Why We Still Need Our Fathers
By: The Secret Aspirant
Tags: American Dad, Fathers Day 2020, Social Justice, Feminism, Paternalism

The BLM movement is indeed different this time than the Civil Rights Movement of the mid to late 20th century. It is not spearheaded by any particular faith nor religion and its origins from the three co-founders of Black Lives Matter are rooted in strong feminism and transgender leadership and goals.

Many conservative Christian groups fear that underlying non-patriarchal, non-nuclear family, all gender-inclusive creed. Moreover, the term ‘feminism’ has more than one definition and mixed reactions from the public. Based on research cited from 1999 to 2011 by the Gendered Innovations (a project initiated from Stanford University since 2009), there are 4 broad feminisms from which have been impacting legislation and policies:

Liberal Feminism, beginning from 1792 in Western Europe, responsible for major legislation changes that guaranteed equal rights, pay, education for women, but this approach to feminism has been criticized for being ‘assimilationist’ which implies women, not culture, must change to succeed;

Difference Feminism, arising from the 1980’s and 1990’s that recognizes the differences in men and women and their inherent qualities, but has been criticized for re-emphasizing gender stereotypes and for ignoring the different cultural and gender views across different races and socioeconomic classes;

Co-Constructionism, emerging from the early 21st century, focuses on the influence of and impact on science and technology from gender identity, but views technology as the determining driver to modernity and gender characteristics as fixed and intrinsic;

Sex & Gender Analysis, from research cited in 2011, concentrates on research and evaluation of all the sciences (health & medicine, engineering & technology) to achieve gender equality and improved lives.

What’s more, 40% of Americans polled in 2016 considered the term ‘feminism’ associated with anger and unfair ascribing of women’s challenges to men. In 2018, again U.S. polls indicated that although more women and men together (30% overall) have identified themselves as ‘feminist’, the majority of Americans still do not — feeling that feminists are either ‘too extreme’ (per 48% of non-feminist women), ‘do not represent true feminism’ (per 47% of non-feminist women), or ‘men and women are not equal’ (per 20% of non-feminist women and 14% of non-feminist men). In the U.K. and the rest of Western Europe, the numbers also vary, although more popular among younger women, but still are not in agreement by the majority by far.

Added to this picture is based on the U.S. Census data from July 2019, the ethnic racial makeup of the U.S. was 60.4% non-Hispanic White, 18.3% Hispanic or Latino, 13.4% Black, 5.9% Asian, and others.

So while the racial and gender equality debates continue to rage on and their indigenous numbers do not currently represent the majority, we have to wonder if the state and future condition of our families that make up society will be lost and therefore, discuss on what principles should they be based to be preserved?

We cannot deny the need to include ethnic, cultural, racial, and varying gender identities into our institutions and policies that benefit all, but with experience and evidence, we cannot ignore nor discount the benefits of the majority — who the BLM movement has so poignantly drawn our attention to regarding the inequitable treatment of and lower economic opportunities due to the biased criminal justice system for their men. Astonishingly, according to a 2010 published book, “The New Jim Crow: The Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, by Michelle Alexander, the Huffington Post has highlighted its prominent claim that

‘There are more African Americans in the US criminal justice system than there were slaves in 1850.’

Furthermore, per the Vera Institute of Justice, Black men makeup 35% of prisons when only comprising 13% of the general population; are more than 5.6X and 2X incarcerated in their lifetimes than Whites and Hispanics, respectively; and in a 2016 Chicago task force for police accountability discovered that Blacks were 4X more searched than Whites though Whites were 2X more likely to have contraband. So that is to say, the BLM has charged the current system as detrimental to the traditional nuclear family structure because of the acceleration of economic and social annihilation of men in this country as illustrated in their Black communities.

Fathers, overall, still makeup the majority of men in this country. From the 2019 published U.S. Census survey in 2014, the majority of men in America are fathers (61.4%) or 6 out of 10 men, with 21.2% White and 24.9% Black between the ages of 20–29, and about one quarter of all men are grandfathers (aged 15 and over). The nine-fold rise to 8% of single fathers (which makes 2.6 million households) is also significant when compared from the 1960’s to 2011 by the Pew Research Center because of the importance still placed on the predictability and future social, economic, and academic welfare of children with the parental involvement of their fathers, as cited on p. 2 of the U.S. Census Mens Fertility & Fatherhood: 2014 report by the works of E. Anthes who wrote Family Guy, Scientific American Mind, May/June 2010 and by the works of Kyle Pruett, M.D. who wrote Fatherneed: Why father care is as essential as mother care for your child, Free Press, New York, 2000.

It is not to say that women or single mothers are weak or incapable. In fact, from data collected between 1960–2011 by the Pew Research Center, it showed 40% of households with children under 18 were cared for by breadwinner mothers; and of those, 63% were single mothers. Moreover, the married breadwinner mothers (37% of the 40% of households with minor children) were more educated than their husbands. However, the income of households with breadwinner mothers who were married was indeed 3.5X more than that of single mothers’ caring for minor children whose single parent was also more likely to be Hispanic, or Black, and less educated. Also, based on the Pew Research Center data in 2008, among ethnic minorities, Black mothers (72%) have the largest share of children out of wedlock:

Based on this, the percentage of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics all largely agree on the negative impact to society that having children by single women is:

Blacks themselves (88%) consider it ‘very important’ that a father be able to be a good provider in a marriage, a precursor for a stable family with children: