Father's Day, R.I.P.

from the new issue of TIME magazine:

The folks at Hallmark are going to have a very good day on June 17. That's when more than 100 million of the company's ubiquitous cards will be given to the 66 million dads across the U.S. in observation of Father's Day. Such a blizzard of paper may be short of the more than 150 million cards sold for Mother's Day, but it's still quite a tribute. What's less clear is whether dads--at least as a group--have done a good enough job to deserve the honor.

good humor requires that the audience find some ring of truth in it. gloria steinem once joked (?):

"a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

new york times columnist maureen dowd recently wrote a book called "Are Men Necessary?" (a critical look here @ Slate.com)

these are just two examples (of THOUSANDS) of the barrage of criticism that men are undergoing. and, strategically or not, it's succeeding in bleeding into the questioning of men's roles as fathers...for example, take a look at portrayals of fathers on TV...it's no longer "Father Knows Best", it's now Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, Peter from "Family Guy", etc., etc., etc.... it's gotten so bad that probably the most caring father on TV today is Tony Soprano (and he sees a shrink!).

a lot of the criticism is deserved. considering that, today, according to the TIME article linked above:

Worldwide, 10% to 40% of children grow up in households with no father at all. In the U.S., more than half of divorced fathers lose contact with their kids within a few years. By the end of 10 years, as many as two-thirds of them have drifted out of their children's lives. According to a 1994 study by the Children's Defense Fund, men are more likely to default on a child-support payment (49%) than a used-car payment (3%). Even fathers in intact families spend a lot less time focused on their kids than they think: in the U.S. fathers average less than an hour a day (up from 20 minutes a few decades ago), usually squeezed in after the workday.

the writers of this piece in TIME are both WOMEN anthropologists, who are trying to figure out why this is so. first, they point out that human males are worse than primates at raising their offspring. later on in the article, they make a point that in many traditional South American cultures "people subscribe to the folk wisdom that any man with whom a woman has had sex in the 10 months before giving birth makes some biological contribution to the fetus growing inside her. Even the woman's official husband accepts this, and any possible father is welcome to assist--discreetly--in providing care for the child." !!! a couple of researchers in venezuela claim that the "optimal" number of fathers is TWO. !!!

what the hell are these people thinking???

to be sure, fathers have been a major dissapointment in today's society. but, i think these anthropologists are missing the point when they compare humans to monkeys and whatnot. first of all, the last i heard was that humans and other primates share some 99% of DNA. did humans get the "bad dad" DNA?

can we blame any of this on welfare systems around the world, which, by design or not, tend to replace the father with a safety net, and create financial incentives to have even MORE children as long as a father is not present? can we place any blame at all on the liberation of sexuality among women through birth control, abortion, etc...? has this not diminished the importance of men, as seen through the eyes of women? have we been reduced from PROVIDER (now handled by the state) to simply "PENIS"?

not to mention how our children view us. take, for example, school curricula: "Heather Has Two Mommies". fine, some kids have gay parents. it's a "choice" (for the parents, that is...), and, okay, to help other kids understand so they don't pick on the kids of gay parent...i mean parent(s). but, i think given the divorce rates going on in today's society, maybe it's time for "Heather Has a Mommy AND a DAD", so these minority kids don't feel so weird.

anyway, Happy Father's Day, dads. kids, don't forget to call 'em. i would, but mine's been gone for eleven years.

i think of him every day.


(this interests someone else, too.)