This is a comment by Alastair on the post “The End of Fatherhood Means the End of Civilized Society”.
Alastair said:
I think that the loss of fatherhood operates on two different levels. There is the absence of particular good fathers and their positive role modelling and support for their growing children. However, in many quarters of society there is increasingly also the loss of fatherhood as a role for men to aspire to. This is far more troubling and dangerous in the long term. Men without the cultural role of fatherhood to aspire to will often pursue masculinity in far less healthy ways.
The loss of fatherhood is easily blamed on male failure. The claim that men are ultimately responsible for the loss of fatherhood is definitely not without a large measure of truth to it. However, they are certainly not the only ones responsible. I think that it is only natural that fatherhood is being lost, given the sort of things that our society values and the sort of things that it dislikes.
Our society celebrates independence and autonomy. However, the father figure represents authority, a figure that to a far greater extent than the mother, from whom we were born, stands over against us. A society that values fathers values authority and a social order to which we are called to submit ourselves, within which we can become more than we already are. Given the common distrust and hatred of authority, the strong father figure will not be viewed in a positive light.
The whole fathering function within society in general has fallen into bad repute, stigmatized as ‘patriarchal’ and repressive. In the society that results from the downplaying of any fathering function, fathers tend to be reimagined as the support staff for the mothering function, muted figures who have limited role of their own, but exist as ancillaries to their wives. These figures are portrayed as belovedly incompetent, relatively passive, childish, bumbling but affirming sidekicks to the women in their lives, demoted to the position of handservants to the feminist dream of women having it all. Frankly, this is an emasculating role to which few men aspire.
Photo credit: Flickr / Beau Maes
The children of many wealthy folks were and are raised by nannies. Do you think the prez and Michelle work 9 to 5? There is a reason grandma moved in.
A father doesn’t have to live in home to be effective.Simply saying his absense is absolutely the primary determinant in how a child will turnout is grossly overrated.If a child is performing one have to courage to ask whats going on in the home.
“The problem is that kids growing up without fathers have a greater chance of having sub-optimal lives, which means crime, drugs, promiscuity, lousy school history. All of which become social difficulties costing society, which means the taxpayer, at least money. And of course being victimized by the criminals thus originating.” yes I do agree that. I think the lack of role models is the factor, Kids without fathers they end up seeking male role models elsewhere and often in the wrong places( but not always) . But I disagree with the ones who claims lack of fathers is equal with… Read more »
Excellent. Now we’re getting down to brass tacks. The assertion: an increase in the percentage of single-parent households translates into an increase in crime. Crime has been getting worse over the past few decades because there are fewer two-parent homes. This makes a lot of sense to me. It’s logical and plausible, and certainly it feels today like crime is getting worse. It’s a great hypothesis because it’s very testable. The problem? The crime statistics don’t really back this up. Contrary to popular belief, the overall crime rate has actually been going down for the past 40 years. If there’s… Read more »
well. The problem is that kids growing up without fathers have a greater chance of having sub-optimal lives, which means crime, drugs, promiscuity, lousy school history. All of which become social difficulties costing society, which means the taxpayer, at least money. And of course being victimized by the criminals thus originating. And since one of the bases for some social engineering is that “your free choice” costs the rest of us, it would be easy enough, were anyone interested, to approach the problem as with seat belts. “Your free choice” not to wear seatbelts costs the rest of us money… Read more »
Drugs and promiscuity are quite pleasant parts of life. I’d stay away from crime and poor performance in school, though. Unless the crime is something white collar that you can get away with, and for that you’ll need to do well in school.
I grew up in a married, two-parent nuclear family household in the suburbs, and it made me a pretty jaded reprobate…..
well.
As I said, it costs society. Drugs and promiscuity lead to crime, STDs, more unwanted pregnancies, more fatherless kids.
And, I’d totally expect these social outcome as well. Or I used to, anyway. I was just as surprised as anyone else to learn that ever since the 1960’s, despite what people say about any increase in drugs and promiscuity, that the crime rate has been going down since then, not up.
It’s only a problem if you don’t aspire to fatherhood and have children anyway.
If I don’t aspire to being a father and therefore I am not a father, then what’s the problem? No children are being harmed by my not being a father to them, because they don’t exist.
Before I can agree about the “loss” thesis, I would like to see what the evidence is that fatherhood is actually significantly “in decline” compared to previous eras. Everyone says it, and it sells a lot of books and gets a lot of votes, but is it actually true? I agree that fatherhood could use a lot more respect today than it gets. That’s different from saying that fatherhood is in decline or that civilization (leaving that undefined for the moment) has always been based on a strong, respected role for fathers. In previous generations, fathers also abandoned their children,… Read more »
@wellokaythen …. You asked for data …. § According to a U.S, Census Bureau report, over 25 million children live apart from their biological fathers. That is 1 out of every 3 (34.5%) children in America. Nearly 2 in 3 (65%) African American children live in fatherless homes. Nearly 4 in 10 (36%) Hispanic children, and nearly 3 in 10 (27%) white children live in fatherless homes.[i] § From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes have tripled, increasing from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined.[ii] §… Read more »
Excellent. Thank you. That’s good data right there about a change over time, or at least the two middle ones show a change over time. The other two are snapshots of the present, which may be better or worse than past moments in time. So, there are more single-parent families, more children growing up in a residence that is separate from their biological fathers, and more single mother families. That’s clearly something to do with a change in fatherhood. Makes sense that this looks like fathers are around less than they used to be. But, there are different kinds of… Read more »
It has nothing to do with nostalgia. It has everything to do with the fact that too many kids have no dads in their lives and the cycle is not changing. I would venture to say that most adult males don’t even know who the Beavers were much less be familiar with the TV shows back in the late 50’s. But what many adult men do know is that they don’t have fathers in their lives or at the very least many of the fathers aren’t great role models. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that… Read more »
There are multiple possibilities, and I think would be best to weigh the pros and cons of all of them. It’s possible to have a great father, an average father, a bad father, or no father. Where the rubber meets the road, in some situations the question is whether a particular child is better off with a bad father or no father. I tend to think a child may be better off with no father than with a really bad father, but I know others disagree. I hope someday our society will see moms the same way, that sometimes kids… Read more »
NAJ. Among other things, the “rule of thumb” canard has been debunked. I suggest you have a couple of words with whomever set you up with that one.
