Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A majority chucked the "Dear Ol' Dad" articles in favor of editorials, feature stories and columns on the problem of absent fathers - fatherlessness, he said.
Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and chairman of the National Fatherhood Initiative - a national nonprofit organization that strives to strengthen fatherhood in America - was pleased.
"This was not really on our national agenda a few years ago, and it is today," Blankenhorn said. "Discussing the issue has become more intense."
Blankenhorn has been working to turn national attention toward responsible fatherhood for years, even before former Vice President Dan Quayle remarked in 1992 that the fictitious Murphy Brown's pregnancy mocked the importance of fatherhood.
Blankenhorn founded the New York-based Institute for American Values in 1987 to examine what was happening to children in the United States and the family as a social institution in society. In 1991, he was looking for a peg on which to hang a think-tank type essay for Father's Day.
Blankenhorn, the father of a 6-year-old son, had seen some U.S. Census Bureau statistics on the number of children who didn't live with their fathers. The numbers, he said, astounded him.
"You had millions of children who were separated from their fathers," Blankenhorn said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It occurred to me that this was the most important trend affecting children today. If you looked at the public debate, it was all about other issues - day care, programs for children in poverty, violence on television.
"But there was very little discussion on the most dangerous trend affecting children today - the unprecedented separation of males from their offspring."
Blankenhorn - who will bring his message to Roanoke College tonight as part of the National Fatherhood Initiative's "National Fatherhood Tour" - is working to ignite a debate on what he calls the "crisis of fatherlessness." His focus is not solely to promote the two-parent family but fathers and the role of men in family life.
"It's almost always the fathers who are the absent parents," he said. "Generally, when you say single-parent family, you're talking about a family with no father in the home."
A report released by the census bureau earlier this year found that one out of four households in metropolitan areas were headed by a single parent. And more than eight in 10 of those households were headed by women.
Some other statistics:
At least 19 million children lived without a father present in 1994.
More than 30 percent of all children today are born to unmarried women. In most cases the father is never legally identified.
Fatherless children are five times more likely to live in poverty than those in two-parent families.
Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school and much more likely to resort to violence and delinquent behavior.
"It's become increasingly clear to me that there is an elephant in the room, a huge problem we haven't been facing up to," Blankenhorn said. "This phenomenon of fatherlessness is the engine driving our big social problems."
Fatherhood has crept into the debate over the nation's welfare system. It is a subtheme of Virginia's new welfare program. The state in July began threatening to cut off benefits to mothers who don't cooperate with authorities in tracking down their former husbands or boyfriends. For those unsure about who fathered their children, the state will require a list of possible suspects and then search them out, take blood samples and conduct DNA tests to determine the real fathers.
Blankenhorn has long had a passion for community activism.
As a student at the old Andrew Lewis High School in Salem, Blankenhorn founded the Virginia Community Service Corps, a community service organization for high school students. After graduating from Andrew Lewis, Harvard University and the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, he returned to Roanoke and worked for a community citizens organization called Virginia Action.
Now he is watching the seeds of a social movement for responsible fathers take root.
"Perhaps we can turn this trend around," he said. "It seems like there is real concern out there at the grass-roots level that something has fundamentally gone wrong."
The Roanoke College Honors Program is sponsoring a two-event program on Fatherless America. David Blankenhorn will give the keynote address tonight at 7 in the Olin Theater. A panel discussion will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. in Antrim Chapel. For information on complimentary tickets, call 375-2333.
by CNB