Friday, June 6, 2008

THE WAR ON FATHERS

THE WAR ON FATHERS: How the 'feminization of America' destroys boys, men – and women

The evidence of this almost unthinkable scenario is everywhere:

SCHOOL: In public school classrooms across America, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind. Girls excel and move on to college, where three out of five students are female, while young boys – who don't naturally thrive when forced to sit still at a desk for six hours a day – are diagnosed by the millions with new diseases that didn't exist a generation ago. To make their behavior more acceptable, they are compelled to take hazardous psycho-stimulant drugs like Ritalin.

Boys are more than 50 percent more likely to repeat elementary school grades than girls, a third more likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to have a "learning disability." And the suicide rate among teen boys is far higher than that of girls.

"What we have done," explains Thomas Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, "is we have a K-12 school system that seems to work relatively well for girls and does not work for a very large share of boys."

HOME: It's well known that roughly half of America's marriages end in divorce, but not nearly as well known that two out of three of those divorces are initiated by the wives. Moreover, America's family court system is scandalously biased in favor of the mother in child custody disputes. Fathers get custody of children in uncontested cases only 10 percent of the time and 15 percent of the time in contested cases. Meanwhile, mothers get sole custody 66 percent of the time in uncontested cases and 75 percent of the time in contested cases.

"Where you have minor children, there's really no such thing as no-fault divorce for fathers," says Detroit attorney Philip Holman, vice president of the National Congress for Fathers and Children. "On the practical level, fathers realize that divorce means they lose their kids."

Unfortunately, this loss by children of their fathers' influence is directly responsible – far more than any other cause – for the modern national scourges of gang life, crime and much more.

CULTURE: Fifty years ago, "Father knows best" was a hit TV show, in which insurance agent Jim Anderson (actor Robert Young) would come home from work each evening, trade his sport jacket for a nice, comfortable sweater, and then deal with the everyday growing-up problems of his family. He could always be counted on to resolve that week's crisis with a combination of kindness, fatherly strength and common sense.

Today, television virtually always portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs. Whether in dramas, comedies or commercials, the patriarchy is dead, at least on TV where men are fools – unless of course they're gay. On "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the "fab five" are supremely knowledgeable on all things hip, their life's highest purpose being to help those less fortunate than themselves – that is, straight men – to become cool.

Maverick feminist Camille Paglia courageously reminds her men-hating colleagues, masculinity is "the most creative cultural force in history."

"The problem, is that misguided feminists, intent on advancing a radically different worldview than the one on which this nation was founded, have succeeded in fomenting a revolution. And that revolution amounts to a powerful and pervasive campaign against masculinity, maleness, boys, men and patriarchy."

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