Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Bus Ads Case
http://www.thomasmore.org/downloads/sb_thomasmore/NEWSRELEASE-CrucialFederalCourtHearingTomorro.pdf
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Sexual Paradox
Things Are Not What They Seem
A Review of Susan Pinker, The Sexual Paradox
. Scribner: New York, 2008, 352 pp., US$17.00, ISBN 978-0-7432-8471-4 (paperback).
Rebecca L. Burch, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, NY. Email: Rebecca.burch@oswego.edu
Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox begins with, of all things, the dilemma of female characters on Sesame Street. Indeed, unlike male characters it has been difficult to create female puppets that are recognized as individuals, not female archetypes. To the reader though, especially an evolutionary psychologist, this may raise some red flags: children’s programming, female role models, gender roles, socialization, etc. Oh no! The standard social science model (SSSM)! Here we go… another treatise on how society never gives girls a chance to succeed. While this may be true in other cultures and in some facets of our own, in the present day US there are plenty of programs, incentives, and encouragement for girls to find themselves and find their niche. There is even a retail and entertainment industry based on “girl power” that rakes in billions a year. Whether this is encouragement or exploitation is also a matter of debate, but the message of “a girl’s freedom to do anything” is clear. These are the conclusions a reader may jump to within the first few pages, but worry not. Thankfully, Pinker has other plans.
By page four, Pinker throws out the question of why women may or may not be allowed to be equal to men and posits a different one: why on earth do men get to be the standard? Why should females have the goal of meeting the male standard? This in itself denigrates females. So many books discuss how females are discouraged, disenfranchised, and disenchanted, citing numbers of women leaving traditionally “male” careers. Pinker dares to posit the idea that women don’t have the same preferences as men and therefore, might actually choose different paths, not be forced into them by the patriarchy. Now we’re talking! Let’s throw out the seemingly societal mandates and all that socialization and delve into actual differences, not perceptions or relative status, but the biology of the matter. Pinker “…began to wonder what would happen if all the ‘shoulds’—the policy and political agendas—were shifted to the side for a moment to examine the science” (p. 5).
And that she does, spending little time on history and the patriarchy, Pinker explains the neurological and endocrinological processes that result in different talents and predispositions (with plenty of overlap) as well as different preferences. Thankfully, she goes beyond just differences in performance, assessment, or feelings regarding these differences. In particular, she examines the role testosterone plays in male risk taking (including those amusing Darwin Awards) and the role oxytocin and empathy play in female career choices. It is important to note that this is not the shallow glossing over seen in other books. Pinker is thorough enough to leave this biopsychologist satisfied, but also understandable enough for nonacademics. My brother, who didn’t go to college and shows little interest in biology, lazily picked up the book in my car last week. He read a line about gender differences out loud, and immediately launched into the SSSM explanation; “because that’s what girls are told to do.” Then he read farther. He became quiet. Then he asked to borrow the book when I was done with my “book report.”
Pinker does more than dryly discuss the biology; she provides example after example of women who have succeeded in this “man’s world” and found it wanting. As Pinker explains, let’s move on past the idea that a woman can’t do the same work as a man, and discuss why she may not want to. Any woman who has wondered if her preferences run counter to the feminist cause should pay close attention here; believing that a woman should have every right to pursue the same goals as men is different from believing that every woman should want to. Time and again, Pinker points out how women have sought those goals, attained them, and then shifted their eyes to a different prize. These “opt out” women can be found, as Pinker states, “in every major university, law, engineering, and accounting firm in North America and Europe” (p. 64). Women are 2.8 times more likely than men to leave science and engineering careers for other occupations and 13 times more likely to exit the labor force entirely. This is not because they are overwhelmed with childcare, either. They leave their careers at every age and every stage of life, whether or not they have families. Pinker concludes with what seems to be an obvious yet ignored truth, that women are autonomous beings who know their own desires. As one woman put it, “…work is not the only thing I do. I have a life” (p. 90).
