Society has a way of creating its own difficulties. Like the push to defund police has led to a situation where no one wants to be on a police force, the idea that strong women don't need a husband or father in the home has led to—surprise!—reduction in fathers.
Free love of the '60's and reimbursement for fatherless children has made dads irrelevant in our group-think today. Should single moms get help? Sure. But sometimes government programs have a way of creating consequences that are worse than the original issue. Anyone with kids knows that raising them is constant work. Children require discipline, and of course they are objects of our total affection. I have two sons, and I cannot imagine covering the bases of the care, feeding, moral upbringing, education, and financial provision by myself.
Kids are also tough. By the time they are 13, what their friends think is more important than what mom and dad are telling them to do. It sometimes takes a firm hand to get them straightened out, and two firm hands are better than one in all those scenarios. But more important are the statistics from just three of the hundreds of studies that show what has happened as the roll of fathers in a family has been diminished.
- Individuals from father-absent homes were 279% more likely to carry guns and deal drugs than peers who lived with their fathers.
- Children living in female-headed homes with no spouse had a poverty rate of 47.6%—over four times the rate for children living in married-couple families.
- The most damning of all, this study found that 75% of juvenile prison inmates say they had no father figure in the home.
How do we turn this around? Social scientists recommend what great moms already know: We have to talk to our children about priorities like education, graduation, getting a good job with a future, then—and only then—think about marriage and family. And they say, we have to start at a very young age, like 6 years old.
When a mother says "Children should never have children," to her daughter, she is hammering out the armor her daughter needs to protect the daughter's God-given potential in life. By the age of 10, mom has repeated this hundreds of times and she will do it hundreds more, whenever the conversation calls for it. (It works, by the way.)
Fathers are supposed to be loving, strong leaders. They are the coach to their children and mom's enforcer when push comes to shove. Most importantly, fathers are to exemplify integrity, honesty, and what it looks like to work to support the family,
Being both mom and dad is an impossible and exhausting job. Some do it very well, but I can't imagine how. Maybe we need a study on that.
Nan
