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This book brings together many of the leading voices of the fatherhood movement. As Wade Horn argues in the book's opening chapter, "movement" is a big word, suggesting important activity, but it has become the most appropriate word today to describe the diverse and rapidly expanding group of leaders, organizations, and grass-roots initiatives, cutting across ideological, political, and racial lines, all aimed at reconnecting men to their children. Five or six years ago, fatherlessness was still a problem with no name. Some good people were doing pioneering work, mostly at the local level - especially African-Americans such as Charles Ballard of the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood in Cleveland - but these leaders were largely isolated and unrecognized, voices in the wilderness. The contributors to this book are among the people most responsible in the 1990s for publicly naming this problem and initiating a movement to confront it. Think of these essays, then, as working papers for the new movement, vision statements and marching orders from the conceptual frameworkers and front line leaders. Several of these contributors are widely acknowledged as experts in their fields, but if you seek in these essays a consistently specialized or expert discourse, you should probably look elsewhere. Compared to formally academic treatments, these essays cut a wider swath and are much more intuitive and freewheeling. They also, I believe, get us closer to the heart of the matter. These authors constitute a promiscuously diverse group. Some are scholars. Some are organizers and activists. Some are clinicians and service providers. Some are think-tankers. Several are in government. Some are writers and public intellectuals. Several of them wear more than one hat. Readers will also note that these writers sometimes disagree with one another, frequently in matters of emphasis, occasionally in matters of substance. At the same time, they are not strangers who are simply talking past one another between book covers. Most of these authors know and respect one another. Many of them actively work together and influence one another's ideas, either formally, through organizational ties, or informally, through regularly talking to one another, sharing research, or debating strategy. This broad sense of people with a common understanding of the challenge -- not sameness, as in indistinct voices in a chorus, but purposeful relatedness, as in different players in an ensemble -- means that these essays connect to one another, engage with one another, in ways that are often missing from multi-author volumes. This shared understanding culminates in the book's conclusion, a jointly authored "Call to Fatherhood." Finally, most of these authors are not detached observers, dispensing allegedly values-neutral reportage from above the fray. For better or worse, these essays take the form of on-the-ground arguments, frequently marked by passion and personal commitment. The best of them - and there are a number of very good ones -- combine passion and precision. Where is the fatherhood movement going? This is the essential question. The answer is made more complicated by the fact the fatherhood movement is now much bigger than any individual or organization, or even any grouping of individuals or organizations. This fact changes the nature and possibility of leadership. Leaders in a bureaucracy typically seek to manage, decide, and claim credit. But leaders in an emerging social movement strive instead to inspire, empower, and give credit to others. Bureaucratic control is not an option. Indeed, with fatherhood now a salient national issue, and with new fatherhood projects popping up every day, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) for any one group even to monitor everything that is happening in the field. In such an environment -- which is the new and happy result, of course, of much effective work over the past few years -- the main task of leadership is to develop a broadly shared vision for the movement, based on a rough consensus regarding first principles and core goals. Toward that end, informed by the insights of these authors, and also reflecting on the possibility of actually reversing the trend of fatherlessness in the years ahead, let me suggest four important challenges for the fatherhood movement in the United States as we approach the new century. The first challenge is setting goals that are compelling and realizable. Building a movement requires winning concrete victories, beginning with small ones, but small ones that nevertheless signal progress toward an ultimate goal. But which small victories? And toward what larger goal? Fatherlessness is a multi-faceted social problem. Moreover, the situations of U.S. fathers today are highly diverse and increasingly problematic: many are very young, many are divorced, many are never-married, and many confront multiple problems, from racism to poor education to joblessness to drug addiction. For these reasons, the measurements of progress for a fatherhood movement must also be realistically wide-ranging and diverse, while at the same time pointing always toward a coherent vision of fatherhood. To me, the leading indicators for evaluating progress in the fatherhood movement should include:
