Life without fathers

Alexander, A. (1999, June 18). Life without fathers. The Boston Globe, p. A31.

OVERVIEW

This African-American is writing about a touchy but important subject: "the troubled state of the black American family."

I count myself among thousands of black children who came from a proverbial ‘broken home’ and lived to tell about it. And now, in my 30s, my interest in Fathers’ Day is more than just peripheral. Only lately, with my newborn daughter gathering her senses and taking her first tentative peeks at the world, do I begin to see the soul-shaping role her African-American father will play in her life.

Amy Alexander watches the special relationship already forming between her daughter and husband. She imagines what that relationship will become down through the years. She feels, even, "a twinge of envy."

My parents’ union didn’t last, and from the time I was 2 years old my siblings and I saw our father several times a year in prearranged visits and never on Fathers’ Day...when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, our single-parent home was not an anomaly. In fact, some of our peers didn’t see their fathers at all and could manage only vacant expressions when asked if they knew where he lived.

The breakdown of the black family is not something we talked about around the dinner table and we didn’t allow ourselves to fantasize about how it might have been to have Dad sit down to eat with us each night.

For all this, the writer feels fortunate this Fathers’ Day. She will not take it for granted, but believes her daughter, with father and mother in the home, will be more able to cope with the " ‘missing pieces’ life may throw her way."

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Is this a subject that should be talked about? By whom and how?
2. What do you think about the importance of fatherhood? What social forces can keep fathers out of the home?
3. Bill Moyers’, "The Vanishing Black Family" is a powerful documentary. In it, a group of five or six
4. young women deny the importance of a father in their homes. Their mothers, and some of their grandmothers, raised all their children on their own. How would you respond to these 15- to 18-year old mothers?
5. How can we support single mothers and how can we best encourage the presence of fathers?

IMPLICATIONS

1. All research shows and experience confirms a positive correlation of poverty, poor school performance, and other teenage problems with single parenting.
2. Single mothers and fathers often do a valiant job in raising and supporting their children. They need all the community and religious support possible.
3. The role of fathers must be understood and strengthened if we are to have strong and healthy societies.

Dean Borgman cCYS