Are Fathers Necessary?July/August 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Liberal feminist moms—eager for the participation of our emotionally evolved, enthusiastically diaper-bag-toting mates in the grueling round of dual-career child rearing—are keen to back the data. Dads, we tell our husbands, are essential influences on children, the source of unique benefits.There’s only one problem: none of this is proven. In the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, and Timothy Biblarz, a demographer from the University of Southern California, consolidated the available data [Technocratic Luciferian speak] on the role of gender in child rearing. As Stacey and Biblarz point out, our ideas of what dads do and provide are based primarily on contrasts between married-couple parents and single-female parents: an apples-to-oranges exercise that conflates gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and biogenetic relationships in ways that a true comparison of parent gender—one that compared married gay-male couples or married lesbian couples to married heterosexuals, or single fathers to single mothers—would not. Most of the data fail to distinguish between a father and the income a father provides, or between the presence of a father and the presence of a second parent, regardless of gender.
11 comments:
This article gives the counter-argument.
http://www.slate.com/id/2256212/?GT1=38001
Good stuff Sasha. Thank you.
What's your take?
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/do-kids-still-matter-to-marriage/?src=me&ref=health
As a solo parent, it would be easy for me to parrot the "I don't need no man" philosophy that our generation has been trained to believe. I provide all of my child's needs without the assistance (physical or financial) of anyone and I do a fucking stellar job. :-)
However, what the "I don't need no man" meme overlooks are those things that only men can instill in children, especially young boys. I see a marked difference in my son's reaction to me as disciplinarian vs. how he reacts to his godfather or his grandfather (the 2 most important men in his life). While my son tries to charm me, he is scared to death of them. While it takes me telling him a few times, they get a response in one. There is a reason for that. Men keep you from you turning your kid into a punk. I'm sorry, but it's true....
Sasha,
The problem is that you unwittingly cave to the meme...
-- I provide all of my child's needs without the assistance (physical or financial) of ANYONE and I do a f....... stellar job.
-- I see a marked difference in my son's reaction to me as disciplinarian vs. how he reacts to his godfather or his grandfather (the 2 most important men in his life). While my son tries to charm me, he is scared to death of them. While it takes me telling him a few times, they get a response in one. There is a reason for that.
By keeping that son in line, godFATHER and grandFATHER are most certainly providing physical and financial investment...
There is no such thing as "single" motherhood.
TD: Please elaborate on your point.
The devout dyke believes she can sustain civilization through "equal" distribution of autonomy.
You asserted that you ALONE provided for the physical and financial well-being of your son.
You then refuted yourself by acknowledging quite forcefully the "physical and financial" contributions of the Fathers (nevermind arguing about whether this is explicit or implicit).
Something you already knew inherently...
Devout dyke seeks a radical female autonomy...
One where she does EVERYTHING without the FATHER.
Sasha,
The conceit of devout dyke is that Mother is the key to our existence.
But devout dyke also recognizes that Father is responsible for our survival.
And so the memetic strategy is clear.
Denigrate Mother's existential creativity and destroy Father's desire to protect and provide for Mother and child.
This is the path towards radical autonomy for the devout dyke. It's the realization of its nature as inherently anti-heterosexual.
Sasha,
Excuse me if I wasn't clear...
I was not referring to you as "devout dyke."
Rather, I was referring to the "human" nature that sustains what is erroneously referred to as "feminism."
The female liberationist movement is actually driven by devout dykism.
Devout dyke seeks to replace Alpha Man at the top of the food chain.
"She" is succeeding at an exponential rate...
I'm saying you've been co-opted, largely unwittingly...
You are heterosexual PHYSICALLY...
But spiritually and psychologically...
Radical autonomist... YOU DO IT ALONE...
Ode to devout dyke...
You don't need FATHER for survival...
That's what you think...
That's what devout dyke wants you to think...
But it's a lie.
You need Daddy... Devout dyke needed Daddy, but he wasn't there... He was being bad Alpha Man. Devout dyke HAD TO DO IT ALONE. And it was always easier to manipulate females physically, psychologically and spiritually.
TD:
When I say I do it "alone," I am referring to who is in charge of the day-to-day responsibilities of caretaking for my household. That person is ME. If you run down the list of all the things that are required to make a home when you have a child, I'm the person who gets those things done. I love having such strong men to guide my son when needed, but they ain't driving him to the ER at 3 a.m., chaperoning field trips, writing checks, etc, etc, etc....So there is no contradiction in my statement.
My point, which was the point of the article, is that modern culture has been teaching a generation of women that this kind of autonomy is IDEAL and that men are not needed in the family unit because women can "do it all." I disagree with this philosophy wholeheartedly. I do not tell other women that my situation is the way to do things. In fact, people ask me all the time, "are you going to have kid #2?" My response is always, "let me get husband #1 first."
Do I believe that the traditional nuclear family is the only way to do things? No, but no matter what type of family you create with your children, there should be a prominent man in there somewhere.
Sasha,
We aren't in disagreement about the need for a good man in a woman's and child's life.
My quibble was your unconscious acceptance and propagation of the meme that you raise your son alone.
Such a belief is in essence saying you don't need a man.
Now, you've asserted that you do have good FATHERS in your life and they are an important influence on your son.
And so you must accept that this "good influence" implies a financial and physical support EVEN WHEN THE EVENT in which the godfather's and grandfather's INFLUENCE moves won't happen until a later date.
It was your acknowledgement of this influence that you spoke so forcefully of. Yet, you failed to identify the physical and financial benefit that it has/may bestow upon you later in life.
You fail to acknowledge that daddy still helps... Some way, some how...
Devout dyke's dream of a manless and fatherless world is the dream of self-annihilation via radical autonomy...
Homo... Sexual... They DO IT ALONE...
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