Good Fathers

Father's Day allows many families around the country to show gratitude for the men in their life. The men who teach their children to walk, talk and read. The men who are faithful husbands and loyal partners in  marriage.

While I see Father's Day as a seemingly "Hallmark" holiday, it does give me time to reflect on the role of fathers in the United States, and the role of my father in my life.

I am blessed. I grew up with a very supportive father. While there were certainly nights when his demanding job as an attorney kept him away from home, he did certain things that helped to make me into the person I am today. First, off, he praised intellectualism. I often tell friends how I was "cross-examined" at the dinner table during family dinners, which my family tried to have at least three times a week. The ability to explain myself, think deeply about ideas and politics, has certainly granted me a skill set which has been invaluable to my professional and activism career. Additionally, my father always wanted us to be learning. If we ever got grounded, he would assign us book reports - usually some title that was far beyond our reading level such as Candide by Voltaire or Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Some may think this would make young children despise literature, but it only made me more attracted to it. Finally, my father believed in letting his children play. He made sure that his three children had the ability to leave the metropolitan world of San Francisco where we were raised and took us to the countryside in Michigan. We got to know our extended family there - I come from a large clan of Midwesterners - and also enjoy the sunshine, take swimming lessons, make sand castles, pick blueberries and live life a little less quickly.

However, while I was lucky enough to grow up with a supportive father, this is a role that is often absent in the lives of many children in America.

The U.S. Census reports that there are 10 million single mothers living with children under 18 years old, up from 3 million in 1970. In comparison, there are about  2.5 million single fathers. These statistics really make me think deeply about the message from President Obama today, who published this piece in Parade Magazine titled 'We Need Fathers To Step Up':

In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.

The fact that President Obama is recognizing how important it is to civil society that we have good fathers is an important domestic policy initiative, in my opinion.

According to Fathers.com,  we know that children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor. In 2002, 7.8 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 38.4 percent of children in female-householder families.

And even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds.

The challenges of raising children is one thing. The challenge of raising good father's is completely different.

As we evaluate the role of women in society, it is also important that we understand how to help boys become men and men become good fathers. So I am going to add to what President Obama said today - we need fathers and mothers and daughters and sons to all step up and ensure that we have the strongest families to raise the next generation of U.S. citizens.