Pinker goes on to distinguish herself from the rest of the field by not just focusing on the female side of the gender coin. Pinker makes it a point to show how males are genetically at a disadvantage; prone to disease, accidents, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s, dyslexia, and others. Many males experience an overlap, getting hit with two or three of these disorders throughout their development. Without political or social posturing she lays out case after case of genetic vulnerability and learning, behavioral, and social differences. All of which creates a wide range of male ability with huge numbers of both extremely low and high achievers. Boys are three times more likely to be placed in special education classes, twice as likely to repeat a grade, and a third more likely to drop out of high school. However, males also dominate the highest percentiles of achievement, from math competitions to scrabble tournaments. This topic Pinker readily admits has gotten much less press compared to the outrageous idea that women may not want what men have or be as willing to trade off other goals to get it. However, it is just as important and just as outrageous an idea in today’s society that men are at a biological disadvantage, or for that matter, that males can top the charts in achievement for a reason other than an oppressive patriarchy.
Speaking of outrageous ideas, another common belief that is torpedoed is the concept of female solidarity or sisterhood. Pinker “blows the lid off female aggression” (p. 220). Girls are often taught that females bond together while males are cutthroat. Indeed, the opposite is often true. Girls are also taught that females are beaten down by that oppressive patriarchy, but in actuality, women are more competitive with each other than with men. Once again Pinker gives example after example of women who have undermined, sabotaged, and exploited each other.
One little known topic that has resonated strongly with female readers is the concept of being a “fraud.” Pinker interviews several women who have succeeded in their fields; in many cases, traditionally male fields. Two themes emerge. First, these women have been encouraged strongly and consistently to rise through the ranks and obtain positions of power. Second, each of these women believes that at any point someone will realize that she is a fraud, an imposter, a sham: that she doesn’t really know what she is doing. To be clear, these women obtained these positions precisely because they do know what they are doing. They fully deserve the promotions they have received, and yet, the lack of confidence not only exists, it is pervasive. Scores of female CEOs, actresses, academics and others admit to feeling that at any point they will be “found out,” “exposed,” or “unmasked.” In the epilogue Pinker describes the massive influx of letters and emails from successful women who feel the same way. While this lack of self confidence is very poorly related to actual ability, the question of where this gender difference originates remains. Pinker hypothesizes that it is linked to gender differences in depression, but admits that no study on this link has been published. This gender difference in the “imposter syndrome” needs to be investigated more fully, especially as more women succeed in their fields.
While many other books show a promising first half, only to repeat their basic premise ad nauseam through the second, Pinker continues to examine different facets of gender differences throughout. She doesn’t even mention the adaptive value of these sex differences until 200 pages into the book. While she may not spend long on the evolutionary bases (and for most of us it is pretty standard fare), Pinker integrates the information very nicely, reviewing Darwin, Daly and Wilson, Buss, Townsend, Kanazawa and others. The highlight, however, is her mention of Robert Trivers; his theories, his findings, and his brushes with the law. Now there is a biography, or better yet, an autobiography that needs to be written!
After systematically breaking down each of these misconceptions about gender, gender differences, and the power of society, Pinker sums things up this way, “…forty years of discounting biology have led us to a strange and discomfiting place, one where women are afraid to own up to their desires and men—despite their foibles—are seen as standard issue” (p. 254). This belief of men as standard issue, and the assumption that women want this, only makes the situation harder for women. This may not be what they want, even if they are highly intelligent, capable, and encouraged. And most importantly, they are entitled to their preferences. This “vanilla male” model is also of no use to those disadvantaged males (those with Asperger’s, for example), whose ability examine concepts differently have usually come at a social price. They, also, are entitled to their preferences and should be given the opportunity to explore their skills. Once again, the belief in the SSSM has set us back. This active disregard of biology and evolution has not improved gender equality. It has done just the just the opposite and even hindered a subset of males in the process.
