Today dads all across the country are the beneficiaries of new neckties, golf balls, fishing rods, and an extra dollop of family affection. Although the idea of a special day honoring fathers originated when retailers lobbied for another national holiday to help boost gift sales, such commercial motives should not diminish the legitimacy of honoring fatherhood.
Yet it is a cause not only for celebration but concern, for full-time fathers have become an endangered species. Over one-third of all American children are growing up without their biological fathers at home. In some inner-city neighborhoods, the number is as high as 90 percent.
The sharp increase in fatherless households is one of the most devastating social trends of our time. While we rejoice at examples of disadvantaged children from single-parent homes achieving success, the overall trends are distressing. On average, a child raised by a single parent is twice as likely to drop out of high school, 2.5 times as likely to become a teen parent, and 1.4 times as likely to be an idle young adultout of work and out of school.
Of course, statistical correlations do not necessarily prove causal connections, but the absence of fathers is certainly not helping matters. Child abuse is higher among children in female-headed, single-parent households than in conventional two-parent households. Moreover, no other social group is so poor or stays poor longer than single-parent families.
Anthropologists stress that a sense of fatherly responsibility is an acquired rather than an inherited social role. For thousands of years, human cultures have employed sanctions and rewards to encourage parental responsibility in males and to constrain their sexual energy. The institution of marriage, of course, is the primary way by which a society sanctifies long-term relationships between men and women. As the distinguished cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead observed, there is no society in the world where men will stay married for very long unless required to do so by social mores and religious injunctions.
The good news is that there are signs of improvement. The divorce rate has dropped from 50 to 40 percent during the 1990s, and teen pregnancy, which soared during the 1980s, has steadily declined in recent years. The Save Our Sons organization in Greenville is one of many grassroots efforts to revive a sense of paternal responsibility. The strong economy has also helped promote more stable families. And in 1994 the National Fatherhood Initiative convened its first National Summit on Fatherhood. Vice President Al Gore provided the keynote address, thereby giving the issue the spotlight of national attention.
But more can be done to reinvigorate the institution of marriage as an essential social institution. Employers, for example, could be more sensitive to the disruptive effects on families of transferring employees to another city or state. They could also be more supportive of fathers participating in family leave programs. Leaders of the entertainment industryespecially producers of television shows and moviescould help revitalize the stature of fatherhood through choosing more socially responsible themes, characters, and plots. Public policy issues also play a role. Congress is now considering a bill to end the IRS "marriage penalty" and increase the value of the tax exemption for dependent children. A welfare system that unwittingly provided monetary incentives for mothers to avoid marriage and work is at last being reformed.
These are just a few suggestions among many that warrant attention. What are your own ideas about this complicated issue? In the end, it seems to me, a commitment to fatherhood will be revived not simply by passing laws but by the renewed efforts of families, communities, and churches to instill in young men a sense of paternal responsibility before they become parents. Americas childrenand their fathersdeserve no less.