Fatherless in America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem

Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem. David Blankenhorn. New York: Basic Books. 1995. 328 pp. Hardcover ISBN 0-465-01483-6. $23.00. Unlike France, where serious sociopolitical and philosophical tracts can count on sales, readership, and serious debate, in the United States books on important social issues seldom attain such status. In the last two years, only The Bell Curve has initiated substantial popular debate, eliciting a torrent of critical responses in both the professional and popular media to its conclusions about the associations between race and IQ. Though arguably focused on at least as serious a social problem as The Bell Curve, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem has received much less attention and has fostered much less debate. That's unfortunate, for while Blankenhorn's thesis is flawed and somewhat simplistic, his book is beautifully written and the problems he identifies are no less important and serious for the failures-in my view-to articulate sufficiently comprehensive explanations and solutions. Blankenhorn begins his argument by noting the convergence of some widely noted demographic trends, particularly rising rates of divorce, single parenthood, poverty, and crime. Whereas the so-called Moynihan Report identified these as portentous indicators of social decay in Black America three decades ago, Blankenhorn shows that they characterize White America with increasing accuracy today and that the situation can only worsen in the decades ahead. And where the Moynihan Report fostered discussion about the extent to which acceptance of fatherlessness in Black families might exacerbate the associated social problems and make necessary the revision of social policy, Blankenhorn observes that fatherlessness is increasingly accepted by all Americans, both White and Black. In his view, this laissez-faire acceptance, along with fatherlessness itself, are the central issues of the social illscrime and poverty-that threaten to derail the society. As he states: In short, the key for men is to be fathers. The key for children is to have fathers. The key for society is to create fathers. For society, the primary results of fatherhood are right-doing males and better outcomes for children. Conversely, the primary consequences of fatherlessness are rising male violence and declining child wellbeing. In the United States at the close of the twentieth century, paternal disinvestment has become the major cause of declining child wellbeing and the underlying source of our most important social problems, especially those rooted in violence. (p. 26) There is little doubt that the phenomena concerned-single parenthood, fatherlessness, crime, poverty, poor school performance, and psychosocial maladjustment-are interrelated, as Blankenhorn proposes and as many social scientists have shown. But evidence of co-occurrence is not sufficient to establish causality, and there remains considerable controversy on this score. In the absence of experimental evidence, which makes reliance on correlational techniques necessary, causality is hard to determine, and the conclusiveness of any research on the topic is limited by the plausibility and comprehensiveness of the theoretical models and the precision and quality of measurement. Brushing aside such qualifications, Blankenhorn concludes that fatherlessness is the central cause of declines in the quality of children's lives. As a result, fatherlessness must be recognized and addressed if any interventions are to be successful. Blankenhorn's stubborn commitment to this conclusion leads him to a simplistic prescription and prevents him from confronting the daunting complexities of our most vexing social problems. Blankenhorn's analysis is disappointing in other ways. Although he effectively and appropriately skewers much politically correct rhetoric, including the notions that strict child support enforcement can ameliorate the problems occasioned (in his view) by fatherlessness, or that father-child relationships can be replaced, psychologically and metaphorically, by casual and temporary relationships between children and other adult males, he also rejects rather superficially other analyses of the complex problems involved. …