From Evolutionary Psychology, a free access online journal. Retrieved July 4, 2010 from http://www.epjournal.net/article259.html
A Review of Susan Pinker, The Sexual Paradox
. Scribner: New York, 2008, 352 pp., US$17.00, ISBN 978-0-7432-8471-4 (paperback).Rebecca L. Burch, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, NY. Email: Rebecca.burch@oswego.edu
Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox
begins with, of all things, the dilemma of female characters on Sesame Street. Indeed, unlike male characters it has been difficult to create female puppets that are recognized as individuals, not female archetypes. To the reader though, especially an evolutionary psychologist, this may raise some red flags: children’s programming, female role models, gender roles, socialization, etc. Oh no! The standard social science model (SSSM)! Here we go… another treatise on how society never gives girls a chance to succeed. While this may be true in other cultures and in some facets of our own, in the present day US there are plenty of programs, incentives, and encouragement for girls to find themselves and find their niche. There is even a retail and entertainment industry based on “girl power” that rakes in billions a year. Whether this is encouragement or exploitation is also a matter of debate, but the message of “a girl’s freedom to do anything” is clear. These are the conclusions a reader may jump to within the first few pages, but worry not. Thankfully, Pinker has other plans.By page four, Pinker throws out the question of why women may or may not be allowed to be equal to men and posits a different one: why on earth do men get to be the standard? Why should females have the goal of meeting the male standard? This in itself denigrates females. So many books discuss how females are discouraged, disenfranchised, and disenchanted, citing numbers of women leaving traditionally “male” careers. Pinker dares to posit the idea that women don’t have the same preferences as men and therefore, might actually choose different paths, not be forced into them by the patriarchy. Now we’re talking! Let’s throw out the seemingly societal mandates and all that socialization and delve into actual differences, not perceptions or relative status, but the biology of the matter. Pinker “…began to wonder what would happen if all the ‘shoulds’—the policy and political agendas—were shifted to the side for a moment to examine the science” (p. 5).
And that she does, spending little time on history and the patriarchy, Pinker explains the neurological and endocrinological processes that result in different talents and predispositions (with plenty of overlap) as well as different preferences. Thankfully, she goes beyond just differences in performance, assessment, or feelings regarding these differences. In particular, she examines the role testosterone plays in male risk taking (including those amusing Darwin Awards) and the role oxytocin and empathy play in female career choices. It is important to note that this is not the shallow glossing over seen in other books. Pinker is thorough enough to leave this biopsychologist satisfied, but also understandable enough for nonacademics. My brother, who didn’t go to college and shows little interest in biology, lazily picked up the book in my car last week. He read a line about gender differences out loud, and immediately launched into the SSSM explanation; “because that’s what girls are told to do.” Then he read farther. He became quiet. Then he asked to borrow the book when I was done with my “book report.”
Pinker does more than dryly discuss the biology; she provides example after example of women who have succeeded in this “man’s world” and found it wanting. As Pinker explains, let’s move on past the idea that a woman can’t do the same work as a man, and discuss why she may not want to. Any woman who has wondered if her preferences run counter to the feminist cause should pay close attention here; believing that a woman should have every right to pursue the same goals as men is different from believing that every woman should want to. Time and again, Pinker points out how women have sought those goals, attained them, and then shifted their eyes to a different prize. These “opt out” women can be found, as Pinker states, “in every major university, law, engineering, and accounting firm in North America and Europe” (p. 64). Women are 2.8 times more likely than men to leave science and engineering careers for other occupations and 13 times more likely to exit the labor force entirely. This is not because they are overwhelmed with childcare, either. They leave their careers at every age and every stage of life, whether or not they have families. Pinker concludes with what seems to be an obvious yet ignored truth, that women are autonomous beings who know their own desires. As one woman put it, “…work is not the only thing I do. I have a life” (p. 90).
Pinker goes on to distinguish herself from the rest of the field by not just focusing on the female side of the gender coin. Pinker makes it a point to show how males are genetically at a disadvantage; prone to disease, accidents, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s, dyslexia, and others. Many males experience an overlap, getting hit with two or three of these disorders throughout their development. Without political or social posturing she lays out case after case of genetic vulnerability and learning, behavioral, and social differences. All of which creates a wide range of male ability with huge numbers of both extremely low and high achievers. Boys are three times more likely to be placed in special education classes, twice as likely to repeat a grade, and a third more likely to drop out of high school. However, males also dominate the highest percentiles of achievement, from math competitions to scrabble tournaments. This topic Pinker readily admits has gotten much less press compared to the outrageous idea that women may not want what men have or be as willing to trade off other goals to get it. However, it is just as important and just as outrageous an idea in today’s society that men are at a biological disadvantage, or for that matter, that males can top the charts in achievement for a reason other than an oppressive patriarchy.
Speaking of outrageous ideas, another common belief that is torpedoed is the concept of female solidarity or sisterhood. Pinker “blows the lid off female aggression” (p. 220). Girls are often taught that females bond together while males are cutthroat. Indeed, the opposite is often true. Girls are also taught that females are beaten down by that oppressive patriarchy, but in actuality, women are more competitive with each other than with men. Once again Pinker gives example after example of women who have undermined, sabotaged, and exploited each other.
