Why are more children than ever are growing up with no male role models in sight?
By the time of the next General Election, the UK is expected to have reached an unwelcome milestone—the number of lone parent families will have hit two million.
This figure comes from a report published last week by an independent think tank, the Centre For Social Justice. According to the report, the number of single parent families is increasing at a rate more than 20,000 per year.
The report also finds that—
“One quarter of all families with dependent children are now headed by a lone parent as Britain experiences one of the highest rates of family breakdown in the developed world.”
At least one million children are now growing up without any contact with their father. This lack of male influence often continues into education, with one quarter of primary schools in England and Wales having no male teachers at all.
According to the report, many children in the most disadvantaged communities are now growing up in “man deserts”, with this absence of male role models being linked to higher levels of teenage crime, pregnancy and disadvantage.
So are there any causes for hope in this seemingly relentless picture of gloom?
Firstly, it’s worth noting that those fathers who do stay with their children are still in the majority even in most of the poorest communities. Secondly, those who don’t stay have usually not physically vanished. Often they are not far away, in single bedroom flats, or living with their parents, or on friends couches.
So how could they be drawn back out of this separate, parallel universe?
The report claims that currently, for every £1 of public money spent trying to keep families together, £6000 is spend dealing with the consequences of a break-up.
It’s possible that providing the right kinds of financial incentives for couples to stay together, or even to get married, could not only reduce the number of lone parent families but could be cost-effective as well.
However, even if these kinds of solutions worked they would not address the fundamental question of why so many men are turning away from their parental responsibilities in the first place.
Could at least part of the answer lie in the changing nature and status of employment in these communities? The majority of young men are still able to find work, often putting in longer hours than ever, but they do so for a relatively lower wage and with less job security or collective bargaining power than their parents would have enjoyed.
Have these changes helped to fuel a culture in which the hard working guy trying to do the right thing for his family is often regarded as being simply naïve, while amoral self-interest and even criminality are taken to be signs of open-eyed intelligence?
For young men influenced by this culture, the commitment and self-sacrifice required for fatherhood are unlikely to seem justifiable.
In a globalized economy there might be no short term solution to this decline in steady, rewarding employment, so perhaps the answer instead could be to try to counter the negative cultural response with one which similarly recognises that men should not be judged by their breadwinning capabilities, but for a different reason—a culture which emphasises the value of the roles that men can play within the family and the community? It is surely better to be a good father than a good earner?
The overall tone of the CSJ report belies the fact that the first green shoots of such a culture might already be appearing. Those fathers who do stay with their children today are likely to have an unashamedly more active involvement in their upbringing than in previous generations.
Anyone who spends much time in the kinds of communities that the report focuses on, or who even passes through them, will know that although young men pushing prams are still not the norm, they are not an eye-catching novelty either.
Is there really any reason to think that it would take a seismic shift in character for most absent young fathers to become positive role models of one kind or another?
The potential is there, like a vast reservoir beneath the surface of the “man desert”. All that is needed is the collective will to find the right way to tap into it.
Read more on Men and Masculinity on The Good Life.
Image credit: Untitled blue/Flickr
Man
You see the problem is that that not all men love their wife’s like Christ love the church.
But when they do,it is a good thing and lots of problems will be prevented.
This isn’t happening in every home, how does the Judeo-Christian perspective fit with the feminist movement again? “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,… Read more »
Actually let me flesh this out- I was on the phone earlier… What I mean is that the # of children raised within a gay parenting structure, as compared to a straight couples’ care is probably diminimous and subsesequently not of consequence- I may be wrong about the %. I have no doubt that children raised in any 2 parent home have a more stable and socialized experience, I also have a suspicion that the children of gay women, in this current crop, have a mother who often worked harder at getting pregnant than many straight women do- and so… Read more »
“I also have a suspicion that the children of gay women, in this current crop, have a mother who often worked harder at getting pregnant than many straight women do- and so can see them being more committed to parenting.” You are assuming that one of he women in a lesbian couple is biologically related to their children, which is not necessarily the case. Plenty of gay and lesbian couples adopt. Speaking of adoption, you’re ignoring all the effort heterosexual couples put in to adopting children. You are assuming that heterosexual women all generally get pregnant easily, which ignores all… Read more »
HeatherN 95% of the friction between us is your assumptions…
“one might expect that the children of lesbian couples were equally prone to crime and teen pregnancy, and that just isn’t the case.”