Of these eight indicators, the last is the most important -- the ultimate vision of the fatherhood movement -- as well as the only one that is almost impossible to measure empirically. In one sense, then, perhaps all the other indicators can be viewed as proxies, indirect but hopeful pointers toward this final objective. In all likelihood, the proportion of children who grow up with their two married parents will prove to be the single most reliable indicator of how many children have responsible fathers who help to love and nurture them to adulthood. The second challenge for the fatherhood movement is racial reconciliation. Twenty or even ten years ago, fatherlessness was largely seen as a black problem, with specific causes and dimensions that were distinct from trends affecting the larger society. Moreover, from the mid 1960s until quite recently, many opinion leaders, both white and black, have insisted -- a few still insist today -- that calling attention to father-absence amounts to little more than racism, an attempt to blame the victim. In short, fatherlessness in recent decades has been a racially charged and racially divisive issue. No longer. The extent of fatherlessness among whites today matches almost exactly the extent of fatherlessness among blacks in 1965 -- the year that President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty aimed largely, he said in his famous Howard University speech of that year, at redressing "the breakdown of the Negro family structure."[1] Fatherlessness is currently increasing faster among whites than among blacks. No longer, then, according to any reasonable measurement, can fatherlessness be viewed as a black problem, a poverty problem, a "them" problem. It's an "us" problem. For this reason, more than almost any other issue, fatherlessness can be an issue that bridges the racial divide, a crisis that brings us together for a common purpose. Our guiding premise should be: one challenge, one movement. The third challenge for the fatherhood movement is supporting marriage. As several of these essays suggest - and as the diverse views expressed in this volume clearly demonstrate -- the "m" word is often controversial in discussions and programs regarding fatherhood. Some people feel that marriage itself is a problematic institution. Others worry about "imposing values" or sounding too preachy. Others worry about being unrealistic. In this view, marriage may be a fine thing, but like it or not, many fathers today are divorced or never-married. Is the fatherhood movement ignoring them or writing them off? Besides, why single out marriage as a necessary support system for fatherhood? Aren't there other viable ways for men to care for their children? Well, at least in my view, not really. Across history and cultures, nurturant fatherhood has rested securely on two foundations: co-residency with children and a parental alliance with the mother. All human societies have recognized these living arrangements as structural pre-conditions for effective fatherhood. All have created public ceremonies to legalize and sacralize them. Everywhere, the name given to this pro-child way of living is "marriage." Certainly, there are exceptions. Some never-married fathers, against all the odds, stick around and make it work. Some divorced fathers, at great personal cost, continue to be good fathers to their children. It is also true that something -- a name on a birth certificate, a child support check in the mail, a weekend visit -- is better than nothing. But let us be honest. There are not many exceptions. And these small things, these faint reminders of fatherhood, are only a little better than nothing. For the child, what really makes the difference is an in-the-home, love-the-mother father. For this reason, the fatherhood movement ought to aim high. Sometimes, of course, our reach will exceed our grasp. Sometimes the best is not possible. But surely this movement ought to know, and be unafraid to say, what the best is. To me, a marriage strategy is also the most realistic strategy. For there is little reason to believe -- there is almost no empirical evidence to suggest -- that we as a society can ignore or dispense with marriage while simultaneously renewing fatherhood. Everywhere, the two rise or fall together. That's one reason why marriage is often called a "natural" institution. It fits us as fathers. It best suits what our children need. That's also why Charles Ballard is not merely moralizing or engaging in sentimentality when he says that the most important job of a father is to "love the mother of his child" and the most important job of employees of his Institute for Responsible Fatherhood is to "model excellence in marriage." The fourth challenge for the fatherhood movement is recognizing the moral and religious dimensions of fatherhood. Several years ago, I wrote a book about fatherlessness. I tried to use social science research and cultural analysis to show that fatherlessness is the most harmful social trend of our generation. In that book, partly due to ignorance and partly because I wanted to make my argument in conventional terms, I said almost nothing about the relationship between human fatherhood and the fatherhood of God. I only asked: Do children need fathers? But what if the deeper question is: Do fathers need God? More precisely, does knowledge and love of God help a man to be a good father and a good husband? If so, why and how? The more I learn about contemporary fatherlessness in modern societies, the more I am persuaded that these are not only the hardest questions, they may also be the most important. In this book, several authors approach this subject. Glenn Stanton and David Gutmann, from quite different but fascinatingly congruent perspectives, confront the issue directly. In the larger fatherhood movement, many (though certainly not all) of the current leaders are people of faith, and much of the movement's energy and most effective grass-roots activity is based in churches, synagogues, and other faith-based organizations. This is more, I would suggest, than a coincidence. But if the faith dimension of fatherhood renewal is not a coincidence, what is it? Read Gutmann and Stanton for the good stuff, but here is a starting point. Fatherhood calls men to purposes larger than themselves. In this sense, the essence of fatherhood is the giving of oneself, connecting to others, and recognizing truths that are bigger than any one man. Having and loving a child thus becomes for the male a flesh-and-blood signal of the possibility of transcendence -- perhaps his best chance to glimpse, even in his weakness and shortsightedness, that spark of the divine that is in every human person. For being a good father is as close as men can come to participating with God in creation. From the Introduction, ``Toward Fatherhood" by David Blankenhorn Notes 1. "To Fulfill These Rights," Remarks of President Lyndon B. Johnson at Howard University. Washington, D.C. June 4, 1965.
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