One little known topic that has resonated strongly with female readers is the concept of being a “fraud.” Pinker interviews several women who have succeeded in their fields; in many cases, traditionally male fields. Two themes emerge. First, these women have been encouraged strongly and consistently to rise through the ranks and obtain positions of power. Second, each of these women believes that at any point someone will realize that she is a fraud, an imposter, a sham: that she doesn’t really know what she is doing. To be clear, these women obtained these positions precisely because they do know what they are doing. They fully deserve the promotions they have received, and yet, the lack of confidence not only exists, it is pervasive. Scores of female CEOs, actresses, academics and others admit to feeling that at any point they will be “found out,” “exposed,” or “unmasked.” In the epilogue Pinker describes the massive influx of letters and emails from successful women who feel the same way. While this lack of self confidence is very poorly related to actual ability, the question of where this gender difference originates remains. Pinker hypothesizes that it is linked to gender differences in depression, but admits that no study on this link has been published. This gender difference in the “imposter syndrome” needs to be investigated more fully, especially as more women succeed in their fields.
While many other books show a promising first half, only to repeat their basic premise ad nauseam through the second, Pinker continues to examine different facets of gender differences throughout. She doesn’t even mention the adaptive value of these sex differences until 200 pages into the book. While she may not spend long on the evolutionary bases (and for most of us it is pretty standard fare), Pinker integrates the information very nicely, reviewing Darwin, Daly and Wilson, Buss, Townsend, Kanazawa and others. The highlight, however, is her mention of Robert Trivers; his theories, his findings, and his brushes with the law. Now there is a biography, or better yet, an autobiography that needs to be written!
After systematically breaking down each of these misconceptions about gender, gender differences, and the power of society, Pinker sums things up this way, “…forty years of discounting biology have led us to a strange and discomfiting place, one where women are afraid to own up to their desires and men—despite their foibles—are seen as standard issue” (p. 254). This belief of men as standard issue, and the assumption that women want this, only makes the situation harder for women. This may not be what they want, even if they are highly intelligent, capable, and encouraged. And most importantly, they are entitled to their preferences. This “vanilla male” model is also of no use to those disadvantaged males (those with Asperger’s, for example), whose ability examine concepts differently have usually come at a social price. They, also, are entitled to their preferences and should be given the opportunity to explore their skills. Once again, the belief in the SSSM has set us back. This active disregard of biology and evolution has not improved gender equality. It has done just the just the opposite and even hindered a subset of males in the process.
From Evolutionary Psychology, a free access online journal. Retrieved July 4, 2010 from http://www.epjournal.net/article259.html
Saturday, July 3, 2010
With Friends Like These . . . | 2010
David Blankenhorn's book, The Future of Marriage
is excellent. The careful case it makes against same-sex marriage and for marriage as our key pro-child institution--as opposed to the likes of Stephanie Coontz and Judith Stacey, who oppose marriage as an institution but support same sex marriage as a path to the institution's disintegration--is excellent. All the more effective rhetorically because the author is a liberal.
But his performance as key witness in the California trial to overthrow Proposition 8 was indescribably pathetic. The case's result is not in doubt. Now the issue will undoubtedly go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether same-sex marriage as a new legal right will be imposed nationwide on a population that has shown again and again through the democratic process that it is overwhelmingly opposed to it. Another nail in the coffin of American democracy? And of marriage? If Justice Anthony Kennedy is true to form, the eventual ruling could be as destructive of marriage as an institution as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey have been to human life and the right to life
With Friends Like These . . . | 2010
is excellent. The careful case it makes against same-sex marriage and for marriage as our key pro-child institution--as opposed to the likes of Stephanie Coontz and Judith Stacey, who oppose marriage as an institution but support same sex marriage as a path to the institution's disintegration--is excellent. All the more effective rhetorically because the author is a liberal.But his performance as key witness in the California trial to overthrow Proposition 8 was indescribably pathetic. The case's result is not in doubt. Now the issue will undoubtedly go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether same-sex marriage as a new legal right will be imposed nationwide on a population that has shown again and again through the democratic process that it is overwhelmingly opposed to it. Another nail in the coffin of American democracy? And of marriage? If Justice Anthony Kennedy is true to form, the eventual ruling could be as destructive of marriage as an institution as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey have been to human life and the right to life
With Friends Like These . . . | 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
The Rage Against God
Peter Hitchens has published an insightful book, drawing on his own experience as former atheist and brother of a famous New Atheist. The Rage Against God is interesting both 1) for its discussion of atheism and atheism's links to intolerance, violence, and totalitarianism and also 2) for its portrait of the disintegrating world of postwar England in which he and I and also Roger Scruton grew up. (See Scruton's Gentle Regrets and England: An Elegy.)
