| On
this Fathers Day 2004, what is the state of fatherhood in
our society? First, let me state the challenge before us.
A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect
to grow up with his or her father. Today, an American child
can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness has now approached
a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American
childhood.
 Tonight,
more than one-third of American children will go to sleep
in homes in which their fathers do not live. Before they reach
the age of eighteen, more than half of our nation's children
are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their
childhood living apart from their fathers. Never before in
this country have so many children been voluntarily abandoned
by their fathers. Never before have so many children grown
up without knowing what it means to have a father.
Fatherlessness
is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation.
It is the leading cause of declining child well-being in our
society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social
problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual
abuse to domestic violence against women.
Where
is this trend heading? As people born after 1970 come increasingly
to dominate our working-age adult population, the United States
will be divided into two groups, separate and unequal. The
two groups will work in the same economy, speak a common language,
and remember the same national history. But they will live
fundamentally divergent lives. One group will receive basic
benefits – psychological, social, economic, educational,
and moral – that are denied to the other group.
The
primary fault line dividing the two groups will not be race,
religion, class, education, or gender. It will be patrimony.
One group will consist of those adults who grew up with the
daily presence and provision of fathers. The other group will
consist of those who did not. Amazingly, in our society today,
these two groups are roughly the same size.
The
core question is simple: Does every child need a father? Currently,
our society's answer is "no", or at least, "not
necessarily." Few idea shifts in this century are as
consequential as this one. At stake is nothing less than what
it means to be a man, who our children will be, and what kind
of society we will become.
Margaret
Mead and others have observed that the supreme test of any
civilization is whether it can socialize men by teaching them
to be fathers – creating a culture in which men acknowledge
their paternity and willingly nurture their offspring. Indeed,
if we equate the essence of the antisocial male with violence,
we can equate the essence of the socialized male with being
a good father. Thus, at the center of our most important cultural
imperative, we find the story that describes what it ought
to mean for a man to have a child. Today the United States
is conspicuously failing to meet Margaret Mead’s supreme
test.
That
is the challenge before us. Is there hope? Of course. Is there
good news? Yes. First, some demographics. Since the late 1990s,
the trends of fatherlessness and family fragmentation –
as evidenced by steady increases in unwed childbearing and
divorce, resulting in ever greater proportions of children
living in father-absent homes – have largely stopped
in their tracks.
 A
few key facts. The proportion of all U.S. families with children
under age 18 that are headed by married couples reached an
all-time low (about 73 percent) in the mid 1990s, but since
then has stabilized. Similarly, the proportion of all U.S.
children living in two-parent homes reached an all-time low
in the mid 1990s, but since then has stabilized. Here is perhaps
the most promising statistic. From 1995 to 2000, the proportion
of African American children living in two-parent, married-couple
homes rose from 34.8 to 38.9 percent, a significant increase
in just five years, representing the clear cessation and even
reversal of the long-term shift toward Black family fragmentation.
These
changes are not large or definitive, but they are certainly
good news. There is a lesson here. Many people have argued
that the trend of fatherlessness is irreversible – a
fact of modern life about which nothing can be done. These
encouraging demographic developments show that these people
are wrong. The trend is not irreversible. In fact, the wind
may already be at our backs. If the current good trends continue
and intensify, they will change the lives of millions of U.S.
children and families for the better.
These
new facts on the ground are in part the result of changing
attitudes and values in recent years, especially among our
elites. For the past decade, I’ve been privileged to
participate in a grass-roots fatherhood movement in the United
States – a diverse and growing group of leaders, initiatives,
and organizations working to reconnect men with their children.
In a 1997 public appeal, “A Call to Fatherhood,”
55 of us wrote: “We come together because we believe
that every child deserves a loving, committed, and responsible
father. Not just the lucky ones, but every child. We come
together from across the nation and across the political spectrum,
all dedicated to ending the curse of fatherlessness that is
maiming our children and coarsening our society.” Much
has been accomplished. Increasingly influential organizations,
such as the National Fatherhood Initiative, and recent pro-fatherhood
policy initiatives at both state and federal levels, as well
as a significantly greater focus on fatherhood from civic,
religious, philanthropic, and academic leaders, are in part
the results of this fatherhood movement.
A
similar grass-roots movement has arisen in recent years to
support marriage. It makes perfect sense that paying more
attention to fatherhood requires us also to pay more attention
to marriage. Why? Because for most men, marriage is the precondition,
the life support system, for hands-on, effective fatherhood.
Everywhere, the two rise or fall together. In a 2000 public
appeal, “The Marriage Movement,” more than 100
of us wrote: “We come together to pledge that in this
decade we will turn the tide on marriage and reduce divorce
and unwed childbearing, 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.”
 In
the area of marriage, too, much has been accomplished. Many
new organizations and initiatives – including by now
hundreds of church-led “community marriage policies”
– have emerged. Federal welfare law now directly encourages
marriage, and the Bush Administration has launched a “Healthy
Marriage Initiative” aimed at supporting marriage education
and marriage-supportive community organizing.
How
much progress has bee made? “On the heels of a fatherhood
movement,” writes Alex Kotlowitz in 2002 in the New
York Times, more and more young couples in inner cities “are
considering marriage.” Kotlowitz’s 2002 Frontline
television documentary, “Let’s Get Married,”
focuses on what the documentary calls the “burgeoning
marriage movement.”
New
research findings, and new scholarly perspectives, are also
supporting the renewed concern for fatherhood and marriage.
A recent report co-sponsored by my organization is called
“Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative
Communities.” In the report, 33 children’s doctors,
brain researchers, and other child experts conclude that children
are biologically primed (“hardwired”) for deep
connections to loving adults and to moral and spiritual meaning.
And what is the first and most important of the “authoritative
communities” that give children this connectedness?
These researchers in lab coats tell us that it is the mother-father,
married-couple family.
The
great challenge on this Fathers Day is to turn these early
signs of renewal into a full-fledged turnaround toward more
and more U.S. children growing up in loving homes with nurturing,
hands-on fathers. We now know that positive change is possible.
The question before us is whether we will commit ourselves
as a society to making that possibility a reality.
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