For John, BLUF: Our births to unwed Mothers is 40.8% of all births. What can't be sustained won't be sustained.
Yesterday, on City Life, Registrar of Deeds Dick Howe made an important point about the great experiment we are embarked on in these United States. He noted that when he was practicing criminal law he had about a thousand clients, but only a few were evil. Most were suffering from not having a proper upbringing, usually by single Mothers. The subtext is that if parents start getting it right, crime will go down even further.
Well, those were Dick's exact words, but that is the gist of it in my understanding.
This was not a please on Mr Howe's part for the hundreds of be let go, but rather a statement that we need to be doing better helping parents raise their children.
I fully agree. The statistic I have recently found is that a typical successful middle class child hears 30 million words by the age of three. The typical child living in poverty hears far fewer, by orders of magnitude. Head Start can't fix this. The child is with the parent more than with the school, and this is from the child's earliest years. The question is how we help new Mothers to not only understand the importance of what she is doing, but how to do it. On the other hand, where is she going to learn all this? School? Is a 16 year old pregnant girl mature enough to absorb the needed lessons?
Then there is the question of the role of the Father. It is my opinion that all births need to have a registered Father as well as a Mother.♠ The Father has an economic responsibility to his offspring. We tend to recognize that in our laws, but are perhaps not sufficiently forceful with regard to unknown Fathers.
But, beyond money, the Father owes the child attention. The Father should be expected, in law, to respond to birthdays and some or another winter period holiday. The Father should be expected to pay attention to school performance, both in terms of grades and deportment, but also in terms of material support to the child.
Let us have more of a sense of responsibility.
Regards — Cliff
♠ I am happy to make proper arrangement to handle the issue of surrogate Fathers.
3 comments:
I was invited to an Fatherhood Engagement Workshop for the Department of Children & Families next month, I won't be able to make it due to other appointments that day. We have a director of Fatherhood Engagement at DCF. Men have the same legal rights to social services/aid as women, they also have the exact same right to parent.
Being a parent is an obligation, but people do not connect to that term. You know obligation. Our headlines are full of the worst cases of horrific abuse and neglect, that we never get to see the positive ones. People worry about the horrible things I read, which at times I do, but I'm also see more good then bad.
It almost has to be reframed in a positive, as their right to parent their biological children. A baby is always a positive, as it should be a parent. We view parenting, while work, to be such a negative thing. It isn't.
A father, who may lack stable housing or employment, maybe demoralized and rather see his child 'adopted out' by DCF. But that isn't the goal of DCF, when the initially may get involved, we need to engage both mother and father from the very beginning.
If you are not an abusive parent and the reasoning you might not be able to provide for your child isn't based on neglect, you have a legal right to parent your own child.
Men, yes show love by providing, usually by means of economic/material. But if a father is emotionally engaging with his child and is doing everything he is fully capable of doing, why would we ever encourage him to terminate his rights? Being a parent is more then providing room and board and ensuring the brush their teeth and do their homework, its very much emotional. Ask any person who grew up in a affluent, but unloving home. I don't care if you can barely speak English or illiterate, when I see a father walk in the room and the baby's eyes light up and they give each a hug, that would be a tragedy to terminate his rights.
The Precipitous Drop in Teen Birth Rates & What it Means for Dads from the Fatherhood Initiative
In reference to teen pregnancy rates lowering....
"As I reflected on these data and read Dr. Koh’s article, I couldn’t help but wonder why, despite this long-term trend, we see rates of unwed childbearing at an all-time high. The reason is that, more than ever, women in their twenties are having children out-of-wedlock. As I pointed out in an earlier post, nearly half of all births to twentysomethings (48 percent) occur outside of marriage. Coupled with the increase in age among women marrying for the first time exceeding the age at which they give birth to their first child, fathers should be very concerned about the prospects of our grandchildren growing up without involved, responsible, committed fathers in their lives. "
"We can’t breathe easy when we realize that so many children in our country are still at risk of growing up without involved, responsible, and committed fathers in their lives because of trends to which many Americans are oblivious. "
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Last fall CNN ran a segment on fatherless in the NBA, and it got little public attention. I wrote about it on my blog... I was sadden, because even 7 years ago a publication in the Washington Post could write an article on traditional marriage and fatherless children in the African American community, without controversy over the word marriage. But without controversy, there was no public concern over the father absence concern either.
Greg Page responded to my blog post.
"You're calling out a major societal problem that people are uncomfortable discussing, and that doesn't lend itself to trendy bumper stickers, school clubs, or Hollywood-type backing.
Talking about fatherless isn't cool, or sexy, or exciting. As you said here in the post, it can lead you to be branded in some not-so-nice ways, because it veers into weighing in on the "social issues."
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I stand on the issue of family for a very good and valid reason, even if I maybe on 'the wrong side of history'. That's OK. Over the years, I believe I have the street credentials to stand by opinion.
Consider this analogy, 40 years ago, when the Population Bomb came out, Baby Boomers (sorry) talk about over population. Today strangely, their grandchildren (if they will have any) are facing the concern socially and economically of demographic spiral.
Over the past 40 years, any substantive model of the family has fallen apart, and over the next 40 years we have to rebuild it. From scratch.
I told my children when her grandparents were children, the streets of Lowell were filled with children. Today due to many factors, much out of the control of adults in the child bearing years, they may be lucky to have one or two. A good percentage will have none. Very few will balance out the childless, by having 4 or 5 kids. Even though some women want larger families, economically, it is not feasible in which really should be for a middle class family.
"..I sure wish I had had a father who was not only present, but involved. Didn’t know my dad. And so my whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father was not for my mother and me. I want to break that cycle where a father is not at home -- where a father is not helping to raise that son or daughter. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a better man."
-Barack Obama
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Can I say it, Cliff. President Obama change on marriage was reluctant, prior to the election.
A child needs a father, unless what? His/her mom is a lesbian, and wants her wife to be the other parent.
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It's one thing to be a step-parent, when a previous marriage/relationship fell apart. Ultimately their role as as a step parent, is to help the parent to parent. But if the other parent is around or possibly deceased, there is a respect by the step-parent for the other parent and respect for the child who lost that parent, either by death or willful-abandonment.
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