Amazon has a brief clip in which Hitchens talks about the book at:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m582FJ1QOUGY1
The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith
Gentle Regrets (Thoughts from a Life)
England: An Elegy
Amazon has a brief clip in which Hitchens talks about the book at:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m582FJ1QOUGY1
The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith
Gentle Regrets (Thoughts from a Life)
England: An Elegy
Friday, June 25, 2010
Dads, Don't Go
Joe Carter
June 25, 2010
“Are fathers necessary?” asks Pamela Paul in the latest issue of The Atlantic. That she considers the question worth asking is a clue to how the article will conclude: “there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.”
Published just before Father’s Day, it would be easy to dismiss such cheap contrarianism as an attention-getting stunt. (The empirical claims presented in Paul’s article—and the research it was based on—have been adequately rebutted. W. Bradford Wilcox and others have already pointed out that most of the studies relied upon small, unrepresentative samples of same-sex and heterosexual couples.) But the fact remains that in America we act as if fathers are unnecessary. We enjoy a fit of pique when Heather has two full-time mommies, yet only respond with a sad shrug when Heather has one part-time daddy. But if fathers are necessary, they have to be completely involved in the lives of their children—and living at home with their children’s mothers.
As David Blankenhorn notes in Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, “The evidence shows that the great majority of visiting fathers are not—indeed, cannot be—good-enough fathers to their children. The deck is stacked against them. Too much has changed, too fast; too much will continue to change.” In theory, he continues, it may be possible to restructure everything else about a family while maintaining fatherhood as a constant. In practice, it is hardly ever possible. Visiting fathers have lost the bases of fatherhood. As Bronislaw Malinowski put it in his classic cross-cultural analysis of parenthood, “the child is linked to both its parents by the unity of the household and by the intimacy of daily contacts.” But for the Visiting Father, both aspects of this linkage are irrevocably shattered.
I first read that passage in 1995, the year I myself became a “weekend dad.” In February my wife told me she was gay. In March she left our home and took my daughter with her.
At the time I was on recruiting duty for the Marine Corps, on an unforgiving assignment that required working fourteen-hour days, six days a week. I could only see my little girl on Sundays after making the ninety-mile trek from Olympia to Everett, where my soon-to-be-ex-wife had moved.
I’d pick up my two-year-old daughter, strap her into the car seat, and we’d set out on our weekend routine: to the park, if it was sunny and warm; to the play-land at McDonalds if it was rainy and cold. (In Everett, it is always rainy and always cold.)
Over the next several years, I was the one who moved—to Japan, San Diego, Dallas, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. I went from being “weekend dad” to being “summer-and-holiday dad.” Through it all I tried my best to be a “good-enough father.”
A few years ago I met Blakenhorn and talked to him about his book. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him the base isn’t always lost and that the linkage is not always shattered. I wanted to tell him that it was indeed possible—because I was one—to be a “good-enough father.”
But it isn’t true. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, Fatherless America was devastatingly prescient about my own experience as a “visiting father.” My experience was one more data point in the reams of empirical studies that show what millions of part-time dads before me have learned: Our children always need more than we can give them in a few weekend hours.
Of course, visiting fathers aren’t the only ones aware of the damage being done to our country’s children. Almost everyone acknowledge the harm in treating dad as if there is “nothing objectively essential about his contribution.”
Yet if we’re too specific, too personal, we may offend some poor hapless father who is doing the best he can. And who are we to judge any individual’s family situation? America’s true religion—unfettered individualism—requires that we find some way to justify everyone’s choice and ignore or play down the damage that results from such choices.
Although it is tempting to join in bending a knee to the cult of individualism (I’m an American, after all), I want to take a different approach. I want to directly address the specific, narrow audience who can do more than anyone else to change this destructive cycle. I want to make a policy proposal to the fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.
