by imposing a meaningful order on the normal challenges of family life—not to mention unusual traumas, such as unemployment, illness, and death—religious faith can help family men deal constructively with the ordinary and extraordinary stresses in their lives. This is important because stress often undercuts men’s abilities to be active and affectionate husbands and fathers."

http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=75

Marriage breakdown costs taxpayers at least $112 billion a year

WASH. D.C. In first-ever research, a new report quantifies a minimum $112 billion annual taxpayer cost from high rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing. It identifies national, state and local costs which account for more than $1 trillion in the last decade. This landmark scholarly study, entitled “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All 50 States,” was released on April 15th at the National Press Club by four renowned policy and research groups—Institute for American Values, Georgia Family Council, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Families Northwest.

“This study documents for the first time, that divorce and unwed childbearing—besides being bad for children—are also costing taxpayers a ton of money,” said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values.

“These costs are due to increased taxpayer expenditures for anti-poverty, criminal justice and education programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by individuals whose adult productivity has been negatively affected by increased childhood poverty caused by family fragmentation,” said principal investigator Ben Scafidi, Ph.D., economics professor at Georgia College & State University.

http://www.americanvalues.org/html/coff_mediaadvisory.htm

Blankenhorn's strong case for marriage keeps the needs of children in clear view

David Blankenhorn's recent book, The Future of Marriage, raises up the needs of children in the face cultural trends that put adult desires first.

“Marriage is fundamentally about the needs of children.” And “what children need most are mothers and fathers. Not caregivers. Not parent-like adults. Not even ‘parents.’ What a child wants and needs more than anything else are the mother and the father who together made the child, who love the child, and who love each other.”

Drawing from the resources of evolutionary biology, psychology, history, anthropology, and sociology, Blankenhorn defends the thesis that marriage is a natural institution present in all (or nearly all) human societies. He shows that marriage is not just a private emotional bond between lovers, or a mere religious affair, but rather a natural and profoundly public institution."

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODZiOTNhYmYyZTE1MjZmOGZkMjExZGI0MGExMzNhNGY

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