DrD with Dr. Nancy Ann Davis
A man in the home is worth two in the street.
— Mae WestMotherhood is a biological necessity, at the heart of the family, while fatherhood is somewhat optional. So as the two-parent family unravels it is fathers who vanish, and families revert to the more primal mother–plus–children arrangement. Fathers are fast losing ground, amid the continuing barrage of complaints about men in general and fathers in particular. Here we take a broad look across the ages.
In nature, fatherhood is common among most birds but only among a few species of mammals. Among Snowy Owls the mom, who sits the eggs, has a full-time job due to the frigid temperatures, and must rely on her mate, who hunts and brings the prey back to the nest.
Fatherhood is typical in the Canidae animal family, which includes wolves, coyotes, and foxes. Many of these social animals also have extended family arrangements. Among wolves, the alpha male and female are the only breeding pair but a second ranking pair may fill in as babysitters.
Our most beloved of the canids is the family dog, which is an offshoot of the gray wolf but shows no interest in any paternal responsibilities. So what happened? Our ancestors would have fed the nursing mother dogs, just as we do today, improving survival rates but replacing fatherhood among dogs and making it unnecessary. Is the fatherless dog family a logical result of dogs on welfare? Males who sired pups but no longer fathered them had just as many surviving offspring, and more time to chase the stray females who wandered by with the "come hither" perfume.
Among primates pair bonding is rare. Pair bonds became commonplace among our own early ancestors about two million years ago, as hominid brains began to increase in size. The larger brain takes longer to mature, so human infants became increasingly helpless. Travel among our early ancestors came to require two functional individuals working together, one to carry the infant and one to carry the groceries and the camping gear. Who better to provide the assistance than a committed mate? The bonded father provided the extra resources. How convenient!
While a father and mother working together should provide about twice the resources as a mother going it alone, the cumulative results were considerably more than that. If a mother could subsist on her own, the extra resources a second parent provides are available for comfort, security, and most importantly, for innovation.
As our mating ancestors bonded together, the males of the species became progressively more involved in supporting the females and in raising the youngsters. Those bonded males who supported the mother and her children became our first fathers, providing more for the youngsters and also gaining the additional respect from the mothers, which would surely translate into additional sexual invitations and thus additional progeny. By choosing contributors over slackers, our mothers themselves enticed men into families and helped cultivate fatherhood as an feature of early human communities. Relatives also support contributors over slackers, and stood adamantly against men whom they considered “users.”
Our ancestors continued as hunter-gatherers until the arrival of agriculture, which provided the abundance of food that supported larger populations and freed more men to join together in productive ventures that would grow into what we now call civilization. The industrial revolution began around 1780, around the time of the American revolution, and the rapidly increasing prosperity changed the nature of families.
Currently, some 40% of American children are born to single moms, compared to just under 4% in the 1940s. And divorce further weakens fatherhood. Ten years after a separation, two-thirds of children have virtually no contact with the men who were once their fathers. So something over half of American children born today are raised in matriarchal arrangements with no father or only a sometime father.
Human progress has ridden a long way on the traditional family, with fathers providing the added resources that lifted mothers and their children and whole societies from meager subsistence toward innovation and abundance. So why is Western society sliding away from fatherhood? Some of the reason is the comparative abundance we now take for granted. The Industrial Revolution introduced the machines that now do the heavy lifting. And the government itself supports unmarried mothers, so who needs fathers? As women seek more rights, more security, more safety, more prosperity, and more control of their lives, the importance of fathers gets lost in the mix. Perhaps we can scrape by without fathers. But do we really want to chance it? Are we willing to abandon our fundamentals while other nations catch up to us and sail on past?
While women who give birth are naturally mothers, fatherhood involves several additional features:
A father is the inseminator, or biological father, which is our principal standard, although men who adopt are also fathers. The biological connection tends to activate a sense of altruistic obligation toward the youngsters.
A father ordinarily has an alliance with the mother and is committed to her. Indeed, his initial connection to an unborn child is often through his love for the mother. Traditionally, we required a man who contributes the sperm to marry the mother and to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood. Men who maintain a committed relationship with the mother are the mainstay of fatherhood and contribute willingly, while men who do not bond with the mother or who separate are often absentee fathers, and hardly fathers at all.
A father resides with his children and participates in their lives. A continuing partnership with the mother in an intact family vastly increases the chances a sperm contributor will mature into a real father and remain a real father.
Only a century ago the extended family was the norm. And in our earlier years, children were often raised communally, with assorted grandparents, uncles and aunts, and older siblings all involved, and the rest of the community stepping in when necessary.
Today with so many children raised by television, video games, and the shopping mall, the fatherless family is hardly a solution. And while it is easy enough to condemn men, today on Father's Day, might we suggest that our culture would do better to support men and to honor our fathers?
Happy Fathers Day!