As with all policy proposals, certain assumptions must be shared before agreement can be reached. My proposal is based on a simple argument: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, you can stop reading now.
Here is the only way to fix the problem of fatherlessness: You must find a way to stay with your children. You may be having a tough time in your marriage. You may be thinking that you no longer love or can live with your spouse. You may believe that divorce is the only remaining option.
I don’t know your situation. I don’t know what you are going through. I only know that your children need you at home. Your sons and your daughters need your presence. They need you around, all the time, and not just for regularly scheduled visits. If you want to be a good father, don’t leave your children.
I’m fully aware that such a suggestion will be unpopular and that it will be deemed impractical. Our society tells us that you shouldn’t “stay together just for the kids.” Some social scientists will tell us that staying in an unhappy marriage will hurt the kids. Our culture tells us that progress has made fatherhood a vestigial artifact. Our hearts tell us that we deserve to pursue our own bliss. Even our churches can tell us that marriage is about being happy and that we deserve to be happy no matter what.
But again: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. They need you at home. If you’re a good man and aspire to be a good father, that is all you need to know.
If your wife is physically abusive to you and the children, you need to get out—and take your kids with you. Otherwise you stick it out, and try to love your wife in every way possible. Maybe the marriage will heal (they sometimes do). Maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. If you have to stay in your marriage for one year or for eighteen, you stick it out until your children are grown.
What do you do, though, if you’re wife wants a divorce? You beg her to stay. You change what you have to change. You use guilt if necessary, and try to get her to “think about what is best for the kids.”
If nothing else works, then you ask her to commit to six months of marital counseling before she files for divorce. If at the end of the six months she’s still resolved to end the marriage you ask for another six months. You keep asking for as long as it takes. You may lose the fight eventually, but if you’re a man you will not give up on your family until you are bloodied and broken.
Don’t kid yourself that your divorce will be different because you have a good relationship with your children’s mother. My ex-wife has become a dear friend and a superb partner in parenting. Despite the peculiar circumstance that ended our marriage, I couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful, accommodating woman to be my former spouse.
But as hard as we work to make it easier on our daughter, everything we can do is not enough. Even though my daughter has lived with me for the past couple of years, her being with me hasn’t changed the fact that our child lives in a house where one of her parents is missing. Divorce doesn’t just end a marriage—it ends a family.
By now I’ve lost almost everyone who has followed me this far. Most people will pity my naivete or denounce my blanket recommendation as insensitive and idiotic. So be it. It may not even be the type of argument that we can comprehend in our individualistic culture. We’ve become so accustomed to politically-oriented solutions for societal problems that we’ve forgotten that sometimes the only way to fix what we’ve broken is by individuals making tough choices. In this situation, there is no other way.
I can’t convince everyone, of course, but my hope is that there is at least one father left—even just one—who will seriously consider what I’m saying. I hope that he will go into his child’s room tonight and watch them while they sleep. I hope that he will think about what it means to his babies that he is there for them when they go to bed and that he is there for them when they wake up.
Finally, I hope he’ll realize he has the power to retain a precious gift that we visiting fathers have lost and that we can never get back. He still has the opportunity to be a good father.
Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.
Retrieved June 24, 2010 from http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/06/dads-donrsquot-go
More about fatherhood:
Pamela Paul (2010). Are fathers necessary? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/are-fathers-necessary/8136/
W. Bradford Wilcox (2010). Are fathers really fungible? http://familyscholars.org/2010/06/14/are-fathers-really-fungible/
Andersson, Gunnar, 1962-
Noack, Turid.
Seierstad, Ane.
Weedon-Fekjaer, Harald.
The Demographics of Same-Sex Marriages in Norway and Sweden
Demography - Volume 43, Number 1, February 2006, pp. 79-98
Abstract at:
The present study investigates the demographics of same-sex marriages—that is, registered partnerships—in Norway and Sweden. We give an overview of the demographic characteristics of the spouses of these partnerships, study patterns of their divorce risks, and compare the dynamics of same-sex couples with those of heterosexual marriages. We use longitudinal information from the population registers of the two countries that cover all persons in partnerships. Our demographic analyses include information on characteristics such as age, sex, geographic background, experience of previous opposite-sex marriage, parenthood, and educational attainment of the partners involved. The results show that in many respects, the distributions of married populations on these characteristics differ by the sex composition of the couples. Patterns in divorce risks are rather similar in same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, but divorce-risk levels are considerably higher in same-sex marriages. The divorce risk for female partnerships is double that for male partnerships.
