By Major W. Cox
In previous years this column addressed both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day; two days, set aside by our society for parental recognition and adoration. These musings attempted to give a rational voice to the traditional status of motherhood and fatherhood. This year, those two days passed silently as this writer tortuously pondered the societal consequences of single motherhood, a status that suggests that the father is not present in the home of his child.
The popular culture says that it’s a woman’s right to bear children outside the institution of marriage. Single motherhood is a growing trend among all sectors of society. Social penalties that operated a generation ago to discourage women from having a child without a husband have dissipated. The question that only time can answer is this: Who wins and who loses when a child is born to a single mother?
Like most everything else in life, this issue can’t be resolved with a simple answer. This is not a sporting event, where there are clear winners and clear losers. Prevailing thought and the media suggest some tentative conclusions. For example, we can find a statistical relationship between the crime rate and the number of children born to unmarried mothers within certain population sectors, but no one can say with scientific certainty that there is a causative relationship.
The time has come to stop politicizing the single parent issue. Society needs information based on objective scientific data. We need to know quantitatively if there are any differences between children who are brought up in single parent homes and those brought up in homes where there are two parents. Such information needs to be published widely, so that individuals, families, and communities can begin to form rational responses to the explosion of women having babies without involvement of the child’s father.
If scientific research manifests no harmful differences between the two groups of children, society needs to know. We need to know that, on average, children growing up in homes without fathers will be as productive and contribute as much as those growing up in homes with fathers. We can then work to eliminate the social and economic disadvantages our society places in the path of a child growing up in a fatherless home.
On the other hand, if this research demonstrates that children brought up in households without their father are quantitatively disadvantaged, we need to know and we need to know why. We need to know, because as a society we have a responsibility to protect, educate and provide for children. It is in best the interest of society to create advantage for all children in order that they may become productive and contributing adult members. We need to know why because if the difference is due to societal and economic disadvantages, we need to work to correct them. It the difference is primarily due to the missing father, we need to insure fathers are involved in the lives of their children.
Many, perhaps most, individuals pondering this issue will conclude that children need two parents in the home to grow into healthy, productive and contributing adults. This is to be expected, because it is our tradition. But when you examine this issue closely, you will find certain aspects of this tradition opposing other values in our society.
Prior to the women’s movement of the 1960s, the traditional place for women was at home raising children. This is not to say that all women assumed this role. As a matter of fact, most women did not. It was this conflict between our social reality and our social tradition that brought on the women’s movement.
Today, the legal status of women more closely equals that of men, resulting in part from the women’s movement. Employment barriers preventing women from working at certain jobs are down. Tradition barriers that steered women away form certain professions and into others are gone. However, the women’s movement didn’t provide women with the power to change their political and economic status to one that is equal men’s. As a results many children with only a female parent are disadvantaged politically and economically.
We as a society must face the single parent issue and take action. Is a society that divides its children into two groups, those with fathers and those without fathers in the home, doomed? Presently, no one can predict what will happen to our society if the traditional two parent family ceases to be.
Society needs leadership. The voters need scientific research … information … about children who are born to women without husbands. Then voters can elect politicians with plans and ideas, who view the single parent issue strategically rather than in a reactionary mode.
_________________________________
Originally Published: 20 July 1994, Montgomery Advertiser
© Copyright
- 1992-2004 - Major W. Cox and Montgomery Advertiser.
Read our copyright notice.
Home | Directory of Columns | Search | More About Major Cox | Related Links