As often as not, every time I have suggested that a loving mother and FATHER in the home are the very best situation for the welfare of children, I have been accused of virtually every conceivable ideological crime short of wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
There's no getting around it, however. Of course single moms and gay parents can and do a great job of parenting and many raise exemplary kids, but most can't accomplish what a whole family unit of Mom, Dad, and kids can accomplish.
If we are serious about improving the economic and educational welfare of children, we will support whatever encourages marriage, keeping marriages together, and what strengthens the traditional family.
This is the issue, for many, in light of possible pending legislation in Washington, and why the issue is probably not going to go away.
June 21, 2006
Social Conservatives Were Right, Again
By Dennis Byrne
The number of the tributes in the mainstream media to dads over the Father's Day weekend was stunning, something that no one would have believed a decade ago.
Even liberal columnists were praising fathers, their own included, when not long ago it was a matter of progressive conviction to either ignore or ridicule the importance of fathers.
Even black columnists recently have been uttering the unthinkable, that the absence of fathers in the lives of African-American children has had a devastating impact of the social, psychological, economic and moral well being of their families. God bless them for having the courage to stand against same charges of racism that rained down on lonely social conservatives who were making the same point years ago.
They were only reflecting the conclusions of scientific research of the type provided by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who found, for example, that first graders without fathers in the home had an IQ 7.5 percent lower than those with fathers. Moynihan's academic and liberal credentials didn't inoculate him from the rage of progressives overcome by ideology. He was taken to the woodshed by the liberal Nation magazine and the liberal National Council of Churches. President Johnson caved into liberal pressure and excluded the question of family stability and the Moynihan Report from a White House conference on poverty.
Instead, "quality integrated education" and equal rights dominated the discussion, and an opportune moment in history was missed to stem, if not reverse, the tide of fatherlessness that today is one of the main causes of poverty, despair and other "dysfunctions." Yet, progressives take no heat, and no apologies issue from them, for this unconscionable exclusion.
For years, anyone who dared discuss in public what social science was continuing to reaffirm--the centrality of fatherhood--were bashed for "blaming the victim," for denigrating "single mothers," and for conducting a host of other "mean-spirited" attacks on the poor and minorities.
Perhaps it reached its apex in the early 1990s, when Vice President Dan Quayle had the audacity to say that fatherlessness was a legitimate and serious problem. He said so in the context of a popular TV show, in which the star investigative reporter, Murphy Brown, played by Candice Bergen, decided to have a child on her own. No need for a father in such a "lifestyle choice." Brown was called "one of the most original, distinctive female characters on television." To attack a TV plot for its ludicrous message was the same as attacking women and feminism. And to be on the side of a dumbbell who didn't know how to spell potato.
Turns out that Quayle, in light of today's realities, was reasonable and prescient. In his famous Murphy Brown speech, Quayle said:
"Right now the failure of our families is hurting America deeply. When families fall, society falls. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation cracks. Children need love and discipline. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children come to understand values and themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers.
"And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of them all. Among families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7 percent. But 33.4 percent of families are headed by a single mother are in poverty today....
"It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown--a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman--mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'"
If you read this weekend's tributes to fathers, you would have to conclude that fatherhood's importance has become a part of American mainstream values. Or at least fatherhood has recovered the esteem that Americans once held for it. Yet Quayle and social conservatives get little credit for their steadfastness in the face of public ridicule. From "progressives" come no acknowledgments that they were wrong.
Just as "progressives" were wrong when they insisted with infallible certitude that the use of traditional public health measures (such as contract tracing) against the spread of AIDS/HIV would actually spread it. Social conservatives warned years ago that absent those measures, the disease would spread and black women would be the greatest victims - a correct prediction.
Social conservatives warned of the coarsening of society by Hollywood and the media. Now, despite some hardliners in the ACLU and elsewhere, most of America grieves for the loss of innocence of its children and the worsening of subsequent personal and society pathologies.
Social conservatives need to be more mindful of their successes as they continue the current culture war battles: For their opposition to abortion and warnings about the dangers, including increased breast cancer, of the procedure for women. For their continued fight for the integrity of the family. For the fight against embryonic stem cells research, whose promise pales against the successes of adult stem cell procedures. And for the many other views for which they are ridiculed.
No more shying away. No more excuses about how "I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social moderate." No more fear of being identified with the "Christian right" or others who hold the same views for religious or moral reasons. All those reasons are good, but scientific, secular reasons for holding these same views are fact-based and sound. Social conservatives have every reason to be proud of what they have accomplished and confident of what they still will achieve.
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