When Vladimir Lenin seized power in 1917, he knew full well that the
traditional family would fiercely resist his grand scheme to consolidate
state power. So he set out to ruthlessly destroy the family.
Lenin banned church weddings. Women were sent out to work in the
factories and the fields. Communal dining halls, sewing centers, and day
care facilities were established. Abortion was legalized. Divorce became
a simple administrative routine.
So it's an interesting coincidence that over the last 30 years, an
unholy alliance of feminists and liberals has also targeted the
traditional family for radical transformation. In particular, they put
fatherhood into their ideological cross-hairs. Father Knows Best became
an anathema.
Feminists began their campaign by turning the meaning of Patriarch on
its head. They changed it from a term of veneration into a word of
contempt. Fathers were smeared as "patriarchal oppressors" who imposed
"male hegemony" on their wives and children.
Once men had been placed on the defensive, the fem-liberals preceded to
float one myth after another. Sadly, these four claims are now accepted
by many Americans without question or doubt:
Men routinely batter their wives. They break up marriages. Fathers often
abuse their children. Dads don't pay their child support.
But let's stop to examine the facts:
Once the myths were firmly entrenched, feminists began to push through
laws that were billed as protecting and empowering women. But they
really had the effect of marginalizing dads. These programs included the
Violence Against Women Act, no-fault divorce laws, and a draconian child
support bureaucracy. And welfare benefits to low-income women were cut
off if the father still lived at home.
And the calumnies didn't stop. Fathers were stereotyped as insensitive
buffoons and as a bad influence on boys who needed to get in touch with
their inner child. In short, dads were non-essential.
These efforts to undermine fatherhood were, by any objective measure,
extraordinarily successful. In 1960, only 8% of children did not live
with their dads. By 1996, this figure had tripled to 25%, making the
United States the world leader in fatherless families.
Among Blacks, the problem reached crisis proportions. In 1950, only 17%
of births were to unmarried women. By 1990, out-of-wedlock births
reached 65%. So by 1996, 58% of Black kids lived with their mother
only.
But the story doesn't stop there.
Family disruption begets social pathology - we know that from what
happened in Soviet Russia. The fem-liberals didn't want to be blamed for
the social chaos that was certain to ensue.
Somehow they had to cover their tracks.
So they concocted the Mother of All Myths -- the Abandoning Dad, the
countless hordes of men who would desert family and home to indulge in a
midlife fling. (Why adulterous women are routinely given a free pass
remains a mystery to me.) This vastly exaggerated urban legend,
endlessly recycled in women's magazines and daytime TV programs, would
serve to divert public attention away from the disastrous social
legislation that spawned father absence.
The rise of fatherlessness in our country did not occur because dads
decided one day to get up and leave. It happened because they were
pushed out.
But the myths became so deeply engrained, and fathers so completely
vilified, that no one is willing to listen to their side of the story
any more.
What we have witnessed is a case study in mass re-education and social
transformation. Tearing down age-old social institutions without
offering a viable alternative - that's the legacy of socialism over all
these years.
