Absent fathers the root of many problems

There's an elephant in the room. No one will admit it's here, right in front of us. Social scientists, policy wonks and politicians walk all around the elephant without ever acknowledging it. They make policies and rules and advocacy organizations to address the symptoms caused by that huge pachyderm that's taking up all the space, but they don't even acknowledge it's there.

The elephant in the room is fathers — the absence of fathers in the lives of millions of children, particularly boys. This absence of fathers is the root cause of many of the social pathologies we see today, particularly in communities with large numbers of fatherless households. The absence of a father can lead to young boys without guidance and discipline. Many of them become angry, violent, disrespectful, depressed and misogynistic. They fail in school and in the workplace. Look at the discipline problems in public schools; you'll find the absence of a father in the home. Look at the school dropout rate; you'll find many in that statistic without a father. Look at the unemployment list — or the unemployable list. Again, no father present.

A few ambitious nonprofits have attempted to provide surrogate fathers, mentors who will work with young men, teach them the importance of being kind and respectful, of working hard in school and staying away from the "wrong crowd." These mentors can demonstrate some successes, but mentors can never fully replace a father — a man who will love the boy's mother and be at home every night, not just a few hours a week.

A Wilson audience learned of a frightening situation that is all too common but, since it's the elephant in the room, is rarely discussed. The Wilson Times reported:  

The keynote speakers at the annual meeting, Ben David and Kip Blakely, spoke from their experience in Wilmington and Greensboro respectively in terms of programs they were a part of implementing to address workforce development.

David, the district attorney in New Hanover and Pender counties, acknowledged the multi-faceted cause of poverty and crime, noting they found only four dads for 253 kids in 87 homes in their target area of Wilmington.

Scary enough for you?

For half a century, the federal government has tried to solve the problems in households headed by single mothers. While some of these brave women manage to be both mother and father to her children, more of these single mothers are too young to make wise decisions about their own lives and cannot offer a successful role model for their children.

If we choose to face the elephant in the room, we should do several things:
  1. Redouble efforts to teach young women good decision making, especially when it comes to having children. Emphasize the marriage-first, babies-later path to a more successful and fulfilling life.
  2. Mentor boys, teach them in school, inspire them in church, but get the message through to them: Real men care for their girlfriends, and that means making their welfare more important than your own. It means avoiding pregnancy by whatever means necessary — abstinence, contraception, fear of failure — until both of you are ready to support and raise children.
  3. Re-emphasize the Protestant Work Ethic. Go back to "idle hands are the devil's workshop;" make sloth and lack of ambition traits to be avoided, not emulated.
  4. Make it clear that school is important, and hard work at school pays better rewards than a shot at a lottery drawing. Many single mothers are dropouts who did not have a good experience in school, and their anti-school attitude gets passed to her children and her grandchildren.

America has a crime problem, an educational problem, an employment problem, a morality problem, a violence problem. But at the bottom of all these problems is a problem in the home, where all of us learn what the world is like, how to treat other people, how to live, how to be responsible adults. Even the best school can't accomplish those goals in a few hours a day, especially if what is taught in school is contradicted at home. What almost nobody is talking about is the elephant in the room: there is no father in the home.

Handling disappointment is part of being mature

I watched the Super Bowl, pulling for the Carolina Panthers all the way, just as I had through the regular season, hoping they might go undefeated. I was badly disappointed at the outcome, but it's only a football game.

After the game, Panthers QB Cam Newton took it a lot harder, as he should have. He had a lot more invested than I or any fan did. My disappointment was a tiny flicker compared to the bonfire burning within him. Nevertheless, I find Newton's behavior at the post-game news conference inexcusable. He was sullen. He hid beneath a hooded sweatshirt. He refused to answer questions, and he stalked out. That's just not the way a person with any sense of class or decent manners behaves.

I had been a fan of Newton since his days at Auburn (my daughter-in-law is an Auburn alumna), and I appreciated his child-like exuberance and his obvious joy at playing the game. None of this, however, excuses his ill behavior toward others after the Super Bowl ended.

