Posted on 06/16/2015 7:39:25 AM PDT by massmike
In his new autobiography, "The Wright Brothers," David McCullough says of the pioneers of aviation, "Like their father, they were always perfect gentlemen, naturally courteous to all."
Of the many adjectives one might choose to describe the youth who rioted in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, "perfect gentlemen" and "courteous to all" don't immediately come to mind. To demonstrate that "black lives matter," the Baltimore mob caused $9 million in damages (mostly to minority businesses), set 144 vehicles on fire and injured 113 police officers.
If you want to understand urban anarchy, the place to start is with fatherless families – a topic the establishment media studiously ignores. According to The Marriage & Religion Research Institute, only 16% of Baltimore teens, 15- to 17-years old, were raised in an intact family.
The mother who went to the scene of the Baltimore riot and smacked her son around (because she didn't want him to "become another Freddie Gray") was praised for tough-love. No one asked why it wasn't the father laying down the law – perhaps because she's a single-parent with six children.
The evidence of the impact of fatherless families is overwhelming:
• A 2008 study showed that 44% of families without a father end up in poverty, compared with only 12% of two-parent families.
• The National Fatherhood Initiative estimates that a 1% increase in single-parent families in a neighborhood leads to a 3% increase in teen violence.
• Children in fatherless families have a 71% drop-out rate.
• 70% of juvenile delinquents were raised by mothers alone, as were 85% of children with behavioral disorders and 63% of youth who commit suicide.
• An African American girl who grows up in a home with her biological father is 44% less likely to have sexual intercourse before the age of 18.
On every single index of social pathology (including under-age smoking and drinking, drug abuse, and early sexual activity) children from fatherless families are far more vulnerable than their parents-married counterparts. The greatest gift a child can get is to grow up in an intact family. This is true in cities and suburbia, and cuts across income and education levels.
And yet, except for family activists, few are talking about this phenomenon. America celebrates fathers one day a year. Our culture denigrates them every day.
TV sitcoms are particularly toxic. From "Father Knows Best" and "The Cosby Show," it's been a steady slide into the abyss of "Married With Children," "The Simpsons," and the latest crop of dysfunctional dads on Prime Time TV.
In "The Atlantic," not known as a bastion of conservative thought, stay-at-home dad Alexis C. Madrigal writes: "And while it may seem harmless to get in a few cheap shots at dads' expense, these characters, and their hilarious incompetence, form the cultural backdrop for our society's larger discussion about the roles fathers play in families."
If that weren't enough, dads get another drubbing in commercials (hundreds are aired by each of the networks every day). It only takes 15 seconds to show dumb old pop being outwitted by his kids, unprepared to handle the simplest situation, and treated with smug condescension by his all-knowing ("that's-right-dear") spouse.
In Slate.com, Seth Stevenson discloses: "From the moment I started writing about advertising, I've fielded complaints – always from men – about how fathers and husbands are portrayed in TV commercials. Ad after ad makes the doltish dad the butt of all jokes." The clueless father (stupefied by any task) is our era's politically correct blonde joke.
Okay, commercials and sitcoms aren't the reason so many men fail to father the children they've fathered. But they may be one reason why so many of us, especially the political/cultural elite, care so little about it.
And the message is getting through. Fox News contributor Suzanne Venker notes that while the percentage of women who consider marriage important is growing, men are moving in the opposite direction. "According to Pew Research Center (in 2012), the share of women 18 to 34 that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things rose 9 percentage points since 1997 – from 28% to 37%. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped from 35% to 29%."
Consequently, the marriage rate has reached its lowest level in the past century, while cohabitation is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception. The fertility rate – the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime – is the lowest since we started keeping track in 1920.
Some women choose not to have children with men who may not be around when the going gets tough – say around age 15, when boys often tower over their mothers. More men choose the allure of the bachelor life – sans diapers and college tuition payments, among other joys.
The treatment of dads is also one front in the war on men. For feminists, empowering women has always been about eviscerating men.
The war on women is a fraud. If I don't want to pay for a single coed's birth control or seek to end late-term abortions, supposedly, that makes me part of the war on women. This equates rejection of feminist ideology with hostility toward women per se.
