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FATHERLESS AMERICA #4
A JAILER FOR A DAD
In November of 1993, a hardened criminal named Joseph
Chaney, Jr. made the front pages of the Wall Street Journal. He'd been
arrested in Miami and charged with armed robbery . . . and this was the
SIXTEENTH time he'd been arrested. The local judge who tried the case
complained that criminals like Chaney were making Miami "(quote)
an absolutely deplorable place to live."
There's one other bit of information you should know about this crime
story. Mr. Joseph Janey, Junior, when this story was written, was was
indeed JUNIOR. He was exactly THIRTEEN years old. And yes, he'd already
been arrested SIXTEEN times already beginning at the age of six. The grand
jury there in Miami was getting ready to try this 13-year-old kid as an
adult for committing a violent crime.
Well, we've heard stories like this one . . . and we all shake our heads.
"What a world we live in," we say to ourselves. But friend,
let me give you just a bit of the rest of the story as part of our weeklong
series, Fatherless America.
Joseph Chaney's mother, Yvonne, is 36 years old. She's never been married,
and she has three sons, each from a different father. Mario, one of her
sons, has a dad in prison. Jovon, the other son, no longer has a dad —
because he recently died of AIDS. And Joseph Chaney, Junior — well, his
dad's married to another woman. Joseph doesn't see much of him.
Yvonne's older brother, Willie, tried to be a bit of a dad to his nephew,
but he has limited influence because he's the unmarried father of several
children himself. Sometimes he asks his mom and his girlfriend to help
Yvonne out, but he can't really ask his father to assist because HIS dad
doesn't live with his mother either. And so it goes.
The author of Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn, lays out all these
variables and then observes:
"In the story of Joseph's childhood, there
is not a SINGLE instance of responsible fatherhood. No grandfather. An
unavailable biological father. No legal or even informal stepfather. Even
Joseph's one male `(quote) role model,' his uncle, is himself an unmarried
father."
Then Blankenhorn adds this sad but undeniably
true diagnosis:
"Today the city of Miami, like the nation as a whole, is FED UP with
Joseph and the growing number of children like him. We will put this little
boy in jail, hoping that a prison will do what no father in his life was
willing or able to do:
Keep him off the streets and teach what it means to be a man. . . . Society
is adamant about demanding more prisons but not very adamant about demanding
more fathers."
In what's almost got to be the sound-bite of the 1990s, writer Alex Kotlowitz,
in his book, There Are No Children Here, describes children living in
a Chicago public housing project. But the book really could be retitled
There Are No FATHERS Here, says Blankenhorn, because in family after family,
there simply is NO responsible male. Violence is relentless and pitiless,
writes the author. And listen to this:
"Welfare mothers commonly purchase FUNERAL insurance for their small
children. But when society gets together around the coffee table to talk
about the problem, we often miss the main culprit. Television is too violent,
we say. There aren't enough community programs, too few midnight-basketball
tournaments, not enough social workers. School hours are too short; the
welfare system breeds laziness and violence.And these are all legitimate
factors, worthwhile arguments. But as Blankenhorn puts it:
"Much of our national discussion of youth crime simply ignores the
ELEPHANT in the room . . . called . . . FATHERLESSNESS."
In the year 1994, fully 40% of all children in the
United States of America did not live with their fathers. Before they
reach the age of 18, more than half of all children in the nation are
going to live apart from Dad for at least a significant part of their
childhood.
And as we look together at the tragic results that stem from fatherlessness,
this is one of the strings: violence — drugs — heartache — crime. We are
throwing more and more kids, usually young boys, into the slammer for
the violent crimes they commit; and statistically speaking, it's usually
a boy who hasn't got a father.
Back to the story about little Joseph Chaney, Jr. After admitting that
this kid will almost certainly be incarcerated, the author of Fatherless
America writes:
"But putting this child in jail is not an
act of justice. It is an admission of failure, a symbol of our retreat."
We simply don't know what else to do except to build
more jails with more guards and then put more kids in them and have fewer
keys to ever let them back out.
There's a lot of criticism in the 1990s about the stereotypical "masculine"
dad. Here's a man who works hard, comes home in his pickup truck, maybe
doesn't play with his boy very much — and when he does, it's a roughhousing
kind of play. Watches a lot of football and violent movies with guys like
Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in them. He's kind of callous
toward women and doesn't know how to treat them in a very gentlemanly
way.
