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Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem Review
I am aware that you discourage people from commenting on other reviews, but I think that the following comment is needed nevertheless. A previously posted hostile review said "Just where does David Blankenhorn get off telling mothers that they're not good enough for their kids!!!???? It looks as if David here is stuck in a time warp and the people that believe this piece of trash are too. So...almost half of kids grow up with single moms. I think it's swell that women today have more choices than ever before." This reviewer clearly doesn't grasp the message of the book. First, Blankenhorn isn't saying that mothers aren't good enough for their kids. On the contrary, a careful reading of the book reveals that he believes that good mothers are just as necessary as fathers. He is not denigrating mothers. He is simply saying that neither mother nor father possesses the resources to give a child everything that the child needs. Parenting was meant to be a cooperative effort between a team consisting of husband and wife, each of whom brings unique personal qualities (some of which are gender-related) to the endeavor. It's not sexist to argue that this is the case; on the contrary, it is extremely sexist to argue that women are the only parents who are essential to healthy childhood development. As for the argument that those who agree with the author are in a "time warp," this is nothing but an unintelligent ad hominem attack designed to divert attention from the legitimate substance of the book. Just because one is dismayed by the increasing number of fatherless children, and the undeniably negative effects of that phenomenon on society, it does not make one a Luddite who wishes to return to the past. Responsible people understand that the only way to ensure genuine human progress is to constantly engage in the process of self-evaluation, both as individuals and as members of a larger society. Refusing to acknowledge mistakes which have been made in the recent past is not the path to genuine progress. One last comment: When I read Blankenhorn's description of the negative effects of childlessness, I saw my own story in the book. My Dad, who just died a month ago, divorced my mother when I was a sophomore in high school. He paid the child support payments required by law, but he apparently felt justified in reneging on an earlier promise to finance my college education, mostly because I criticized him for having engaged in the adulterous affair which led to my parents' divorce. As a result of my father's subsequent unwillingness to finance my education (even though, as a successful optometrist, he was more than capable of doing so), I have spent many years struggling financially, in jobs which were only peripherally related to my real interests. My mother loved me, and did the best she could, but the bottom line is that I needed a mom AND a dad, not just for economic reasons, but for a variety of other reasons as well. Instead, I got a mother, and an absentee father who, in terms of adequately preparing me for future life as an adult, might as well have died many years ago. Yeah, that's just "swell." The reviewer refers to the mother's choices. What about the kids' choices? Most of the children affected by the modern disintegration of fatherhood have no choice at all but to suffer the ill effects of that disintegration. Unfortunately, a lot of modern parents today are in a state of arrested development, and they think only of their own needs, not the needs of their children. This is not a sob story. My point is that Blankenhorn's assessment of our current crisis is totally correct. It's time for us, as a society, to admit that the Playboy philosophy, which essentially denies that masculinity has anything to do with parental responsibility, is morally and intellectually bankrupt. We will experience tragic episodes such as the recent massacre at Littleton, CO with increasing frequency unless and until we begin to reverse the decline of the American family.Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem Overview
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