The same forces that push the mythical war on women wage a relentless war on men. It's feminists who control what comes out of Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the mainstream media, not patriarchal males. The message is everywhere: Men are stupid, selfish, overbearing and insensitive – a bunch of beer-guzzling brutes who beat their wives and children during half-time in the Super Bowl, start wars and don't recycle.
"Men Are Obsolete," read the headline in a 2014 commentary in Time magazine by feminist Hanna Rosin.
"Are men obsolete? Of course not. For one thing, we haven't found a way to harvest sperm without them being, you know, alive," Rosin wrote. But men "as we've historically come to define them (historically defined by whom?)– entitled to power, destined for leadership, arrogant, confused by anything that isn't them….They are obsolete."
This is as much a caricature of masculinity, as calling women ("as we've historically come to define them") whiny, manipulative, vain and shallow ("Does he look like Brad Pitt?") is of femininity.
We need to start talking about masculinity and femininity seriously. Actress Kristen Dunst set off a firestorm last year when she said "I feel like the feminine has been undervalued. We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being a mother, cooking – it's a valuable thing my mom created."
If that weren't outrageous enough, Dunst added that at times women "need a knight in shining armor" and "You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That's why relationships work." I'm surprised she wasn't burned at the stake at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.
But society rolls merrily along scoffing at dads and sneering at men in general. Dissident feminist Camille Paglia warns, "What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide."
The fate of fatherless families suggests that men are good for more than harvesting their sperm. In the inner cities, sperm-harvesting (consciously or unwittingly) has been going on for some time. It's filtering down to suburban and small-town America. The result isn't "perfect gentlemen" who are "naturally courteous to all," but too often savages and the spiritually maimed.
Somebody emailed me a joke during the Baltimore riots, that the only things the rioters left on the shelves in the drugstore they trashed were the Father’s Day cards.
Fathers are more important than ever! As society has shown. What God has created, let no one tear down!
Easy answer to the quesiton -
look at the kids who grew up with dads,
and those who grew up without them,
and compare their relative criminality and prosperity.
bttt
Too bad he is your dead beat uncle who spent his whole life working under the table construction/Sheet rocker jobs, who drank his money away.
Father’s Day – ————the most confusing day in the inner cities of the USA.
sad sad sad
“Fathers are more important than ever! As society has shown. What God has created, let no one tear down!”
Unless like Bruce Jenner you have an inner freak waiting to be born and good plastic surgeon
I wonder if his kids will send him Father’s day cards?
The fangtooth militant feminazis want them to be. Their wishes are contrary to nature and is hurting us.
Hate the feminist movement and the denigration of men and fathers. However, although the feminists were too often vicious, there was a problem in male/female relationships which needed addressing.
In middle ages Italy, there were an equal number of men women students, professors etc.
Luther said women only needed education for church, children and kitchen and the culture responded by forcing women to do only those tasks, essentially depriving them of other human activites. Human nature will try to assert its God given rights, but in the case of the feminists, the cure was worse than the disease.
You repeat yourself.
In the old days before the PC lunacy began ... lunatic like these were looked on as the village idiot and ignored. Now every crackpot imbecilic idea that comes from these loons is given a try.
” According to the latest lunatic left wing professor, having loving parents is an unfair advantage — which is why he argues that children need to be raised in state institutions instead of by parents.”
I saw that coming as an excuse by the left for putting the final nail on its most fundamental nemesis - the family.
I also see them using this argument. “Kids today are totally out of control as evidenced by all the senseless crime and riots. This is a sign that the institution of family no longer works therefore the government must step in and raise kids.”
I have noticed this trend for years and I cannot tell you (but I'll try) how much I detest this. It is disgusting, belittling, nonsensical and hateful.
I fantasize that one day I'll see one of these abused...yes, abused...TV commercial dads turn to his smart-ass, harpy wife after she utters her belittling dialog and say, "WTF is your problem?"
The only reason we see these ads is because the white, American dad is the last safe target for concentrated disdain and abuse.
</rant>
Through constant reinforcement by women; through endless jokes, advertising, and other media portraying men as useless, helpless without a woman, dumb, and incompetent, fathers are now largely seen as sperm donors and cash cows. Until they find someone better.
Have you seen the advertisements for the show on ABC “Family”
It’s disgustingly sick. 2 kids whose fathers are “becoming women”.
It is sad. But it was an joke, however ironic.
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