Well, as you listen to that, you maybe frown a little bit. Not the perfect
dad, by any means. And I'd agree.
But it's interesting to note, as David Blankenhorn points out, that, flawed
though this man may be, at least this is a dad who's THERE. He's IN THE
HOME. And statistically, boys raised by such traditionally "(quote)
masculine" fathers generally do NOT commit crimes. FATHERLESS boys
commit crimes.
This writer further notes that there's a process where young boys eventually
separate from their mothers in search of their own maleness. Listen to
how Blankenhorn describes this:
"In this process, the father is irreplaceable.
He enables the son to separate from the mother. He is the gatekeeper,
guiding his son into the community of men . . . showing him on good authority
that he can be `man enough.' . . . He becomes the son of his FATHER. Later,
when the boy becomes a man, he will reunite with the world of women, the
world of his mother, through his spouse and children."
When this process breaks down because there's no dad
there in the home, when male IDENTITY doesn't succeed, the clinical result
is often one word: RAGE. Rage against mothers, against women, against
society. This kind of misogynistic, woman-hating rage is hugely expressed
in contemporary rap music today, with titles like: "Beat That WOMAN"
— and that's a substitute word — "Beat That (PAUSE) WOMAN With a
Bat."
Well, friend, this is a brutal portrayal. Sometimes it's not this vicious,
but it's almost certainly painful for every child who experiences the
abandonment of having Dad leave. In a 1994 "Mother to Mother"
column in the magazine Working Mother, a woman writes in for advice. Here's
her question:
"My preschooler came home the other day
complaining of feeling left out because all the kids at his child care
center had been making Father's Day cards. Because we have NO CONTACT
with Joey's father, I don't know how to deal with this holiday. How can
I help my son to feel more included?"
Well, you say, that's a small thing. Yes, but it's a small thing multiplied
ten million times over a year. Our kids have the card and the envelope
and the stamp, but there's nowhere to send it. Dad simply isn't home.
Later in the same chapter, David Blankenhorn explores the longer-term
effect on young GIRLS who grow up in fatherless homes. Here are a few
statistics coming from Irwin Garfinkel and Sara S. McLanahan in their
book Single Mothers and Their Children.
"Daughters of single parents are 53% more
likely to marry as teenagers, 111% more likely to have children as teenagers,
164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve
their own marriages."
Girls without dads often lapse into a kind of precocious sexuality and
repeated short-lived physical relationships. "What do I need to DO,"
they ask, "and who do I need to BE, to find a man who won't abandon
me, as the men in my life and my mother's life have done?"
"Deprived of a stable relationship with
a nonexploitative male," the author writes, "these girls can
remain developmentally `stuck,' struggling with issues of security and
trust that well-fathered girls have already successfully resolved. . .
. This form of PATERNAL DISINVESTMENT in daughters cannot really be remedied.
When a girl cannot trust and love the first man in her life, her father,
what she is missing cannot be replaced by money, friends, teachers, social
workers, or well-designed social policies. She simply loses. Moreover,
as more and more girls grow up without fathers, society loses."
Well, friend, we've looked at some distressing problems
today. And tomorrow we'll discuss some possible answers. But as we close
today, let me end on a positive note.
Basketball star Xavier McDaniel of the Celtics, in a 1993 interview with
the Boston Globe, described his father as a man who worked two jobs —
one loading and unloading trucks for a food service company, the other
as a janitor at the University of South Carolina — in order to support
six kids. Things were hard, but here was a plain, simple, hardworking
man who didn't quit. He didn't walk away from his responsibilities. He
didn't take the easy way out and go find a girlfriend. James McDaniel
stayed and worked those two jobs, brought home those two paychecks, so
that his children and his wife would be provided for.
And Xavier McDaniel had this to say: "Some days our family didn't
even see our dad." And yet in a very special way, he did "(quote)
SEE" him. He felt his dad's presence; he knew Dad was working those
extra hours so he could have a meal and a bed and an education and a career.
Even when Dad was sometimes not at the supper table, he was still THERE
in a way too many of us don't recognize anymore. He was a breadwinner
who gave his children more than bread. And this fortunate son, now a successful
athlete, had this to say in conclusion:
"I saw him in a situation where he didn't
give up, so why should I give up?"
What a beautiful challenge for the rest of us who are fathers in America!
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