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October 22, 2004
Nanny remembers
it as “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town
were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers
would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children;
we had seen it happen before.” A brave young girl in Anne LaMott’s
All New People, she gave voice to the fears of an entire
generation of children…and for the children of two successive
generations.
Nanny was a
prophetess. On January 1, 1970, the first no-fault divorce law,
California’s Family Law Act, became effective and eliminated the
requirement to use one of seven statutory reasons for filing for
divorce. In the following decade, all other states followed
California’s lead, making divorce an easy-as-pie solution to
“incompatibility.”
In the past
thirty-five years, as divorce has become commonplace, another
statistic has been on the rise. Unwed teen pregnancies have given
birth to children whose fathers are absent from the very beginning…no
divorce needed.
In just three
decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living
apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent
to 36 percent. Poppa’s gone.
Mama is left to
handle the children on her own…their lunch money, their bruises and
hurt feelings, their temper tantrums, fights at school, homework,
dating, proms and first loves. When children reach for a hand up and
when they celebrate with a high five, they aim for one hand…the hand
of their Mama. Papa? He’s gone.
This is no
exaggeration.
About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen
their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers
live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of
children living absent their father have never set foot in their
father's home.
The impact of
absent fathers has proven complicit in a wide range of social
problems: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to
teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression,
substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing
number of women and children in poverty.
How do we bring
Poppa home? The answer is being melded from many sources. An Arizona
judge requires counseling before divorce. Legislatures are
considering changes in no-fault divorce laws.
The
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a special
initiative to support and strengthen the role of fathers in families.
In the private sector, groups like the National
Fatherhood Initiative and The Fatherhood Project are reaching out to
dads with help on parenting, encouraging them to take an active role
in the lives of their children. And faith-based groups are taking the
lead in helping to strengthen marriages and in giving couples
effective strategies for dealing with conflict before it leads to
divorce.
But the biggest
hope in bringing Poppa home…and creating a home where he will
stay…comes from a surprising group: abstinence educators. Abstinence
education is all about placing sex in context, helping students
understand that the natural result of sex is to produce children…in
families…with parents…with Mamas…and Papas.
Joneen Krauth,
who developed Wait Training abstinence programs, has her
students begin a marriage file. She encourages them to collect
information on how to create and maintain healthy and happy
relationships, and in particular, how to “marry smart”. What are the
compatibility factors that predict survival of relationships? What
are the seven warning signs of a bad relationship? Is he/she “just a
date”…or are they “my soul-mate”?
Students learn
that relationships require the same planning, goals, and commitment as
college educations and career plans. They gain hope by realizing that
even in a culture of divorce, they can learn how to avoid the mistakes
that lead to broken relationships.
Abstinence until
marriage…students learn to see sex, not in isolation, but in the full
context of human life and relationships. And in this context, where
marriage is valued, students are laying the foundation for families
where Papa and Mama come together…and stay together…for each other…and
for their children.
Copyright © 2004 Jane Jimenez
October 15, 2004
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