THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 10, 1995 TAG: 9505100051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY RODNEY J. MOORE, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
ACCORDING TO David Blankenhorn's new book, ``Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem'' (Basic Books, $23), the phrase ``wait till your father gets home'' is in danger of becoming obsolete.
Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, solidly argues that missing fathers are partly, if not solely, to blame for many of today's societal problems. He contends that the underlying phenomenon tying together youth violence, children in poverty, adolescent childbearing, child sexual abuse and domestic violence is the absent father.
Blankenhorn goes beyond documenting the effects of fatherlessness on families to show how the very model of fatherhood is at risk. His book is not simply a criticism of fathers but more a criticism of a fatherless culture. It is as thought-provoking as it is challenging.
Since 1960, the number of children in America living apart from their fathers has more than doubled. Before they reach age 18, more than half of our nation's children are likely to spend a significant portion of their childhoods apart from their fathers.
Until the early 19th century, in almost all cases of divorce, it was established practice to award the custody of children to fathers. By the 1830s, however, Blankenhorn says, child-rearing manuals were more often addressed to women, and men were spending more and more time away from their homes. The industrialization of the United States led to the separation of home and work, which meant the separation of fathers from their families.
So who or what is to blame for the dramatic shift in today's ideology? For one thing, we're now living in a divorce culture, Blankenhorn says. More often than not, fatherhood ends after divorce. The father either becomes a Deadbeat Dad (the ultimate bad guy) or The Visiting Father (part father, part stranger) - two of five ``almost fathers'' categorized by Blankenhorn. The remaining three are the Sperm Father, the Stepfather and the Nearby Guy.
To get a much better idea of what fathers should be, Blankenhorn interviewed 250 married men and women in eight different states. And with 81 pages of footnoted research, his conclusions are hardly manufactured.
In the end, Blankenhorn calls for a new cultural story of fatherhood to be written. ``The moral of today's story is that fatherhood is superfluous,'' Blankenhorn says. ``The moral of the new story must be that fatherhood is essential.''
He wants to see the reinstatement of what anthropologist Branislaw Malinowski called the ``principle of legitimacy.'' In other words, a father for every child. Ideally, married fathers.
A good society, he says, celebrates the ideal of the man who puts his family first. According to Blankenhorn, he would be called the Good Family Man. Unfortunately, that is a dying breed.
Blankenhorn ends with a dozen modest proposals to point us in a new direction. Most of his proposals require action on the part of men. They include (1) a presidential report given to the nation on the state of fatherhood; (2) the creation of community fathers' clubs by a few good men; (3) limiting sperm-bank withdrawals to married women; (4) encouraging intact families, with fathers, to move into public housing; and (5) professional athletes' organizing a public service campaign about the importance of fatherhood.
Taken individually, Blankenhorn's proposals are limited and fragmentary, but if implemented together, they could be the start of a revolution toward the fatherhood ideal. MEMO: Rodney J. Moore is a freelance writer who lives in Chesapeake.
by CNB