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botherlessness is the leading cause of
declining child well-being in our
society it is also the engine driving
our most urgent social problems yet
despite its scale and social
consequences fatherlessness is a problem
that is frequently ignored or denied
families are microcosms of society
strong and stable families contribute to
social flourishing while dysfunctional
families push Society in the direction
of breakdown
more than at any point in history the
family unit is broken as a significant
number of children are growing up
without a father
in this video drawing from the research
of the American sociologist David popono
we explore how absent fathers are
harming children and destroying society
and how this problem can be solved
based on the evidence a strong case can
be made that paternal deprivation in the
form of the physical economic and
emotional unavailability of fathers to
their children has become the most
prevalent form of child maltreatment
today writes David popono
fathers are Vanishing from family life
and only mothers are left to care about
their children and mothers are not
enough
approximately 40 percent of children are
born to unmarried mothers over 50
percent of marriages end in divorce with
the mother more often than not to being
granted custody of the children
even in families where the father is
physically present many are not
emotionally present in the lives of the
children
many fathers are addicted to their
smartphones or to drugs or alcohol
others are forced to work long hours or
multiple jobs to provide for their
family in the face of the ever declining
purchasing power of money
but whether emotionally or physically
absent the problem of absent fathers has
reached endemic proportions and a mother
cannot fill a fatherless void
for men and women possess innate
biological differences that translate
into different yet complementary
parenting styles
women are more compassionate and
relationship oriented while men are more
competitive aggressive and oriented
towards risk-taking and self-reliance
mothers provide children with a
nurturing safe and emotionally secure
environment while fathers challenge
their children push their boundaries and
help them cultivate autonomy
as psychological health is contingent on
adequately satisfying the need for both
Independence and relatedness Challenge
and emotional security risk-taking and
safety a developing child needs to be
exposed to both the paternal and
maternal worlds or as Pompano explains
the significance of gender
differentiated parenting undoubtedly is
related to something fundamental in The
Human Condition
parental androgyny is not what children
need males and females bring different
qualities to children
the burden of social science evidence
supports the idea that gender
differentiated parenting is important
for human development and that the
contribution of fathers to child rearing
is unique and irreplaceable
unfortunately stepfathers are not a
reliable solution to the problem of
fatherlessness as step children are
often worse off than children of single
mothers
the lack of genetic ties can make a
stepfather reluctant to invest time
energy and resources into the child's
development and some stepfathers are
prone to seeing their step children as
competition for the mother's attention
one of the surprising findings of family
related research in recent years is that
the presence of stepfathers may actually
aggravate child-rearing problems and
thereby increase the level of negative
child outcomes explains Pompano
in two of his books families without
fathers in the war over the family David
popono summarizes the abundance of
studies which demonstrate that children
who grow up without a physically present
and emotionally committed biological
father are at a greater risk of
suffering from emotional behavioral and
physical health problems they are less
likely to succeed educationally more
likely to be socially impaired and as
adults more prone to dysfunctional
relationships
girls of absent fathers are more likely
to become single teen mothers boys are
more likely to become criminals and
moral deviants this list only scratches
the surface of the known negative
outcomes of growing up absent a father
indeed almost anything bad that can
happen to a child occurs with much
greater frequency to the Children of
Divorce and those who live in
single-parent families explains Pompano
following divorce the quality and
quantity of the time that children spend
with their fathers sharply declines in
the book divided families Frank
Furstenberg and Andrew cherlin explained
that after a few years of a divorce only
1 in 10 children have weekly contact
with their fathers while two-thirds have
no contact at all
yet even with divorced fathers who
maintain contact most often it is a
sporadic and superficial contact that is
of little to no benefit to the child
in other words while the mother child
bond is a primal bond that is rarely if
ever broken a man's bond to his children
is heavily dependent on whether he is
still in a relationship with the mother
men tend to view marriage in child
rearing as a single package writes
Pompano if their marriage deteriorates
their fathering deteriorates if they are
not married or are divorced their
interest in and sense of responsibility
toward children greatly diminish
it is because men tend to view marriage
in fatherhood as a single package that
virtually every society in history has
placed great emphasis on the institution
of marriage the primary function of
which is to create socially binding ties
which hold a man to his wife for the
benefit of the children or as popono
writes
men have the capacity to father but also
