OPINION:
The four children who miraculously survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle received a message of hope from their dying mother before she sent them away from the wreckage of their plane: “You guys are going to see the kind of man your dad is, and he’s going to show you the same kind of great love that I’ve shown you.”
On Father’s Day, those words have special significance.
The impact of fatherless families can be seen everywhere.
Of the young men in prison, 90% grew up without fathers. It’s been estimated that a 1% increase in single-parent households in a neighborhood results in a 3% increase in adolescent violence.
More than 70% of high school dropouts come from fatherless families. Criminal behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, and the early initiation of sexual activity are all far more common among children whose fathers weren’t around in their formative years. Seven in 10 unplanned teen pregnancies happen when there’s no father at home.
Despite this massive weight of evidence of the disastrous effects of growing up without a father, society seems intent on separating men from their families.
For the middle class, no-fault divorce has led to the rise of female-dominated households. Ironically, feminists told us that easy access to divorce would improve the condition of women. Sure, if poverty is an improvement.
For the poor, giving welfare to single mothers achieved the same end. Before the War on Poverty, the Black out-of-wedlock birthrate was 25%. Today, it’s over 70%, and up to 90% in some parts of the country.
The responsible father provides protection in an increasingly chaotic world. When a man tells his daughter’s date to have her home by 11, it’s far more persuasive than if it’s her mother who lays down the law.
Yet everywhere, the message is the same: Fathers are largely irrelevant. Single or married mothers are celebrated, and rightly so. Fathers are ignored or ridiculed. In commercials, women are savvy, while men are well-meaning schnooks.
Speaking in April at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the National Teacher of the Year, President Biden proclaimed: “There is no such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”
You can see why the Father of the Year would want to blame society for the way Hunter turned out. If we’re all responsible for his son’s degeneracy, the president is off the hook.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis remarked: “Fathers are not born but made. A man does not become a father simply by bringing a child into the world, but by taking the responsibility to care for that child.”
Was the father of little Navy Joan Roberts listening?
A mother doesn’t have to be coaxed into caring. She carried the child in her body, experienced the pain of childbirth, and probably nursed the infant too.
As the pontiff said, fathers must be made.
They’re good for more than financial support, though the poverty rate is three times as high among fatherless families.
Mothers and fathers teach different lessons. Fathers stress restraint. The teen gangs that have taken over cities like Chicago and Los Angeles are largely a product of runaway dads.
Mothers teach security, fathers the importance of striving. Mothers teach empathy. Fathers teach responsibility.
We live in a feminized society where it’s all about getting in touch with your feelings. That’s why masculine leadership is dismissed as patriarchal.
I couldn’t last 40 minutes in the Amazon jungle, let alone 40 days, but — like the juvenile survivors of that plane crash — I had a father who loved me.
Wednesday is my father’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death, which is observed according to Jewish tradition.
He was part of the Greatest Generation. He didn’t preach, but he taught by example. He grew up in Brooklyn in what was called a cold-water flat, without a father of his own. He survived the Depression and served in World War II.
He wasn’t a good father; he was a great father.
Then again, perhaps fatherhood was easier for him. I grew up in the era of “Father Knows Best” and “Make Room for Daddy,” when public schools supported families instead of teaching gender ideology. Divorce was spoken of in hushed tones. To abandon your family was disgraceful.
To give more children a father like mine, we must recreate the culture that shaped him.
It’s a jungle out there. Children need fathers to survive.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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