I suppose many of you know animal fathers don’t always play a role in their children’s lives.\u00a0 For instance, polar bears mate, then the mama bear goes off and eats.\u00a0 If she manages to gain enough weight for her body to support the pregnancy and her confinement in a snow cave, her embryos will embed in the wall of her uterus, and she’ll carry the cubs to term.\u00a0 Once the cubs are large enough to go with her outside the den, she’ll seek nourishment and raise her cubs on her own, never seeing the father unless at some later date two or three years down the road they happen to mate again.\u00a0 In fact, if he started nosing around, she’d chase him away right quick.<\/p>\n
For various reasons — I could probably speculate for days — American culture seems to be heading in that direction.\u00a0 At one time, we defined a family as a father, a mother, and 2.4 kids (to call upon the stereotype).\u00a0 Of course, there have always been variations of that “norm.”\u00a0 Parents died or left.\u00a0 Sometimes they just weren’t fit parents, so grandparents stepped in on behalf of the children.\u00a0 Or aunts, uncles, or siblings filled the void.\u00a0 Yes, there were even blended families due to remarriage for whatever reason.\u00a0 And, yes, I suspect there were also two mommy or two daddy families through the ages.\u00a0 But society recognized a norm and encouraged it through various means.<\/p>\n
I’m not here to discuss whether that is right or wrong.\u00a0 I would like to observe we seem to have embarked upon functional fatherlessness — for whatever reason.\u00a0 This is where women, usually single — never married, divorced, separated, or widowed — are raising children on their own.\u00a0 A man may be involved who may or may not be the child(ren)’s father, but the woman has legal responsibility for carrying out the functions of both parents.<\/p>\n
This changes our society in fundamental ways.\u00a0 Again, I’m not saying they are necessarily bad ways, but things are different.\u00a0 For instance, we have historically been a patriarchal society — male head of household with children bearing his last name.\u00a0 Today, women head the household, and oftentimes her children have her last name.<\/p>\n
This may not seem like much, but women are the role models in our homes.\u00a0 Women are the strong players in a child’s life.\u00a0 Increasingly, men have\u00a0 no role in our society except to father children and disappear.\u00a0 They aren’t needed and often aren’t wanted for financial support or an emotional role in their children’s lives (or, they refuse to play that role).\u00a0 They have no need to contribute to society.\u00a0 We seem to have gone overboard in making sure everyone but the male (white males, specifically, but males in general) have equal opportunity to the point where males are discriminated against.<\/p>\n
I’ve read critiques that young males have no reason to grow up, so they engage in an extended adolescence, playing video games and hanging out well into their late twenties.\u00a0 By that time, they are stuck on the lower rungs of the career ladder.\u00a0 Women who have matured and are leading responsible lives or are attempting to do so see these men who are stunted in their adult development, and they want nothing to do with them, perpetuating a tough situation for family development.<\/p>\n
Do we want our children to be functionally fatherless?\u00a0 What, if anything, do we need to do to make sure both parents are actively engaged in a child’s life — and they are worthy of that child?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose many of you know animal fathers don’t always play a role in their children’s lives.\u00a0 For instance, polar bears mate, then the mama bear goes off and eats.\u00a0 If she manages to gain enough weight for her body to support the pregnancy and her confinement in a snow …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-z-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}