W. Bradford Wilcox (2009, April 13). To Have, to Hold, For a While
Amid divorce, remarriage and co-habitation, children do not do well.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123958524728412435.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/parenting/pa0140.htm
http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=78
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/06/on-the-demise-of-fatherhood
Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem
June 25, 2010
“Are fathers necessary?” asks Pamela Paul in the latest issue of The Atlantic. That she considers the question worth asking is a clue to how the article will conclude: “there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.”
Published just before Father’s Day, it would be easy to dismiss such cheap contrarianism as an attention-getting stunt. (The empirical claims presented in Paul’s article—and the research it was based on—have been adequately rebutted. W. Bradford Wilcox and others have already pointed out that most of the studies relied upon small, unrepresentative samples of same-sex and heterosexual couples.) But the fact remains that in America we act as if fathers are unnecessary. We enjoy a fit of pique when Heather has two full-time mommies, yet only respond with a sad shrug when Heather has one part-time daddy. But if fathers are necessary, they have to be completely involved in the lives of their children—and living at home with their children’s mothers.
As David Blankenhorn notes in Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, “The evidence shows that the great majority of visiting fathers are not—indeed, cannot be—good-enough fathers to their children. The deck is stacked against them. Too much has changed, too fast; too much will continue to change.” In theory, he continues, it may be possible to restructure everything else about a family while maintaining fatherhood as a constant. In practice, it is hardly ever possible. Visiting fathers have lost the bases of fatherhood. As Bronislaw Malinowski put it in his classic cross-cultural analysis of parenthood, “the child is linked to both its parents by the unity of the household and by the intimacy of daily contacts.” But for the Visiting Father, both aspects of this linkage are irrevocably shattered.
I first read that passage in 1995, the year I myself became a “weekend dad.” In February my wife told me she was gay. In March she left our home and took my daughter with her.
At the time I was on recruiting duty for the Marine Corps, on an unforgiving assignment that required working fourteen-hour days, six days a week. I could only see my little girl on Sundays after making the ninety-mile trek from Olympia to Everett, where my soon-to-be-ex-wife had moved.
I’d pick up my two-year-old daughter, strap her into the car seat, and we’d set out on our weekend routine: to the park, if it was sunny and warm; to the play-land at McDonalds if it was rainy and cold. (In Everett, it is always rainy and always cold.)
Over the next several years, I was the one who moved—to Japan, San Diego, Dallas, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. I went from being “weekend dad” to being “summer-and-holiday dad.” Through it all I tried my best to be a “good-enough father.”
A few years ago I met Blakenhorn and talked to him about his book. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him the base isn’t always lost and that the linkage is not always shattered. I wanted to tell him that it was indeed possible—because I was one—to be a “good-enough father.”
But it isn’t true. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, Fatherless America was devastatingly prescient about my own experience as a “visiting father.” My experience was one more data point in the reams of empirical studies that show what millions of part-time dads before me have learned: Our children always need more than we can give them in a few weekend hours.
Of course, visiting fathers aren’t the only ones aware of the damage being done to our country’s children. Almost everyone acknowledge the harm in treating dad as if there is “nothing objectively essential about his contribution.”
Yet if we’re too specific, too personal, we may offend some poor hapless father who is doing the best he can. And who are we to judge any individual’s family situation? America’s true religion—unfettered individualism—requires that we find some way to justify everyone’s choice and ignore or play down the damage that results from such choices.
Although it is tempting to join in bending a knee to the cult of individualism (I’m an American, after all), I want to take a different approach. I want to directly address the specific, narrow audience who can do more than anyone else to change this destructive cycle. I want to make a policy proposal to the fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.
As with all policy proposals, certain assumptions must be shared before agreement can be reached. My proposal is based on a simple argument: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, you can stop reading now.
Here is the only way to fix the problem of fatherlessness: You must find a way to stay with your children. You may be having a tough time in your marriage. You may be thinking that you no longer love or can live with your spouse. You may believe that divorce is the only remaining option.
I don’t know your situation. I don’t know what you are going through. I only know that your children need you at home. Your sons and your daughters need your presence. They need you around, all the time, and not just for regularly scheduled visits. If you want to be a good father, don’t leave your children.