I sincerely doubt there are enough children of lesbian couples to provide a meaningful analysis of trends.
Actually, there’ve been quite a few studies on the children of lesbian parents. The results are that they are doing just as well as kids in families with two straight parents.
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/parenting/adolescents-with-lesbian-mothers-describe-their-own-lives/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1939-0025.2012.01176.x/full
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20100607/kids-of-lesbian-parents-are-well-adjusted
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1994480,00.html
And here’s the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting
And then of course there’s the anecdotal evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Wahls
Some points: The quote you provided says that “one quarter of all families with dependent children are now headed by a lone parent.” I’m curious what the breakdown is between how many families have a man as the ‘lone parent,’ and how many have a woman as the ‘lone parent.’ I’m curious, how many of those families without a father are being raised in communities which emphasize the importance of extended families. As such, just how accurate is the term “man desert,” if male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc., are helping raising these children? How many of these single parent households… Read more »
Hi HeatherN
Good analyses!
Heather, Neither marriage nor the nuclear family were elevated to a position of privilege within the article. I mentioned marriage once as one possible solution. The article focused on the importance of male role models and looked at reasons why some men may have become less willing to accept parental responsibility. This should be seen in the context of the Good Men Project being a site which provides a space for these kinds of issues to be constructively discussed. It does not imply that male role models are always indispensable, or that any childhood without them is inevitably incomplete. Nothing… Read more »
“Do you really believe it’s possible that the presence of a male role model might, on average, have no influence whatsoever on any of those factors?” Alrighty, did you know that Hitler was a vegetarian? Do you really believe that him being a dictator and him being a vegetarian just happen to go together, but without any causality? To take my example out of an individual, and to look at larger patterns: Did you know that there seems to be an overlap in the geographical distribution of chocolate consumption and Nobel Prize winners? Does that mean that chocolate consumption causes… Read more »
The thing is, Hitler and being a vegetarian, and chocolate and the Nobel Prize are two examples which are obviously correlative but without a causal link. The problem, however, is that the way in which we determine what is obvious is by using our past knowledge on the subject along with our common sense. And our common sense is developed through instinct (of course), but also but cultural and social norms. So we read that many households that are single-parent (assumed to be mostly mothers) also suffer from higher instances of crime and poverty. And based on “common sense” about… Read more »
Even if no causal relationship has been proven that does not mean it isn’t there. As the saying goes – “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” If there is no proof one way or the other then people are entitled to form their own opinions. My opinion is that the presence of a male role model in a child’s life is likely to have some influence over the factors listed – disadvantage, crime and teenage pregnancy. This opinion is a reflection of my views on men, my wider political views and, although you dislike the notion, common sense.… Read more »
I think perhaps some men are simply saying “No responsibility without rights”. Right now in the UK, US and Canada (and perhaps other places) men have zero rights regarding procreation including but not limited to the right to say “NO”. How’s that pro choice for you.
How about as a culture we dispense with the idea of maternal ownership of the children?
Didn’t Daniel Patrick Moynihan write about this 40 years ago? I find this trend disturbing- but not new. “At least one million children are now growing up without any contact with their father.”– Any idea what % of them ever had a Father; as opposed to their mother had sex with a guy? I’m strident in my opinion that fertility does not make one a Father. This piece circles back the the NYTimes “Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?” https://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/open-thread-discussion-of-nytimes-opinion-piece-is-forced-fatherhood-fair/ I suspect more and more men are voting, for a woman’s right to decide, with their feet and walking away when presented… Read more »