Why the appeal to history? What’s the point? Do you know anybody who wants that? The only thing I can think of is that anybody who says something, anything, might have been better fifty years ago is instantly accused of wanting to return to Jim Crow. It’s kind of a reflex. Some folks can do it in their sleep.
@ NAJ … I would be interested to know where he got his information? Why is he not responding himself? This is “The Good Man Project” and I would think that if anywhere, he would feel comfortable speaking up in this forum. Each generation of dads try to be better then their dads before them. I did some things differently as a dad. He was a blue collar worker whereas I and my brothers became professionals in the corporate world, just as an example. But I have to say that my dad provided a great foundation as to how I… Read more »
My friend has his own demons. Among them betrayals which have left him unwilling to engage unless he knows the people in the discussion and knows they speak honsestly and thoughtfully. I only posted this because I was certain he would not return to the site. His father and his relationship with his father was … “less than good.” However he is very intelligent, very well educated and a very deep thinker, even when his thoughts are colored by what an ass his father was. One issue left unstated is the impact of PTSD. It is estimated that nearly 100%… Read more »
@NAJ . I completely understand what you’re saying and what you’ve experienced. I work with a lot of inner city kids and have heard them say the exact same thing. Helplessness and hopelessness. But should that be enough to throw the idea of fatherhood out the window or should it be motivation for change? I’m known as the “hard ass” on my unit. Many of the kids come out of the gate hating me yet at the end of treatment, they come to me and thank me for caring for them. Caring enough that I would hold their feet to… Read more »
A friend who has no interest in participating in a debate with people who do not know him sent me a response after a shared the article with him. There is a great deal of anger in that response. I’ve copied it here without the name simply because I respect my friends intelligence and insight. I read it and I find its conclusion to be misogynistic clap trap. Feel free to continue to be disappointed and disillusioned by the failure of intelligent discussion with courtesy and thoughtfulness on FB, but there it is. The spirit embodied there is a cry… Read more »
The way I see it is that there is a push to re-define fatherhood opposed to enhancing or expanding it. It’s outstanding that there are more men as primary care givers to their children but at the same time there is a large population of men who are not interested in that role as described. I’m not knocking stay at home dads, I’m simply stating that fatherhood shouldn’t be defined as XYZ. We live in a society where it’s perfectly acceptable that fathers not have to be in a childs life. Men are denied access to their kids, people automatically… Read more »
Amanda, Problem with having it all is one of the laws of physics: Nobody can be in two places at the same time. You can’t have it all with a big-time job–how many of those are there, anyway?–and be a full-time, or even much of a part-time mother. To have the big-time job, either your husband is a SAHD, which means he doesn’t have it all or you use daycare to do your mothering for you. That presumes you have a husband. Nobody can have it all unless the definition of mother does not include, say, fifty hours of the… Read more »
Except MANDA: Fathers are still supposed to be responsible for all the things they were responsible for before this ‘new age’, look at crippling CS and Alimony (though rarer, it is still there). They are still expected to have a job , both by society thru what I will call peer pressure and thru laws such as child support and alimony.
Essentially you’re complaining that the patriarchy isn’t as popular anymore. So what? I think you’re defining fatherhood pretty narrowly here. I agree that society has made a running-gag of the “clueless, second-child of a husband,” and it’s pretty lousy and incredibly degrading. However, I don’t think that these silly representations spark a need for a rewind into the days where a father would have unquestioned authority over both his children and partner. You refer to the “feminist dream of women having it all” and state that men’s part in that ideal is as the “handservant”. I’d like to make it… Read more »
@Manda … Believe it or not, there were countless women who enjoyed living in patriarchy. Patriarchy, contrary to what the feminists wanted to portray it as, did not mean that women had no say in their families. To the opposite, through the years women very much ran the roost, raised and took care of the family. My father was the patriarch and died when he was 62. My mother who reaped the benefits of his hard work lived another 18 years after his passing. I’m not taking away any of the benefits that my mom enjoyed but you make it… Read more »
I dont really understand what you are talking about Manda. I dont see anybody wanting to go back to the so called good ol days, I dont see any MRA claiming such and I dont see anybody here saying that. Perhaps some traditionalist anti evolution flat earth beliver. Sure, but we are not talking about them. The point is fathers ARE IMPORTANT. Men know this, women recognice this. So whats the problem? well society is slowlæy bein ingrainet to make dads irrilevant. Just a burden, a burden about bein a father, who for today stndart is either a doormat or… Read more »
oh no I hit the submit button to fast and I didnt correct the typos. My apologies.
The reason is misandry & excessive feminism