Replies

I don't know the "best" solution, but if a program exists that brings fathers back into the picture, and it educates parents in some way, and makes their marriage and families stronger, and it rests on principles that relate to the founding of this country, I find I can not oppose it.
---

Well, we all agree about the tradgey of not having fathers around. But I still think it is not helpful to look at the problem and say "What can we do to bring fathers back?", but rather, "Why are they staying away?" and "What is causing this problem already?"

Why is the black and white rate of single motherhood so different? To offer a solution, you need to know what is causing the problem. Government is causing the problem.

Perhaps the link I posted didn't explain it well enough, but if you get a chance to skim some of the charts on the main paper I think it is pretty clear what is causing, or at least, is the major contributer to this problem. Government programs to the poor (and indeed all people), welfare, health, housing, money, subsidies, need to be eliminated and/or phased out.

To offer solutions without getting rid of these things will most likely be counter productive and is doomed to failure from the onset.

'course, it all sounds like great fun, which is why politicians love these sorts of programs.

but rather, "Why are they staying away?" and "What is causing this problem already?"

I agree with you, as those questions are good questions. Now, why do you think fathers stay away? I will give some of the reasons I have come across, as I am not sure how many of those reasons would change as a result of what else you wrote. Beyond divorce (and some divorced men very much want to be part of their kids' lives), here's some of the "reasons" for absentee fathers that I know of:

1) No one has ever figured out who the father of the child actually is. Birth certificate says "father unknown." Mother was raped or had multiple partners.

2) No one expects the father to marry the mother of the child. The mother and father were just "hooking up." The kid was an accident.

3) The father does not marry THIS mother, since the dad has fathered kids with multple women. He remains single.

4) The dad is out of the picture and not married to the mother, and the dad's current address is jail, or his current address is unknown.

5) The father of the child was, himself, raised by a single mom, and does not know how to be a father, and is afraid of this new role, and so abandons the mother and child.

6) The father feels no responsibility to the kid. This includes celebrity dads' kids, as some of these wealthy men have to be dragged into court and forced by court order to pay child support. There is never any "family" structure for the kid in terms of having a father around.

7) Etc.