Father Feeding Frenzy
A priceless headline in today's Washington Post:
Last night, Laura Bush gave a speech at the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI)awards gala, where corporations received awards for promoting positive images of fathers, as if it were cool for corporations to be telling Americans how to live.
Fathers are about to get very, very pop. The NFI is poised for a full-court media press. They've got the dough, as Scaife is one of the backers. The NFI is also part of the Court of King George II's "faith-based initiatives." I could critique the NFI on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state and the civil rights of gay people (which it does), but I'll start small and investigate this glorification of the father and denunciation of the single mom.
First, if having a father around is so important, then why wasn't George II there? I mean, this is the softer stuff that falls in Queen Laura's domain, but George II is a father. I sure would love to hear his suggestions for discipline regarding underage drinking. (I know, ad hominem argument, but calling for a father to attend a gala praising fathers isn't ridiculous.)
A while back, Feministe had an excellent post explaining the real challenges facing single-parent households:
Single parenthood is not disastrous. Research “confirming” that single parenthood is disastrous seeks to validate assertions of immoral behavior instead of exploring the evidence, evidence showing that poverty is the primary reason that single parents experience more “failure” in their parenting, than the lack of a second adult figure in the home. Simply stated, two paychecks bring more opportunity to children than one paycheck, but marriage alone does not guarantee economic stability.
Feministe is a single mom and knows of what she speaks. I'm glad to see that Queen Laura is encouraging more parental responsibility, but I'm tired of single-parent homes being painted as disasters waiting to happen. The NFI glosses over the economic problems of living in a single-parent household and turns single parenting into a matter of morals.
Morals are easy to dictate, and moralizing wins over voters, but sitting down and thinking about society's overall responsibility to its children is tougher. We can't assume that everything will be okay just because both the father and mother are around. I was lucky. I had two loving parents around all the time, but plenty of two-parent households are downright dysfunctional.
Another criticism I have of the father frenzy is that it puts women in the position - yet again - of needing to be rescued. Why can't we as a society give young women the tools and knowledge to protect themselves?
I grew up in an area where teen pregnancy was common. When yet another girl got pregnant, people would grumble, "She coulda said no" and would lay the blame on the woman. The sad truth was that many of these girls didn't know any better since sex ed was limited to abstinence education, and many of these girls were preyed upon by significantly older men. Sure, some of them knew better, but it's a logical fallacy to assume that all of them did.
Isn't the entire community responsible if one child gets pregnant? Shouldn't parents know where their kids go at night? I know of at least one pregnancy that was the result of a girl sneaking out to meet an older boyfriend. Shouldn't everyone keep an eye out on their kids the next time that twenty-five-year-old is cruising the fifteen-year-olds? (Or twelve-year-olds, which I've seen.)
Remember Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) in Dazed and Confused who said, "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age"?
You laugh, but that dude is out there cruising, and he isn't as genetically blessed as Matthew McConaughey.
One last question: Why can't we ask adults to grow up and act like "parents" instead of asking women to act like "mothers" and men to act like "fathers"?