Fathers and Sons (and daughters)

On Labor Day, the Wall Street Journal published two stories that, in the words of one commentator, "paint a dark picture of our nation's future." This picture includes a dearth of marriageable men for a growing share of college-educated women who are having babies outside of marriage. Some are quick to assert that since women today can access education, start a career, and have financial freedom in such large numbers, we should unequivocally celebrate this new development. After all, why is it a problem that women are overtaking men academically? The problem is that in an economy where specialists and managers are valued above tradesman, men who do not gravitate towards a college education have fewer work opportunities where they might be reasonably compensated, and this bodes badly for women and their children. Future generations will suffer if men lose work opportunities and women forgo marriage in record numbers, resulting in a dearth of healthy male role models absent from all children's lives. 

Children Need Fathers

Social scientists have known for a long time that the presence of a biological father in the home is especially beneficial for children's educational, emotional, and psychological outcomes. Absent or abusive fathers, on the other hand, are associated with difficulties in school and behavioral issues, criminality, and suicide. Although both sexes fare poorly when a father is absent or abusive, boys are especially susceptible to these outcomes, as they are typically raised by a mother with no consistent same-sex role model in the home. Aside from serving as examples for how to be a man in the world, fathers provide a kind of love different from that of a mother, who is more intimately biologically attached to her children through childbearing and breastfeeding. Since fathers are a step removed from the very physical relationship mothers cultivate with their children, they are a bridge connecting kids to the outside world. They demonstrate to children what it means to love and be loved in the context of a larger community beyond the family. Children without fathers often feel as though they're missing a crucial relationship that would have helped them better understand themselves, the world and their place within it.  

Boys Need Male Mentors

Today, many jobs are disembodied from our homes and from our physical bodies. Ironically, as education has become more specialized, the types of work being performed across industries looks relatively similar in our technological age. The result is a workplace where the meaning of mentorship has changed. Whereas a carpenter can instruct his apprentice in woodworking or a plumber in installing pipe, mentors in computerized workplaces are more limited by the nature of the work to be done. As efficiency the name of the game, it has become difficult and in many ways obsolete to educate a younger person into the art of performing certain tasks. They are expected to come prepared through their academic courses, even if the content they learned in those courses never becomes integrated into their daily tasks. So what of the men who didn't attend college, either because they couldn't or wanted something better to do? Many of them are disincentivized from pursuing the trades by this popular sequence of college education followed by office work, and many are either unaware of discouraged from learning a trade due to the overvaluation of college degrees. Regardless of the type of work, boys need male mentors to teach, encourage, and put their hands to work. Instead, countless men find themselves settling for passive entertainment or strapped in for a college education they find pointless. 

Women Need Strong Men

As Jordan Peterson put it in a now-infamous interview with Cathy Newman, women want "competent" male partners who "they can contend with." In marriage, women want men who are going to forgo their personal comfort if necessary, to care for her when she feels unwell, to look after the baby when she needs a break, to participate in family activities for the sake of her children. A man who is willing to make these sacrifices is one who has learned to do a job well. He's a man who knows how to take responsibility for his own actions and values relationships with others. It's easy to see how women armed with college educations and countless work opportunities might pass on marriage based on their less-than-stellar experiences with "man children," however, there are plenty of men who want to become husbands, who are working or will work diligently in a meaningful job that fits their skills and interests. However, as long as women actively disparage men in the name of social justice, they will do little to improve men's ability to serve as equal partners in work and life. They should help the little boys they hope to raise become solid men of tomorrow by modeling graciousness toward men, not write them off completely. Just as women have long hoped to be treated as equals in dignity, so should they extend the same with respect to men. 

Faithfully,

Alain Oliver
Executive Director
ao[email protected]