Pop culture psychiatry

July 15, 1999

In the latest liberal attempt to reengineer American society, last
month the “American Psychologist” published a “study” concluding that
fathers are “not essential” components of family life. Further, the
report’s authors concluded that fathers — in the traditional
heterosexual family role — might actually be detrimental to their wives
and children.

“Academic underachievement, emotional problems, and delinquency are
frequently attributed to children being raised solely by mothers,” wrote
Drs. Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach. “Research on the
components of parenting reveals that the two most significant variables
are the stability of the emotional connection and predictability of the
caretaking relationship. These variables are independent of the number
of parents in the home or their sex.”

The authors of this “report,” entitled, “Deconstructing the Essential
Father,” further stated, “[W]e do not believe that the data support the
conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being and that
heterosexual marriage is the social context in which responsible
fathering is most likely to occur.”

That’s because, you see, dads eat up family resources on gambling,
alcohol, cigarettes and other “nonessential commodities” — whatever
those are.

Incredibly, the authors also concluded that “divorce does not
irretrievably harm the majority of children,” and that any harmful
effects of divorces are related more to economic factors such as the
loss of a father’s income, rather than the absence of a father. In other
words, what “normal” family needs fatherly love, nurturing, protection,
and security, not to mention stability?

The authors went on to label the “old notions” of the importance of a
father in the family as nothing more than “neo-conservative” beliefs.
And they casually dismissed the volumes of evidence that credibly
disprove their outrageous claims.

The fact is the “notions” about the importance of fatherhood are
neither “neo-conservative” nor ultra left wing. According to the
Institute for American Values, they
are somewhere in between.

The IAV has conducted dozens of studies over the years, and each of
them have concluded — irrefutably — that families with both
parents do much better than single-parent homes. A breakdown in
acceptable behavioral norms as much as poverty is to blame for America’s
rising divorce rates, but the IAV has found that neither factor is
solely endemic to single parent homes.

David Blankenhorn, the IAV’s founder, wrote in Fatherless
America, “Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of
this generation. It is the leading cause of declining child well being
in our society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social
problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse to
domestic violence against women. Yet, despite its scale and social
consequences, fatherlessness is a problem that is frequently ignored or
denied. Especially within our elite discourse, it remains largely a
problem with no name.”

Furthermore, Blankenhorn wrote, “Tonight, about 40 percent of
American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do
not live. Before they reach the age of eighteen, more than half of our
nation’s children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of
their childhood living apart from their fathers.” And these numbers are
much worse in the African-American community.

For blacks alone, the IAV reported that “new statistics show that an
estimated 80 percent of all African-American children will spend part of
their childhood living apart from their fathers. Seventy percent of
African-American children are born to unmarried mothers and 40 percent
of all children regardless of race, live in homes without fathers.”
That, the IAV concluded, is why the black community — especially in
inner cities — is self-destructing. Crime, out-of-wedlock births, and
— in many cases — government-induced poverty have all contributed to
this phenomenon.

Annalee Baldwin with Focus on the Family also refuted the “facts”
presented in this new study. She told me her organization had “volumes”
of evidence that repeatedly prove “stereotypical families” are better
for children and that “fathers are most definitely an integral part of
any family.”

Blankenhorn, who has studied the issue of fatherless families for
many years, ominously warned Americans in Fatherless America what
would happen if Americans don’t get a handle on the problem of
disintegrating families:

The primary fault line dividing the two groups will not be race,
religion, class, education, or gender. It will be patrimony. One group
will consist of those adults who grew up with the daily presence and
provision of fathers. The other group will consist of those who did not.
By the early years of the next century, these two groups will be roughly
the same size.

“Surely a crisis of this scale merits a response,” Blankenhorn
concluded. And surely it does, but it must come from Americans
themselves — not pop culture psychologists or government bureaucrats.

In the meantime, though, Americans should be told that this “study”
is nothing but garbage and should be treated as such.