I’m fully aware that such a suggestion will be unpopular and that it will be deemed impractical. Our society tells us that you shouldn’t “stay together just for the kids.” Some social scientists will tell us that staying in an unhappy marriage will hurt the kids. Our culture tells us that progress has made fatherhood a vestigial artifact. Our hearts tell us that we deserve to pursue our own bliss. Even our churches can tell us that marriage is about being happy and that we deserve to be happy no matter what.
But again: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. They need you at home. If you’re a good man and aspire to be a good father, that is all you need to know.
If your wife is physically abusive to you and the children, you need to get out—and take your kids with you. Otherwise you stick it out, and try to love your wife in every way possible. Maybe the marriage will heal (they sometimes do). Maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter. If you have to stay in your marriage for one year or for eighteen, you stick it out until your children are grown.
What do you do, though, if you’re wife wants a divorce? You beg her to stay. You change what you have to change. You use guilt if necessary, and try to get her to “think about what is best for the kids.”
If nothing else works, then you ask her to commit to six months of marital counseling before she files for divorce. If at the end of the six months she’s still resolved to end the marriage you ask for another six months. You keep asking for as long as it takes. You may lose the fight eventually, but if you’re a man you will not give up on your family until you are bloodied and broken.
Don’t kid yourself that your divorce will be different because you have a good relationship with your children’s mother. My ex-wife has become a dear friend and a superb partner in parenting. Despite the peculiar circumstance that ended our marriage, I couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful, accommodating woman to be my former spouse.
But as hard as we work to make it easier on our daughter, everything we can do is not enough. Even though my daughter has lived with me for the past couple of years, her being with me hasn’t changed the fact that our child lives in a house where one of her parents is missing. Divorce doesn’t just end a marriage—it ends a family.
By now I’ve lost almost everyone who has followed me this far. Most people will pity my naivete or denounce my blanket recommendation as insensitive and idiotic. So be it. It may not even be the type of argument that we can comprehend in our individualistic culture. We’ve become so accustomed to politically-oriented solutions for societal problems that we’ve forgotten that sometimes the only way to fix what we’ve broken is by individuals making tough choices. In this situation, there is no other way.
I can’t convince everyone, of course, but my hope is that there is at least one father left—even just one—who will seriously consider what I’m saying. I hope that he will go into his child’s room tonight and watch them while they sleep. I hope that he will think about what it means to his babies that he is there for them when they go to bed and that he is there for them when they wake up.
Finally, I hope he’ll realize he has the power to retain a precious gift that we visiting fathers have lost and that we can never get back. He still has the opportunity to be a good father.
Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.
Retrieved June 24, 2010 from http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/06/dads-donrsquot-go
More about fatherhood:
Pamela Paul (2010). Are fathers necessary? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/are-fathers-necessary/8136/
W. Bradford Wilcox (2010). Are fathers really fungible? http://familyscholars.org/2010/06/14/are-fathers-really-fungible/
Andersson, Gunnar, 1962-
Noack, Turid.
Seierstad, Ane.
Weedon-Fekjaer, Harald.
The Demographics of Same-Sex Marriages in Norway and Sweden
Demography - Volume 43, Number 1, February 2006, pp. 79-98
Abstract at:
The present study investigates the demographics of same-sex marriages—that is, registered partnerships—in Norway and Sweden. We give an overview of the demographic characteristics of the spouses of these partnerships, study patterns of their divorce risks, and compare the dynamics of same-sex couples with those of heterosexual marriages. We use longitudinal information from the population registers of the two countries that cover all persons in partnerships. Our demographic analyses include information on characteristics such as age, sex, geographic background, experience of previous opposite-sex marriage, parenthood, and educational attainment of the partners involved. The results show that in many respects, the distributions of married populations on these characteristics differ by the sex composition of the couples. Patterns in divorce risks are rather similar in same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, but divorce-risk levels are considerably higher in same-sex marriages. The divorce risk for female partnerships is double that for male partnerships.
W. Bradford Wilcox (2009, April 13). To Have, to Hold, For a While
Amid divorce, remarriage and co-habitation, children do not do well.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123958524728412435.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/parenting/pa0140.htm
http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=78
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/06/on-the-demise-of-fatherhood
Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)