America Has a Man Problem
Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 13, 2016
When Terrelle stood to give his
talk, his fellow inmates listened intently.
Terrelle was thirty-eight, handsome, intelligent, and much loved by all
his classmates. He was the type of guy
who makes you wonder how he could ever have done anything that led to a state
prison.
Terrelle’s English course required students to
give one talk. He chose to talk about
growing up in the ‘hood. Among other
heartbreaking but revealing details, Terrelle stated he had never seen his
father. Of his mother he said, “She
pretty much pushed me off on my grandmother, and my grandmother left every day
for work so I had to take care of my younger brother.”
These details were wrought with
emotion, but were quite familiar. Familiarity
can breed a ho-hum attitude toward a situation that needs anything but. I had heard stories like Terrelle’s not just
from other inmates but from quite a few high school and college students
outside of prison. However, toward the
end of his talk, Terrelle added something that made his story different: “My
family wuz my street buddies, but as far as my real family was concerned, I
just about didn’t know who I wuz.”
Those words rang in my ears for the
remainder of the day. To me, they were
profound, revealing that fatherless
homes can lead to an identity crisis even in the mind of a small child. They can also rob a child of his or her
childhood, forcing children to function as parents of younger brothers and
sisters.
Yes, America has a man problem. Perhaps that’s the reason forty percent of
American children will go to bed tonight without fathers. Today we care more about defending same-sex
marriage than we do fixing our man problem.
School systems in several major cities, instead of standing for common
sense, are grappling with the issue of “correct restrooms” and how to deal with
transgenderism, as though there weren’t enough societal problems without the
silly ones brought on by sexual chaos.
Statistics are cold things. If they reveal information that saddens or
frightens, we shake our heads in despair and go on. But the statistics stubbornly remain. They indicate that before our nation’s
children reach the age of eighteen, more than half of them will have spent a
significant portion of their childhood apart from their fathers.
But our male prison population isn’t
the only indicator. The general
population is trending in directions that show we are becoming a nation of “men
without chests.” As C.S. Lewis further
put it, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and
enterprise.”
There are two foundational questions
that pertain directly to our man problem.
One of them is “What is first in nature?” One
doesn’t have to believe the Genesis account of creation (“Male and female
created He them”) to know that life is sexually transmitted. Yet in our tinkering with human sexuality
(transgenderism, homosexuality, same-sex marriage) we are consequently killing
off masculinity and femininity. The
collateral damage is the denigration of fatherhood. Does anyone remember the highly touted book
for children titled “Heather Has Two Mommies”?
It didn’t exactly elevate fatherhood.
Something else that is first in
nature is that beautiful little unit of government called the family. “Male and
female” does often lead to children. As
the writer John Allen puts it, humans are “a species of homebodies.” Marriage, family, and home are not just the
American psyche but the human inclination. (You know – a mom, a dad, and some
kids.) But if you believe in this
time-honored arrangement today, you are “on the wrong side of history,” a
nonsensical phrase if there ever was one.
The other foundational question is
“Who am I?” We should readily see how
fatherlessness leads to this question.
Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic in America today. But not all of it is caused by sorry men who
flee from responsibility. The culture
itself is either questioning or denigrating fatherhood. Television comedy presents fathers who are doofuses. Masculinity itself is suspect and viewed with
hostility. It doesn’t fit modern
androgyny.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead argued
that the supreme test of any civilization is whether or not it can “socialize
its men” by teaching them to be fathers and to willingly nurture their
offspring. As far as social stability or
law and order are concerned, no issue has higher stakes than fatherlessness.
“ … I just about didn’t know who I
wuz,” Terrelle said. And so it will
continue to be as long as governmental policies weaken the family and as long
as religious values are driven from the public square.
Roger
Hines
3/9/16
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