His response to the inevitable criticism of that behavior only made matters worse. His rationale: "I am who I am. If you don't like it, that's your problem," or words to that effect. Newton is not alone in this attitude. In fact, this attitude might be the predominant one among entire generations of mostly youthful adults. That doesn't make it any less inexcusable.

This attitude had been widely proclaimed on a number of enigmatic Facebook posts a few years ago. They went like this: "I like the way I am. I'm not going to change. If you don't like it, get over it." This attitude has become prevalent, perhaps because public schools placed a high value on "self-esteem," and many parents were so busy giving their young children positive reinforcement that they failed to ever discipline them or punish unacceptable behavior. The "back to nature" movement of the 1970s also included a notion among some that children are born perfect, and society (especially parents) must not change them and ruin their perfectness.

That's a reversal of untold generations of child-rearing efforts that emphasized acclimating the child to the expectations of society — teaching good manners, respect for others, discipline, obedience, sympathy, empathy and all the other attitudes, talents and skills society values.

It's OK to be disappointed at a loss. It's OK to grieve. But it's not OK to be sullen, disrespectful of others and even antagonistic or angry toward people who were not responsible for your disappointment.

Instead of falling back on the "I'm me, and I'm happy this way, so it's your problem if you don't like it" excuse, a role model (which Newton certainly is) could improve society by modeling the kind of attitude and behavior that respects other people and accepts a world where my own selfish interests and concerns are not the most important things.

Some parents miss the higher calling

In this post on her blog, my wife reminisces about her baptism and about the little baptism service book that she has treasured for years. The stilted language derived from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer seems quaint and dated now, but the verities are undeniable: Parents' greatest responsibility is to nurture their children, not only physically but spiritually. "Given to God" is the title of this baptismal service, affirming that parents have a duty to present their child to God in humble thanks for the miraculous gift God has presented to them.

Many of the problems parents encounter today could be avoided if they fully appreciated their responsibility to guide their children spiritually as well as physically, academically, culturally and emotionally. There is no more solemn responsibility, no greater task, no greater honor than the privilege of raising a child miraculously formed by God's plan. Too many parents see their parental responsibility as getting out of the way so that a child can "find himself" or "express himself" in his own unique way. What the church of the era when "Given to God" was written knew was that children are not born perfect and in danger of being corrupted by the world. They are, instead, born as blank slates, or (more contemporarily) as unprogrammed computers. Children need discipline and social skills that usually do not come naturally. They also need spiritual guidance, which won't come to them if their parents follow the plan of one young mother I overheard. She was going to avoid church until her son was 12 or 15 and then let him decide whether he was interested in attending church. I'm betting he's never darkened a church doorway.

Laptops, new media distract us all

Someone sent me this photo, allegedly taken by the Associated Press, showing state legislators (from Connecticut, I think) goofing off on the job. I can't vouch for the credibility of the photo. It's the sort of thing — two legislators playing solitaire, one on Facebook, another checking baseball scores — that's just about too fantastic to be true, the sort of thing that could be Photoshopped into a scandal.

Legitimate or not, it speaks to a pervasive problem with modern technology. Those laptops that were supposed to make everyone — from state legislators to eighth graders — more productive, better informed, even smarter are, instead, making us suckers for the enticing bait of useless distractions. Some colleges have banned laptops because professors were infuriated that instead of taking notes and looking up references during lectures, the students were emailing, instant messaging, updating Facebook and so forth. Remember when laptops were the latest salvation of education? I doubt that anyone thinks that now, but laptops are pervasive in college classrooms and in many high schools as well. Younger children, reared from the crib on electronic gadgets, think it perfectly acceptable to stare transfixed at a mobile phone's screen as they peck out text messages during meals or when adults are attempting to talk to them. Adults are no different. When I received a "smart phone," I was told if I was the type who liked to play video games while sitting in boring meetings I could download this game and that game. Sorry, I'm not the type.

The goofing-off legislators might be real, or they might be victims of a clever graphic artist. Either way, they're symbolic of the lack of discipline and labor in so many parts of life — work, study, relationships. The sirens of cyberspace are luring us onto the shoals of declining seriousness and productivity, and we're too busy playing games to notice.