THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506180044
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
Some dads today will open Father's Day cards picturing a smiling, wide-eyed dog holding slippers in its teeth.
Written above the dog: ``Today, Fathers across the land are being honored, revered, and respected!''
The punchline inside: ``Monday, it's back to normal!''
It's a funny card, but it also begs the question: What's ``normal'' for fathers anymore?
How they should act and how society should act toward them has become the subject of unprecedented scrutiny in this country.
Recent years have seen a spate of studies, books, organizations and gatherings of, about and for fathers. They've been spurred in part by Census Bureau reports that 40 percent of American children don't live with their biological fathers and a quarter don't live with any father figure. Studies have shown a correlation between absent fathers and all manner of social ills: welfare dependency, crime, teenage pregnancy, educational declines.
Among the activities:
The National Fatherhood Initiative, a 2-year-old advocacy group with headquarters in Lancaster, Pa., this year is sponsoring a multicity National Fatherhood Tour across the country, featuring co-founder David Blankenhorn, author of the much-quoted book ``Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem.'' This month it also kicked off a national public-service advertising campaign ``to support and encourage good fathers.''
Vice President Al Gore in October gave the keynote speech at a National Summit on Fatherhood in Dallas, and he promotes a computer chat-line for fathers.
The 13-year-old Institute for Responsible Fatherhood in Cleveland, which counsels primarily poor, black fathers, announced this month that for the first time, it's expanding to five other cities.
Promise Keepers, a conservative spiritual movement calling for fathers to return to more traditional roles in the home, filled Washington's RFK Stadium in May for a revival, and it's holding other big rallies across the country.
National and local children's rights councils are pushing lawmakers and courts to give fathers parenting rights equal to those of mothers.
Newsletters such as At-Home Dad out of North Andover, Mass., and Full-Time Dads out of Cumberland, Maine, offer support to the estimated 2 million fathers who are primary caretakers for their kids.
All this makes fathers a hot topic on Father's Day 1995, in what has become an unofficial Year of the Father.
``It's getting bigger all the time,'' said Froma Walsh, a University of Chicago professor and director of its Center for Family Health. ``And that's a great thing. I think for too long parenting was equated with mothering. And fathers were peripheral.''
No longer feeling peripheral are dads like Daniel A. Burke of Virginia Beach, a former Navy officer and now a stay-at-home father of three. He's long been used to patronizing, ``how-nice'' comments and the feeling that people thought he simply couldn't find a ``real'' job when he told them what he did. But at a recent high-school reunion, more of his friends said, ``God, I wish I could do that.''
There's also the social change he's been witnessing each morning when he drops off his children.
``There are many more fathers taking their kids to preschool,'' Burke said. ``Two years ago, I felt like - maybe I was not in fact the only one - but I felt like the only one.''
Professor Walsh and others see two main directions to this new interest in fathers - one harks back, the other looks ahead.
The smaller one, but the one that's attracted the most publicity, is what Walsh calls the ``nostalgia'' movement, which calls for a return to a sort of 1950s model - the traditional father-as-head-of-household-and-disciplinarian.
Identified with this wing by Walsh and others are the religiously conservative Promise Keepers and Blankenhorn's National Fatherhood Initiative.
Proponents of this view point out that things aren't working the way they exist now, and the crumbling of traditional family roles and values is a big reason why.
In the book ``The Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper,'' author Tony Evans blamed ``the feminization of men'' for much of the decline of the family. Men should reclaim their family leadership, he wrote: ``I'm not suggesting you ask for your role back; I'm urging that you take it back. . . . There can be no compromise here. If you're going to lead, you must lead. Be sensitive. Listen. Treat the lady gently and lovingly. But lead!''
But the bulk of the interest and discussion about fathers' roles is in the direction of ``more egalitarian and shared responsibilities between husband and wife, both out of the home . . . and in the home,'' Walsh said.
The ``brave new family of the future,'' she said, is ``men being equal partners in parenting.''
Men have become more important parents largely because of changes in women's roles in our society in the past few decades, said Ronald Levant, a Harvard Medical School psychology professor and writer. He noted that more than half of married U. S. women now bring in half or more of their family income. The '50s are gone.
``Basically, the old model of being a good man, the family provider, has no validity,'' Levant said. ``Basically, we are co-providers.''
He added that research has shown the importance of fathers' ``warmth, nurturance and empathy, rather than their authority.''
While many fathers do more at home because they have to, many also are doing more because they want to. And that leads to yet another discussion: Some men are dissatisfied with the role models of their own often-distant fathers, and want to be more involved with their children, said Robert Pasick, a writer on men's issues who works out of the Center for the Family in Ann Arbor, Mich. This is important for fathers and their children, he said.
``It kind of socializes men,'' he said. ``In other words, if you're a man responsible for children, you're going to be more focused on healthy behavior, taking care of yourself. You're going to be more nurturing.''
For others, the new interest in fathers is reactionary. It's a backlash against years of feminist advocacy, said Hugh Nations, senior vice president of the National Coalition of Free Men in Austin, Texas.
Fathers are tired of the ``deadbeat-dad'' image, and only now are breaking through a ``lace curtain'' preventing men's gender issues from reaching the public on a par with women's issues, Nations said. He cited complaints about custody and child-support laws that men call unfair, but they aren't heard over the screaming about unpaid child support.
``We have begun to recognize that fathers indeed have a place in the development of a healthy child,'' Nations said. ``We have not yet started the process of correcting what we have done to that relationship over the past 30 years.''
Other men see feminism as an important factor, but a more beneficial one; it's prompted men, as well as women, to question their roles and choices, leading to more public debates about fatherhood, said Stephen C. Harris, editor of Full-Time Dads.
``And I think that it got men thinking, you know, maybe there's more to life than I've got . . . more than one choice,'' said Harris, who has stayed home almost seven years with his son and daughter while his wife has worked at an outside job.
What's encouraging to some observers is that this men's movement is largely outward looking - it focuses on what's best for children, as well as for fathers. And it's doing so by encouraging fathers to share more of themselves with their families.
``I think, in a sense, if we want to teach kids to respect each other, they have to see respect between parents,'' said Richard G. Bradshaw of Virginia Beach, who stays home with his two children during the day and runs a remodeling business at night.
``I like the fact that children know they have a mother and a father.'' ILLUSTRATION: ADRIANA LIBREROS/Staff
KEYWORDS: FATHER'S DAY by CNB