the capacity to stray so all successful
societies have imposed social sanctions
on men to encourage their fathering
Behavior
by far the most important of these
sanctions is the institution of marriage
the most universally found social
institution of all
up until the mid 20th century marriage
was held to be a sacred contract between
a man and woman that was only broken in
the most extreme of situations since
then the institution of marriage has
rapidly deteriorated
today many people avoid marriage and of
those who do marry divorce is the
statistical Norm
if one more specifically to design a
culture and a social system for the
express purpose of undercutting marriage
and fatherhood and men's contribution to
family life our current society would be
close to what would result observes
Pompano
the sexual Revolution which commenced in
the 1960s was a major factor in the
decline of marriage
under the guise of sexual Liberation
promiscuity was normalized and with more
females willing to engage in a low
commitment sexual relations more men
renounced monogamy and marriage in favor
of sleeping around
the damage that the sexual Revolution
inflicted on marriage fatherhood and of
the family was one of its intended
outcomes
in summarizing the ideas of Wilhelm
Reich and Herbert marcusa two of the
intellectual drivers of the sexual
Revolution Carl Truman explains
sex focused on procreation and family
life is the repressive weapon of
Bourgeois capitalist society and free
love and untrammeled sexual
experimentation are a central part of
the Revolutionary liberation of society
to transform Society politically one
must transform Society sexually
the sexual Moors of late capitalism
focused as they are in the maintenance
of monogamy and the patriarchal family
are actually no longer as necessary as
they once were
a societal-wide deterioration and values
has also weakened the institution of
marriage responsibility and commitment
to others have fallen by the wayside and
been replaced by a narcissistic
obsession with ego fulfillment
while in the past the main function of
marriage was to create an economic and
reproductive partnership for the sake of
raising healthy children today marriage
is seen almost exclusively as a vehicle
for satisfying one's needs and Desires
in the myth that romantic love can solve
one's problems remains pervasive
when feelings of infatuation or love
Wane therefore or when a partner feels
unfulfilled or incomplete then divorce
even when children are involved has
become the socially approved solution
whereas poppinel writes
it was not so long ago that the divorce
Revolution was given a strangely
positive cast in popular culture
if breaking up is better for parents it
was thought it cannot be all that bad
for children what keeps parents happy
should also keep children happy
how can an idea so wrong-headed have
been so pervasive in part of course it
was a convenient guilt retarding
rationalization for parents who were
breaking up
clearly an abusive or highly
dysfunctional marriage should end for
the sake of all involved however for the
problem of the absent father to be
solved there needs to be a
revitalization in the institution of
marriage and a re-emphasis on the fact
that the main reason marriage developed
in the first place was to benefit
children not to fulfill or complete the
adult partners
Society in its wisdom has recognized
that in order to hold the father to the
mother and child a cultural tie had to
be developed where a biological tie was
weak
marriage is society's way of signaling
to would-be parents of children that
their long-term relationship together is
socially important
while marriage benefits children
committed fatherhood promotes the
well-being and fulfillment of men
Family Life motivates men to positively
Channel their aggressive energy become
socially productive and cultivate the
virtues of honesty trust self-sacrifice
and discipline that are necessary to
support and become a role model for
their children
in his book a sense of well-being the
psychologist Angus Campbell notes that
in terms of overall life satisfaction
the most well-off males are fathers of
grown children who are still married to
their wives
the unhappiest on the other hand are
divorced men and unattached men who have
no wife or children as men have more
difficulty forming social relationships
than women a man without a wife and
children is often a man without any
close relationships at all
it is not just that particularly healthy
and competent and morally upright
persons are more likely to marry but
that marriage actually promotes Health
competence virtue and personal
well-being
there is a civilizing effect for men in
merely being in the company of women and
children an environment which typically
promotes life-enhancing values
with the continued growth of
fatherlessness we can expect to see a
nation of men who are at worst morally
out of control and at best unhappy
unhealthy and unfulfilled
but it is ultimately children who suffer
the most from an absent father and as
children are the future of society
Society suffers by extension
absent fathers translate into broken
children and broken children are at risk
of growing up to be broken men and women
who perpetuate societal dysfunction
what Society does to its children so
will its children due to society the
Roman Statesman Cicero observed and as
Pope no concludes
strong families with involved fathers
and lifelong marriages are irreplaceable
for a strong and stable moral order for
adult well-being and ultimately for the
well-being and success in life of their
children
if we continue down the path of
fatherlessness we are headed for social
disaster
in the final analysis every father
counts
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