Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 20, 1993 TAG: 9306280261
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That question has crossed my mind many times in the nearly three years I have been writing editorials for this newspaper. Maybe it's because I write so often about tragedies, horrors and pathos that for today's children have become a critical mass.
You're familiar with the misery index:
Children living in poverty. Children being sexually abused by their parents or other adults. Children committing suicide. Children carrying guns, shooting themselves accidentally, shooting others on purpose. Children hooked on drugs, or alcohol.
Children dropping out of school, or running away from home, never to be heard of again. Children stalked by dangerous crazies. Having abortions. Going to adult jails. Children infected with AIDS. Children having children.
That last one has somehow become a specialty. Whenever no other topic presents itself in time to meet a one-a-day editorial quota, I will view with alarm (though I've never actually used that hackneyed editorial phrase) the problem, writ large, of unwed teen-aged mothers.
I'm ashamed to say - being an equal-opportunity finger-pointer - I've not written nearly enough about unwed teen-aged fathers.
Where did all the fathers go?
Well, to hear me tell it - in an editorial I recently wrote about Virginia's Paternity Establishment Project - they sometimes go to hospitals' maternity wards when a girl/woman has delivered a baby they've sired. They act like proud papas (read: virile studs).
But all too often that's the last time they act like fathers. Soon, even if the state is successful in collaring them at the hospital and getting them to sign paternity papers, they'll disappear from the lives of the girls (often more than one) they got pregnant and the children (often more than one) they helped to produce.
(Sitting in a bar months or years later, someone will ask: "You got any kids?" And be they bubbas, yuppies, dudes or bro's, they'll grin, wink and - so original - say, "None to speak of.")
I know that not all unwed fathers are louts who want nothing to do with their children. Often, social workers tell me, the last thing unwed mothers want is to have this guy hanging around. So low is their self-esteem, they believe that if daddy shows any interest in the baby, it entitles him to sex with mama whenever he wants it. Been there, done that; no thank you.
I know also that many dads - wed and unwed - have the excuse of being financially unable to show responsibility for their children. They may be willing, but lack the skills or education to support even themselves, much less their youngsters.
And, yes, I know about the other excuses. Males, poor dears, have been led astray by the media: Rap anthems that extoll the joys of promiscuity, even rape, for macho fellows. Movie stars and sports heroes on the talk shows, boasting of their sexual conquests and children by different mothers. If "responsibility" comes into it at all, it's mostly advertising jinglelese: "Be a Trojan man!"
But in January 1992, pre-empting Veep Dan Quayle and the "Murphy Brown" unpleasantness, then-U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan said this: "Though our society is only beginning to recognize it, the greatest family challenge of our era is fatherless-ness: male absence from family life."
He drew the links between violence in society "and a generation of young males raised without the love, discipline and guidance of a father," links between swelling prison populations and absentee fathers, between childhood poverty and vanishing dads.
In a "call for national action," Dr. Sullivan said, "It is time to shift our attention to the issue of male responsibility, and to the indispensable role that good fathers play in our society." I agree.
Others are beginning to join the call. Virginia's Gov. Doug Wilder, in a speech honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. this past January, said: "How can future generations sing of their fathers' pride when almost an entire generation is going fatherless? . . . We must resolve . . . that we will instill in our young men what pride of fatherhood really means, and that it doesn't end at conception."
Governor, sometimes it doesn't even start there. Let me tell you about a local man who washes my car. He is 49-year-old Mickey Scott, who runs Mickey's Executive Car Care across the street from this newspaper.
Scott and his wife, Margaret, learned 12 years ago that she had cancer, and because of it they could not have children. A friend at their church suggested they might ease that pain and fill a gap in their lives by becoming foster parents.
Since then, Scott has "fathered" more than 30 foster kids, many of them in poor health, many rescued by social workers from homes where they were being neglected or abused. "Boys, girls, blacks, whites, it makes no difference to me," he says. He formally adopted two toddlers he met as foster children: Latisha, now 13, and Michelle, now 6.
Often, he and his wife have cared - and I do mean cared - for as many as five children at a time. Financially, he says they just scrape by. "But I'm convinced my wife wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for these kids." Anyway, says Scott, "the Good Lord provides."
Now, being as how my turn to write the editorial-staff op-ed column happened to fall on Fathers Day, and since I get to say most anything I please in a column, I am pleased to say this:
I've been privileged to know many fine, responsible fathers - dedicated to giving kids love, attention, discipline and guidance. Among these, I include the major father figures of my life: a grandfather, the late George Custer, and an uncle, the late Ralph Mayfield, both of Roanoke.
I would include some dear friends: Bob Nicholson of Richmond, father of my goddaughter, Bryn. The late Hugh Robertson of Richmond. Also, my boss, Alan Sorensen, editor of these editorial pages.
I would include several young, Virginia political reporters, pals and colleagues too numerous to name, whose hard-nosed cynicism (required of political reporters) just melts away when they speak of their babies. (Well, some of their names are Rob Eure, Warren Fiske, Jeff Schapiro, Greg Schneider.)
I'd include my ex-husband and still good friend, Everett Fisher of Roanoke. And finally, I'd list the poppa of my three grandchildren: my son, Jeff Fisher of Winston-Salem, N.C., of whom, when he was growing up, I would never have suspected such strong, good-parenting instincts.
These are men of widely varied financial means. But prosperous, working-poor or somewhere in between, they've seen to it that their children don't know poverty.
So happy Fathers Day to them, and to others like them. They might leave their children's mother, but they don't ever leave their children. They understand, I believe, that the worst poverty for children may be a poverty of care and values that fathers can provide.
They stick by their kids. They aren't "going" anywhere.
by CNB