.jpg)
Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" may be the right thing to do, but there's only one reason to do it: military effectiveness.
Reader comments: 12
Didn't that Manchester bank robber last week know that if you are going to rob a bank on Elm Street, ManchVegas, you are supposed to tape a tree to your head?
More Columns >>>
- > You never know about the mail (2)
- > Caroline Baum: We might as well be building pyramids (16)
- > Jonah Goldberg: Obama not ideological? Don't make me laugh (26)
- > Shackling our future to our elderly (12)
- > Thomas Sowell: Politicians in Wonderland (22)
- > John Clayton: For most writers, this is THE list
- > Gaming the abortion debate (32)
- > Joe McQuaid: Washington reigns supreme, but the Granite State has a few notables, too (8)
- > Some things never change, just the voices (4)
- > Fergus Cullen: Cronyism and corporate welfare rule RGGI grants (17)
- > George F. Will: The Democrats' two brains (18)
- > Is free speech merely a privilege? (25)
- > Thomas Sowell: An active electorate is a powerful electorate (16)
- > Pat Buchanan: Is Obama losing the white vote? (24)
- > Joe McQuaid: Virtual reality makes winter bearable for golfers stuck in its snowy grip (5)
Andrew Cline has been editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader since October of 2001. His writing has appeared in more than 100 newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and National Review.Kathleen Parker: Obama's incomplete plea on fatherhood
Print
Email
Mobile
Reader comments
By KATHLEEN PARKER
Thursday, Jun. 19, 2008
BARACK OBAMA'S recent call for responsible fatherhood is welcome, overdue -- and misleadingly incomplete.
That America's fathers need to embrace their most important role is no secret. Activist fathers have been trying to make the same claim for decades, without much success.
Not all fathers are trying to be good dads, it goes without saying.
But neither are all absent by choice, as Obama's message implied.
His plea to fathers came on Father's Day, a time we usually reserve for praising good men. Noting the plague of fatherless homes, he called on fathers who have abandoned their responsibilities to act like men, not boys.
Hear, hear.
We pause briefly to ponder the kind of response Obama might have received had he decided to criticize negligent moms on Mother's Day. No one in his right mind would do such a thing, but we're so accustomed to dissing dads that even a Father's Day reprimand leaves America's eyelashes unruffled.
Double standards are sometimes allowed for the greater good. We cut Obama slack because his message is so urgent. We also know that the African-American community has been hardest hit by father absence. In Obama's words:
"We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled -- doubled -- since we were children. We know the statistics -- that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."
Obama is right on all of the above, but the stats are even worse. More than 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Since 1960, we've tripled the number of American children living in fatherless homes, from 8 million to 24 million. The population as a whole increased just 1.7 times during that period.
What Obama fails to mention is that the problem of absent fathers, especially in the black community, is tied in part to well-intentioned social programs such as those the presumptive Democratic nominee intends to expand -- domestic violence prevention and child support collections.
As I point out in my book, "Save the Males: Why Men Matter; Why Women Should Care," cracking down on deadbeats is one of those guaranteed applause-getters, but most of the fathers of whom Obama is speaking make less than $10,000 a year -- or are unemployed.
Throwing them in jail won't help children much, either financially or psychologically. The truth, meanwhile, seems unwelcome in political circles: Most employed men pay their child support in full and on time, and always did, without government prodding.
Similarly furthering the public impression that only men are guilty of domestic violence is counterproductive if the goal is truly to bring fathers home. That's because as the system is currently set up, men lose all legal rights to home and children if a woman charges assault. The accused is guilty until proven innocent.
Clearly, the state has a compelling interest in protecting women and children from abusive men -- where they exist. But not all charges are legitimate and the state's punitive powers, permitted without due process, are mind-boggling to consider. Once the system is engaged and injunctions issued, even innocent fathers are unlikely to see much of their children.
Perhaps never.
On Mother's Day, we didn't hear much about women initiating domestic violence, including child abuse, though some studies show that they do more often than men. That's not a popular statistic for the good reason that women more often than men suffer grave injury and are killed in physical disputes.
