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October 17, 2005
Anthony Edwards
looks down at the cover of the 1998 Sports Illustrated in his
hands. The face of 2-year-old Khalid Minor stares at him. The
headline above Khalid reads Where's Daddy?
According to
SI, Khalid's father, Boston Celtics swingman Greg Minor refused to
make child-support payments, leading to his ex-wife and three kids
being evicted from their home. Edwards opens up the magazine. The
article chronicles the appalling number of pro athletes--particularly
NBA players--who have illegitimate children yet want no part of
fatherhood.
SI
reporters Wahl
and Wetheim lay out the details. New York Knicks forward Larry
Johnson has five children from four women. Cleveland's Shawn-Kemp has
seven kids, again with multiple partners. Indiana coach Larry Bird
refuses to have a relationship with his teenage daughter.
"It's like they
don't even care," says Edwards, talking with Scott Bordow of the
East
Valley
Tribune.
An Arizona Cardinals' nine-year veteran in 1998, he adds, "What makes
it worse is that they have so much money it means nothing."
Edwards could
have been one of them. He was 21, a promising wide receiver at New
Mexico Highlands University. A pro football career beckoned. He
didn't want a child. It was an accident. Like modern sports heroes,
he could have let the girlfriend take care of the baby.
That was not the
path Edwards chose, though. He quit school, returning to Casa Grande
in Arizona to support his new family. He and his girlfriend Mary Ann
slept in separate bedrooms of his parents' home. He took a job at
Ross Abbott Laboratories, earning $6.50 an hour as a machine
operator. Ross Abbott made baby formula.
"I was 21 years
old and boom, everything changed," Edwards tells Bordow. "It would
have been easy to just pay her off. But even if we weren't going to
be together, I had to take care of my child. He's my flesh and
blood."
Edwards did make
it to the NFL in 1989, signing as a free agent with Philadelphia. He
and Mary Ann married in 1990. Their commitment to each other in
marriage is the hopeful solution to a nagging social problem
threatening the welfare of American children.
From 1960 to
1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled
from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living
with married parents declined. Today, 24 million children (34
percent) live absent their biological father. And in 2000, 1.35
million births, one-third of all births, occurred out of wedlock.
Fathers are the
missing ingredient for many children. The results of father absence
are staggering. An analysis reported in 2001 of nearly 100 studies on
parent-child relationships found that, in some studies, father love
was actually a better predictor than mother love for certain outcomes,
including delinquency, substance abuse and overall mental health and
well-being.
In other studies
analyzed in the 2001 report, after controlling for mother love,
researchers found father love was the sole significant predictor for
certain outcomes such as psychological adjustment problems, conduct
problems and substance abuse. The importance of Edwards’s commitment
to his wife and his children is born out by research. Fathers do
matter. They matter a lot.
Edwards knows
that eventually he'll have to tell Tony why he was born before his
parents were married. He'll be honest. "It's just part of being a
father," he said. "You take on the responsibility."
Taking his
commitment to fatherhood one step further, Edwards has also worked
with teenagers, counseling them to remain celibate until marriage.
His personal story and his role model as a committed father himself
are a strong witness to his message, the power of one father to make a
difference.
From one
parent to the next, whether we are there or not, we pass the seeds of
success or failure on to our children. Anthony Edwards is planting
seeds of success that were given to him. Is the source of his
commitment any surprise? "My father was there for me.”
Copyright © 2005 Jane Jimenez
Scott Bordow, "Fatherhood means more
than a check to Edwards," East Valley Tribune, May 7, 1998,
C1, C10.
Grant Wahl and L. Jon Wertheim,
"Paternity Ward," Sports Illustrated, May 4, 1998.
June 18, 2004 -
Me Jane, You Tarzan
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