While the country celebrated Father’s Day this weekend, many may not realize fatherhood itself is in peril. Whether through consequences of life, societal problems, or government intervention, many fathers have less of a role than ever before in raising children. This is an alarming trend for a variety of reasons. Most notably, the lack of a father in a child’s life can lead to “serious consequences and even fatal outcomes.” In light of this issue, Reps. Burgess Owens (UT) and Byron Donalds (FL) introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives last week to promote fatherhood and its benefit to society.
This comes roughly two months after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill to encourage responsible and involved fatherhood in his state. The bill allocated nearly $70 million for a variety of services stemming from “educational and mentorship programs to one-on-one support.”
Numerous studies have shown that the presence of a father is essential to a child’s development. Despite this, the lack of fathers in the home is a growing problem in the United States. It has reached epidemic levels “worthy of attention as a national emergency.” Yet this emergency could be partly due to the court system. While some fathers leave their children, others are subjected to numerous barriers imposed by the court system to see their children. It’s a problem that plagues many single fathers who want to be involved. Such is the case of Markus Trent, a single father from Baltimore.
“I love my daughter so much and am so proud to be a father. I was there for her birth and her first doctor appointments,” Trent told me. “I feel it’s important to be a positive role model and strong father figure in my daughter’s life, especially as a black man. I’m looking forward to her first day at school, teaching her how to do things like swim and write.”
Trent is a man who wants to be a father, someone who wants to be in his daughter’s life. Yet, according to Trent, the court granted custody to his daughter’s mother, seemingly for no reason other than being her mother. There weren’t any legal issues or any financial matters that persuaded the judge to choose the mother over the father. It was merely because he was the man, and men frequently don’t get a fair opportunity to raise children as single parents. This is especially true for black fathers.
“The court is supposed to be the mediator that looks out for the best interest of the child,” Trent said. “But we see the system failing the child. More legislation needs to address the bias in the family court system.”
This is a plea made by many single fathers.
“The court system does not promote co-parenting or mediation to keep families together. It’s more focused about making one parent look bad. This ultimately alienates a parent and hurts the child who deals with the negative fallout from psychological trauma,” Trent said.
Trent is aware of the reality and knows that many men face similar challenges throughout the country. His experience led him to take action. He started a group to help other fathers in similar situations.
“The reason I founded Fathers Fighting 4 Fathers was to encourage and promote family structure. Studies show that if both parents are in their children’s lives in a positive manner, they are better off,” Trent said. “One such way this could happen is for courts to assist fathers in the legal process and let them know their parental rights. In many instances, this is one of the biggest hurdles that fathers encounter in the black community.”
Moreover, we can trace much of these circumstances to events that long predate Trent’s fatherhood. According to some scholars, left-wing social policies devastated the country’s family structure. Trent is just the latest victim of that damage. This is especially true in the black community due to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty.
Robert Woodson, civil rights activist and founder of the Woodson Center, spoke with me about how the government contributed to the lack of fathers in the country, specifically in the black community. Woodson mentioned the “War on Poverty” as a catalyst for many of the societal challenges black fathers in the country face today.
“Why has the father’s role been reduced in households and families? I think it is a phenomenon of the War on Poverty,” Woodson told me. “Up until 1965, 85% of all black households had a man and a woman raising children. In fact, if you look at the records, between 1930 and 1940, during the Depression, black communities had the highest marriage rate of any other group in society. Black people had the highest rate of two-parent households. But all of that began to decline as policy separated work from income.”
He discussed the negative consequences of Johnson’s War on Poverty and how the federal government recruited blacks into the welfare system and seduced them with radical left-wing political ideologies that challenged the idea of the family.
“They attacked the nuclear family and said the nuclear family was Euro-centric and racist. This was also supported by such groups as the ‘Black Power’ movement and the ‘women’s rights’ movement,” Woodson said. “So you have these powerful social forces, aided by the government recruiting people and making welfare more generous than work. The combination of these powerful forces resulted in the dissolution of two-parent families.”
Yet, while Democrats set up fathers to fail, they never admitted to any wrongdoing. Instead, they claimed it was racism and discrimination that destroyed black families. Woodson condemned such a narrative.
“After 1965, within ten years, you saw an explosion of out-of-wedlock births, to the point now it is about 70%. But that has nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with the legacy of slavery. Because up until 1965, those families were intact,” Woodson said. “It was a conscious effort of government programs, the very consequence of this policy aided by government intervention that spent about $22 trillion during the period between 1965 and today, and it made welfare more attractive. The problems we have today are from the government intervening and attacking the family.”
As for today’s problems of courts preferring mothers while fathers are seemingly left behind, Woodson blamed biological thinking.
“For obvious biological reasons, mothers are the ones left with the children. They don’t have a choice — fathers do,” Woodson said. “The emphasis was on the mothers, and fathering was discouraged.”
Yet, in 2022, fathers like Markus Trent need it to change. Many fathers are begging for the opportunity to do right by their children but have to deal with the stereotypes and stigmas associated with being single fathers. Many are presumed to be “deadbeat dads” when nothing could be further from the truth. They’re just not being allowed to be their children’s fathers. Archaic ideologies about parenting no longer serve the father or children any good, if they ever did.
To reclaim the narrative on fatherhood, things need to change, now more than ever. Fathers not being part of a child’s life are associated with every significant “societal ill facing our country’s children.” The resolutions passed by Gov. DeSantis and Reps. Burgess and Donalds are a good start. However, much more needs to be done.
The courts create a systemic matriarchy by denying fathers equal opportunity to be present in their children’s lives. It’s time to start lifting up fathers’ roles in a child’s life instead of holding them down. It’s time to end these harmful practices and give fathers a chance.
