The greatest problem with modern fatherhood is that too many men are missing it.
And it’s not only the women and children who suffer. Men often damage themselves when they wriggle out of their responsibilities. Think about it.
The erosion of marriage and fathering in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has resulted in low incomes and unhappiness among males, too, according to a recent study by Rutgers University.
The study qualifies popular wisdom: men who shirk their parental responsibilities rarely wind up on top, either with a good job or with a good mate.
Let’s face it, some men will give up their socially irresponsible behavior only when they have children and feel the need to set a good example.
Marriage and commitment encourage the regular work habit and sacrifice required to meet the family’s material, psychological and social needs.
Without pressure, some men choose to slide by and let somebody else assume the burden of their obligations.
Self-gratification is the culprit: the attitude of “Me first, you second.”
Truthfully, there is strength in family ties and social responsibility.
Consider the following statistics:
- Married couples have higher incomes and assets than singles, with an average individual wealth (assets) of $66,000, almost twice the level of divorced individuals ($34,000) or the never-married ($35,000) of the same age;
- Children of single-parent families (after adjusting for parents’ education, race, and place of residence) are twice as likely to drop out of school, and two to three times as likely to live in poverty as those children from two-parent families;
- Married men and women (again adjusting for education, race, and place of residence) live longer than the unmarried. Among married 48-year-old men, about 85 percent will live to age 65; among singles, the proportion is only about 62 percent. The experience for women is similar;
- According to another academic study, nearly half of cohabiting parents split up before their child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in 12 married couples. The report says that 70 percent of young criminals come from lone-parent families.
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This is not to say there are no single-parent successes in raising children.
We are only talking about averages, and the averages decisively favor marriage.
And whatever the reason, a family commitment is a powerful antidote to self-centeredness.
At the same time, being committed to a family unit offers experiences that likely would be missed otherwise: coaching a soccer or basketball team, or merely connecting with others in a community of learning that goes beyond one’s own children to the children of others;
This is not to ignore, however, the problems and conflicts that arise from day-to-day family encounters: arguing, blaming, complaining, and criticizing.
At the end of the day, there is something to be gained by unconditional love, a love that is often returned to the provider with bonus points.
Marriage and family, meanwhile, are not just a good bargain; in life, they offer the best bargain we can get.
Among girls, those with healthy ties with their fathers have fewer out-of-wedlock births than those who don’t. One reason is that they feel confident in a relationship with a man and are less vulnerable to predatory sex.
Additionally, there is a broader benefit that children take from two parents. In today’s world, making marriage work requires commitment and compromise. But successful marriage is an object lesson to children in trust and obligation.
Yet there’s little doubt that the decline of marriage and fatherhood stems from the breakdown of traditional roles in the family—the man as sole breadwinner, the woman as mother and homemaker.
As women pursue their careers in today’s world, they are less confined to the home; they can more easily survive independently. As a result, 70 percent of married women with children have joined the labor force.
The bottom line is that we are at war with ourselves.
We are a social order obsessed with individual satisfaction.
As we loosen the collective bonds that are indispensable for the good of our children and our society, we are becoming a culture of fatherless families, drug and alcohol addiction, welfare dependency and educational failure.
We are creating an underclass mired in misery and cut off from much of mainstream society.
If the trend continues, this new burgeoning underclass will threaten the wellbeing of middle-class America, particularly those of the once tranquil neighborhoods.
Without a radical reappraisal of government policy towards marriage and the family, social tensions will continue to grow, fueling violent crime and undermining our nation’s future.
For too long the issue of family breakdown has been disparaged and ignored, and its erosion already has had a harmful effect on us all.
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Top o’ the morning!