Why do Americans refer to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as our
Founding Fathers? When Christians recite the Lord's Prayer, why does the
phrase, "Our Father" immediately tumble out? Why did a generation of
Americans grow up watching the TV series, Father Knows Best?
In days past, "father" evoked notions of goodness, wisdom,
steadfastness, and self-sacrifice. And with good reason.
According to the Father Facts report from the National Fatherhood
Initiative, children with involved dads get better grades in school,
have fewer emotional problems, enjoy better physical health, and are
less likely to live in poverty -- it's an impressive inventory.
When the Industrial Revolution swept through the United States, fathers
left the farm to work in the factories, the steel mills, and later the
corporate highrises. A void was created, which was soon filled by their
wives.
Even though Dad continued as the titular head of the family, the reins
of the daily operations of the house rested firmly in the hands of the
wife. But that common-sense division of labor didn't satisfy the radical
feminist agenda.
Beginning in the 1970s, feminists launched a ruthless campaign against
the family and fathers. Maybe you're asking, What's wrong with the
family? And why would they target fathers?
To answer those two questions, we must turn back the hands of time to
exactly 120 years ago.
In his 1884 classic, the Origin of the Family, Frederick Engels wrote:
"The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the
development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous
marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the
female sex by the male."
This passage, and
others
like it, were used by Lenin and his minions to
convince impressionable women that they would be better off leaving
their families and taking up the hammer and the sickle.
But fem-socialists knew better than to wage a frontal assault on
fatherhood. They would have to find a new boogeyman.
Soon after Lenin seized power in 1917, he set out to destroy religious
belief and practices. To do this, Lenin banned and humiliated the
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church.
So when the Sisterhood decided to put fathers in their crosshairs, it's
no surprise that they seized upon the "patriarchy" as the
historically-convenient scapegoat.
It was Kate Millett's 1970 book, Sexual Politics, that gave the green
light to the onslaught. The book is replete with hateful calumnies about
men. Millett offers this pithy paraphrase of Frederick Engels earlier
indictment of fathers: "Patriarchy's chief institution is the family."
No one could really define patriarchy. But patriarchy became an
oft-repeated epithet that soon evolved into a circular argument:
patriarchy was bad because it caused the oppression of women. And
women's oppression was self-evident because of the existence of
patriarchy.
The feminist assault on fatherhood harnessed the mass media to
disseminate their destructive message. Feminists portrayed fathers as
deadbeats and abusers. And single moms became, well, chic.
This campaign was remarkably successful in dismantling the cultural
authority of fatherhood.
By 1992, it was acceptable for TV sitcom character Murphy Brown to have
a child out of wedlock. So commendable, in fact, that when Vice
President Quayle chided Brown for "mocking the importance of fathers by
bearing a child alone," Quayle was the one who endured the firestorm of
criticism.
Three years later, a stunned David Blankenhorn was compelled to write in
his book Fatherless America, "The most urgent domestic challenge facing
the United States...is the re-creation of fatherhood as a vital social
role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American
experiment."
The deconstruction of fatherhood continues to this day. Turn on your TV
and you will see the sitcoms and advertisements that portray dads as
speechless dolts in the face of the superior wisdom of their wives and
11-year-old children.
So when feminists attack the institution of fatherhood, they are rending
the very fabric of families, and of Nationhood itself.
