Captain Obvious Strikes Again: We Do Need Dads
BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #040618 - 06/18/2004
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
Stop the presses. Some new research has been released, with shocking results.
Here's the conclusion the researchers came to: "Dads make a difference in a child's life." As the father of six children I can't tell you how relieved this makes me feel -- especially on Father's Day.
What's the point, you may ask, of researchers telling us what most humans throughout history have already known?
Well, some people have known it. But many people today seem to need frequent reminders about the importance of fathers. As if it weren't bad enough that decades of no-fault divorce have caused millions of kids to grow up in broken homes, the shapers of our culture are pushing for yet another marital experiment.
Same-sex "marriage" advocates assure us that children will be fine with two moms or two dads. The important thing, they say, is having two parents in the home who love each other.
That's why this new research from the Yale School of Medicine is more important than you might think. Kathleen Fackelmann of USA TODAY summarizes it this way:
"Fathers bring a different parenting style to everyday activities. . . . Dads often take an active approach that encourages children to solve problems on their own rather than asking for help."
This approach is needed to help balance the family, since mothers, on the whole, tend to be more nurturing than challenging. As Fackelmann writes, "Kids need both parenting styles, but the father's contribution can be crucial: It helps kids develop a can-do attitude and helps hone their problem-solving skills. Fathers often adopt parenting methods to help prepare kids for the real world."
I don't know whether the Yale researchers intended their findings to be applied to the hottest social and political battle of our day. But the implications would be too dangerous to ignore. The choice to give a child two moms and no dad or two dads and no mom is more than exercising parenting and sexual options. It denies children a basic human need.
Marriage expert Maggie Gallagher tells the story of a young man with whom she talked about same-sex "marriage." She asked him, "Don't you think that, ideally, kids need a mom and a dad?" The young man disagreed. He'd grown up without a father, he said, and he was fine. So Maggie asked, "What about you? Do you think you'll matter to your kids?" The young man looked startled, "and then followed his train of thought to the only logical conclusion -- a train wreck: 'No,' he said. 'Not really.'"
This young man, Gallagher tells us, "has absorbed the message of [same-sex "marriage"] very well. Fathers are optional. Children are resilient. Adults are fragile, and their emotional needs come first."
This Father's Day, as those lucky enough to have a father as I do celebrate one of the most influential people in their lives, we need to think seriously about that
message and its destructive potential. If we don't want these lies to undermine
our society as a whole, then, like the Yale researchers, we need to keep stating
the obvious: Male dads (and female moms) make all the difference in the world.
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Originally published June 18, 2004.