Those two dueling facts highlight the lose-lose nature of the domestic violence debate. But if prevention of violence and preservation of the family are indeed our goals, then the solution involves focusing on the causes of family violence, including women's role, not promising to make things tougher only on fathers.
Changing the system won't be easy, but Obama is uniquely positioned to make a difference in the conversation. He should begin by saying that bringing fathers back into the family means ending the demonization of men and the culture's trivialization of fatherhood.
That would be a change we could believe in.
Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. © 1997-2010.
YOUR COMMENTS
I'll say what i said before in a letter to the editors (it isn't short but it is thoughtful--
Sadly, our growing problem with broken homes has a lot to do with government influences, specifically its devotion to collecting tax money. When Obama says the other parent "keeps the foundation of our country strong", that's code for "his child support payments keeps our economy strong and our taxes coming in".
Obama's real focus is on all of those single mothers that decades of misguided government policies have made into a large part of the American landscape. Welfare programs as well as other social policies have encouraged single mothers, and our tax dollars have built slums, some the size of towns and even small cities where generation after generation of our poor live and die.
And yes Barrack, many of them are of African descent, but many others are Hispanic, some are Caucasian, and certainly some are of other ethnicities. the real problem is that they are poor, and that alone has the most significant impact on their futures.
How does our government fix this problem? Tear down the slums it made a generation or so ago and start again! And of course, chase down those evil fathers and rip them off for the entire childhood of the children they putatively fathered. But that doesn't mean our government really wants those poor fathers to be real fathers, they just want those fathers to dearly pay for their sin of fathering a child. That is the real reason behind the growing tenacity of the federal government's "crackdown" on men by funding state based paternity and child support enforcement actions.
Curiously, this diligence of our government is supposed to reduce the number of single mothers on welfare, yet the reality is that what this really does is inject far more money into the economy than the sparse welfare payments could do. Yes indeed, child support inflicted by courts is seldom if ever based on what government would pay in the same circumstances.
Nor does it appear that any state (much less the federal government) ever figures out what is a truly equitable support level for the children of their state, and then require each parent to bear exactly half of that amount-- something that would discourage women from getting pregnant in the first place. Instead, there is a very significant reward system for the mothers, with her usually getting a percentage of the father's income, and often other financial incentives like property.
Our "welfare state" is more than just about poor black single mothers, it is about the entitlement of women that for what ever reason, do get pregnant. Men have yet to realize that this is often no accident but is in fact very deliberate. Whether during a short unhappy marriage ending in divorce, or the deliberate effort at pregnancy which then leads to a paternity action against the man, women enjoy financial rewards for bearing children. And that is wrong.
American will grow ever more diminished by the high rates of divorces which result in broken homes mostly headed by women. These are homes where the children are at much greater risk of social failure plus subject to various acts of abuse as well as higher rates of child mortality, with some accidents, some self inflicted and still others being homicides. Broken homes are destructive, and government policies encourage this pattern!
In the end, it is our children that are paying for the greed of our government, and our mothers as well. It is all about money, not about the welfare of our children.
So Obama, just why did your father leave your mother and this country?
- Randall Hofland, Stockton, ME
FINALLY, An UL published article which explains the problems and describes my experience with a corrupt DV and Family law system in NH.
What did NH do with the garnished payroll payments of $49,088.00 in child support payment to HHS?
Why is the STATE collecting child support from me for an ADULT child still?????
2,179 days of STATE Parential Alienation continues and NH HHS received my child support ontime every pay day for two fine sons that have been totally abused by the NH BAR and NH Judicial System along with their NH STATE beaten down Father.
Hey "DV" Judge Emory, "Temp Hearing" Master Alice C Love and "Divorce" Judge Groff how your summer going and enjoying your lives with your families?
When do I get to see my children?
You go Kathleen Parker,..... you tell them...
..Tell Obama to come to NH and reform these NH institutional child abusers.
- Jim, Hooksett
NOTE: If you have visited this page before, newer comments may be hidden. Press F5, or hold down the Ctrl key while reloading or refreshing the page. (Another option for Firefox users is the Clear Cache add-on.)