In most society's the state has, if anything, supported the integrity of the family. It's not limited to fathers, who I've been mostly concerned with - it's a very broad phenomena. Any child, almost, in America, can be taken away from parents at any time for any reason, and frequently for no reason. Most often these are fathers.
Fatherhood is certainly an institution which has been under attack for a long time.
Certainly the popular media has mocked it. It goes back even before Murphy Brown and her infamous program that came out in which the role of the father was really played down. The family court is at the top of a huge governmental machine that consists of lawyers, judges, psychotherapists, social workers, bureaucratic police and many others, who have a vested interest in tearing as many children away from their fathers as possible. These fathers don't necessarily have to have done anything wrong. They don't have to have consented to a divorce or separation.