Red States Can Lead the Way on Marriage and Fatherhood

“If we care about our children, if we care about the vibrancy of our communities, we have no choice but to have the conversation” about absent fatherhood, said Chris Sprowls, who served as a prosecutor in Florida before going on to become speaker of the state house in 2020. In his work on cases involving gangs and homicide, he found—over and over again—that the vast majority of the young men he prosecuted had grown up without a father in the home.

His experience with fatherless young men was a driving force behind his initiative to enact fatherhood-related legislation in Florida. The bill passed with unanimous bipartisan support — and was signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis — early last year. Florida is now rolling out a $21.1 million fatherhood initiative that will combine public-service ads, outreach to nonresident dads (dads who don’t live with their children), and evidence-based parental education in an effort to help men be better fathers.

It is a welcome step towards emphasizing, rather than minimizing or denying, the value of fathers. Too often, particularly in the halls of academia and in the media, elites have overlooked the significance of fatherhood and the power of two-parent households. “Women possess the innate mompower that in itself is more than sufficient to raise fine sons,” said psychologist Peggy Drexler of Cornell University.

But in recent years, we have seen a growing recognition from scholars and policy-makers, even those on the left, that dads make a difference. The most prominent example is Brookings Institution fellow Richard Reeves, who acknowledges in his 2022 book Of Boys and Men that “fathers matter for their children’s welfare in ways that are different from, but equal to, those of mothers.” He points to the educational, mental-health, and other benefits that engaged fathers provide to their children.

The only problem with the Left’s newfound appreciation of fatherhood is that it does not extend to marriage. Progressive advocates of fatherhood like Reeves believe we need to make our peace with the reality that a large minority of kids — slightly fewer than 30 percent — are living apart from their dads. “The goal,” in his words, “is to bolster the role of fathers as direct providers of care to their children, whether or not they are married to or even living with the mother.”

What Reeves misses is that most men find it difficult to forge strong everyday relationships with their kids absent marriage, and that children are much more likely to struggle when they grow up in a home without their dad. For instance, new research by Wendy Wang at the Institute for Family Studies finds that the average nonresident father spends less than an hour a week with his child; by contrast, the average married dad spends eight hours a week. This is a staggering difference, and it is enormously consequential for children. As Melissa Kearney notes in her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege:

Children from single-parent homes have more behavioral problems, are more likely to get in trouble in school or with the law, achieve lower levels of education and tend to earn lower incomes in adulthood. Boys from homes without dads present are particularly prone to getting in trouble in school or with the law. 

Continue reading at NRO . . . .