Life without father : compelling new evidence that fatherhood and marriage are indispensable for the good of children and society

Every unhappy family may be unhappy in its own way, but a common denominator of familial misery is an absent father. To convert doubters of that proposition, sociologist Popenoe offers conclusions pulled from empirical studies, which overlay his frequent enunciation of the child's viewpoint: don't most kids in single-mother households prefer, if given a choice, also having a good father in the family? That 40 percent don't have one occupies Popenoe's search for the root of the problem, which takes him on a historical excursion through the American family from Puritan patriarchy to contemporary patterns of self-defined families. In contemporary patterns, Popenoe detects a source of fatherlessness in "radical individualism." Lest some readers recoil from that thesis, Popenoe takes pains not to idealize the Victorian or the 1950s nuclear family: he admits their stifling aspects but also insists that the responses to them--easy divorce and the elimination of social sanctions against illegitimacy--ineluctably lead to current rates of fatherlessness. Stern but readable analysis similar to David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America (1995). The American Family Is Changing. Divorce, Single Parents, And Stepfamilies Are Redefining The Ways We Live Together And Raise Our Children. Many Experts Feel These Seemingly Inevitable Changes Should Be Celebrated; They Claim That The New Families, Which Often Lack A Strong Father, Are Actually Healthier Than Traditional Two-parent Families - Or, At The Very Least, Do Children No Harm. But As Renowned Family Sociologist David Popenoe Shows In Life Without Father, This Optimistic View Is Severely Misguided. Examining Evidence From Social And Behavioral Science, History, And Evolutionary Biology, Popenoe Shows Why Fathers Today Are Deserting Their Families In Record Numbers. The Disintegration Of The Child-centered, Two-parent Family - Especially In The Inner Cities, Where As Many As Two In Three Children Are Growing Up Without Their Fathers - And The Weakening Commitment Of Fathers To Their Children That More And More Follows Divorce, Are Central Causes Of Many Of Our Worst Individual And Social Problems. Juvenile Delinquency, Drug And Alcohol Abuse, Teenage Pregnancy, Welfare Dependency, And Child Poverty Can Be Directly Traced To Fathers' Lack Of Involvement In Their Children's Lives. Our Situation Will Only Get Worse, Popenoe Warns, Unless Men Are Willing To Renew Their Commitment To Their Marriages And Their Children. Yet He Is Not Just An Alarmist. In Life Without Father, He Suggests Concrete Policies, And New Ways Of Thinking And Acting, That Will Help All Fathers Improve Their Marriages And Family Lives, And Tells Us What We As Individuals And As A Society Can Do To Support And Strengthen The Most Important Thing A Man Can Do. The Remarkable Decline Of Fatherhood And Marriage -- The Human Carnage Of Fatherlessness -- Victorian Fathers And The Rise Of The Modern Nuclear Family -- The Shrinking Father And The Fall Of The Nuclear Family -- What Do Fathers Do? -- The Essential Father -- Reclaiming Fatherhood And Marriage. David Popenoe. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 229-264) And Index.