P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

FATHERLESS AMERICA #3

DADS WHO STICK AROUND

When author David Blankenhorn interviewed mothers about the distinctive contributions MEN bring to a family life, one woman shared this anecdote:

"My daughter was about seven. We had just bought her a brand-new bike and we lived in suburbia. The bike was outside on the front lawn. My daughter . . . went outside and the bike was gone. Okay. Meanwhile a little boy down the street . . . also said HIS bike was taken. My husband gets in his van . . . You know what he did? He took his van right to where the kids were and knocked them off the bikes. They dropped both of the bikes and they ran. Now, not only had he saved my daughter's bike, but the little kid down the street's. I mean everybody, the whole neighborhood, knew what my husband had done. My daughter was so proud of her daddy saving their bikes. Whereas if I had to . . . Well, let's see how much money we have. Maybe we can get you a new one later on. That's what I would have said."

The name of the book is Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem. And this little bicycle story, so poignantly told right from the heart, illustrates why America and Canada so desperately need dads. Not just to rescue stolen bikes, but because of the strength and security and protection that a man like this one represents.

Last June, on Father's Day, I shared the story of a 10-year-old German boy named Helmut. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, a squadron of soldiers moved into their house, forcing the family into a tiny wing of the residence. And immediately, Helmut noticed that his dad never seemed to sleep in the bedroom with his mother. Every night he was gone. How come? Helmut wondered. Was his father collaborating with the hated Nazis? He had to know.

Finally one night, he just had to check. He crept out of bed and went into his parents' bedroom. Sure enough, his mother was there alone. But where was Dad? Going down the hallway toward the main part of the house, he suddenly spied a familiar figure. Lying on the floor in front of the double doors, with a pad and pillow and blanket, was Dad. He was right up against those two doors; the Nazis couldn't have opened them up an inch without bumping him.

And instantly Helmut understood. His father wasn't cooperating with the Nazis. He wasn't being unfaithful to his mother. His father was literally declaring that those occupying troops would harm his family . . . OVER HIS DEAD BODY. They'd have to go THROUGH him to touch his family.

Now there's a real father.

Just a few months ago, David Blankenhorn was quoted in USA Weekend as saying:

"Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is THE leading cause of the decline in the well-being of children. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to domestic violence."

Many people here in the 1990s are kind of shrugging off the problem of fatherlessness. "What's the big problem?" they ask. "When a dad DIES, the family picks up and goes on. Mom is able to make it then. Why is this so different?"

The answer to that question is starkly revealing, says Blankenhorn. Here's what he says:

"Where it COUNTS, death and abandonment are much closer to OPPOSITES. When a father dies, a child grieves. (I have lost someone I love.) When a father LEAVES, a child feels anxiety and self-blame. (What did I do wrong? Why doesn't my father love me?) Death is final. (He won't come back.) Abandonment is indeterminate. (What would make him come back?)
Later on the same page, he adds this:
"Death kills men but sustains fatherhood. Abandonment sustains men but kills fatherhood."

It's sad but true that many, many children simply can't relate to the loss of a father, whether it's through death OR abandonment. In London wartime nurseries during World War Two, the young children could tolerate a father who was absent, but not one who was dead or had deserted his family. One four-year-old boy whose soldier father had been killed said this:

"My daddy is killed, yes, my sister said so. He cannot come. I want him to come. My daddy is big, he can do everything . . . My daddy is taking me to the zoo today. He told me last night; he comes every night and sits on my bed and talks to me."

Bob, a little two-year-old born out of wedlock, would assert over and over that his daddy was real. Often during a game he would stop and cry out, "Yes, I do have a daddy!" even though no one had disputed it. When his mother brought a man to the nursery one day, this little Bob latched onto the incident as evidence that, sure enough, his father was a real person.

And how much harder it is for a child who has to finally accept the fact that Dad wasn't killed, but simply wanted to leave. In referring to the many World War Two fathers who reluctantly went off to fight in Europe, Blankenhorn writes:

"The 1940s child could say: My father had to leave FOR A WHILE to do something important. The 1990s child must say: "My father left me PERMANENTLY because he wanted to."

I agree wholeheartedly with the very clear list of four huge benefits that children gets from a dad who is present. They're ENRICHED in these four ways by fatherhood:

ONE: It provides them with a father's PHYSICAL protection, like in our bicycle-thief story.

TWO: It provides them with a father's money and other material resources. Divorce typically means lower living standards for women and children. In the year following divorce, average income for women drops by approximately 30 percent. In fact, the author of this book goes so far as to say this:

"The BEST anti-poverty program for children is a stable, intact family."

And he has the statistics to back up every word he says.
THREE: Fatherhood provides children with what might be termed paternal cultural transmission. You'll remember that yesterday I described how a dad "(quote) manhandles" — in a good, positive way — his kids, passing along to them his values.

And FOUR: Dad provides children with the day-to-day nurturing — feeding them, playing with them, telling them a story — that they want and need from both parents.

Well, friend, this is what our kids need. There are still so many factors we want to consider tomorrow and Friday, but the bottom line is that kids NEED strong parents: a mother and a father. I know full well how many of you are carrying on, trusting in God to make up for what a fatherless America has cost YOU. I know about that; here at The Voice of Prophecy we get your letters and your prayers requests. But we still want to lift up the ideal, to CELEBRATE the good vision that the Word of God lays before us, where good men STAY.

And author David Blankenhorn writes so compellingly how fatherhood is one of the major factors that makes good men GOOD. Very early in his book, he writes this. See if you agree:

"Fatherhood, more than ANY OTHER MALE ACTIVITY, helps men to become GOOD men. Fatherhood BENDS maleness — in particular, male aggression — toward prosocial purposes."
One page later, he sums up:
"The KEY for men is to be fathers. The key for children is to HAVE fathers. The key for society is to CREATE fathers."

And to CELEBRATE and praise and support and honor fathers and fatherhood, as we've been mentioning.

In a round-table discussion that Blankenhorn organized, he got these comments:

From a man in New Jersey: "Well, basically you are there for them. You're not out carousing. You are putting them above yourself."
An Ohio man said the same thing: "Putting the family first, before anything. Putting the family's needs before his own."
Colorado: "Put yourself last."
And that all led to the author's almost biblical conclusion:
"Equating masculinity with servanthood — I am a good man because I serve others — is a dominant idea in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Many of the most famous biblical stories and teachings, such as Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, convey precisely this message: The greatest leader is the greatest servant."

In the final chapter of his book, entitled "A Father For Every Child," this gifted writer lists 12 proposals that America — and Canada — might well consider. And I certainly like the first one on the list. He invites every single man in the country to take the following pledge. Here it is:

"Many people today believe that fathers are unnecessary. I BELIEVE THE OPPOSITE. I pledge to live my life according to the principle that every child deserves a father; that marriage is the pathway to effective fatherhood; that part of being a good MAN means being a good father; and that America needs more good men."