Absentee Childhoods
Broken homes. We have a lot of them.
Do you have any idea how many single mothers leading lives of "quiet desperation" contact me? Single mothers, struggling to put food on the table, struggling to parent well when they also have to work 50 hours a week to survive; struggling with substandard homes, substandard health care, struggling to cope with vaccines, medicines, produce, and goods they don't trust to be healthy.
You mothers out there, keep mothering. Keep doing what you're doing. Mothers don't have to be fathers, you just have to be there. Let your kids know that you wish things were different, but plenty of kids do fine without a father around. Don't go for serial dating while you're looking for a substitute father; surviving serial temporary fathers is harder on your child than having no father at all. Emphasize your child's strengths. Turn to the healthy relationships in your extended family to provide a vision of male role models.
The father's role is to be a support person for the mother, a breadwinner, a role model, and one of the socializers of the children.
Where are the fathers out there?
I know I'll get email about this, but I'm not saying this to the fathers that are already doing their job. If you're there, you know how important you are to your family's survival. I'm sure you look out of your window every day and see all of those unfathered children out there, and your heart bleeds for them too.
I remember a day years ago, when a neighbor's daughter was standing outside of her house. Let's call her Katy, for the sake of anonymity. Katy was wearing a pretty dress, and very excited. So my daughter talked to Katy for a while, then came back home. I found her standing on the porch, facing out toward the street, watching cars go by, seeming hopeful and hopeless at the same time. She'd look closely at each car as if she were waiting for someone, but then the car would drive away, and with each passing, she was that much more disappointed.
I finally asked her what was wrong.
She said, "Katie visited her father for the weekend."
I found ways to distract her, but there were still weekends after that where I would find my daughter waiting in her pretty dress, waiting for her father to come. And he didn't. I can still see her walking back inside, disappointed and somehow gallant, still believing that he would be there for her, not when it was convenient for him, but when she needed him.
There were plenty of days when I passed up serving my family nutritious food for stuff I could afford just so we could make ends meet. When we had too many starches on the table, because they do such a great job of stretching a meal.
To the absentee fathers out there: you already know the obvious, that without your contribution, your kids are more likely to be inadequately housed, and more likely to be going hungry. Do you know that when you are involved in your children's education, your kids are more likely to get "A"s, enjoy school, participate in extracurricular activities and less likely to repeat a grade? Did you know your being there helps make your child more well rounded, more confident, less emotionally unstable? That fathers who acknowledge their children as capable and beautiful individuals, have children who grow up knowing that they are loved for who they are. But children who don't get that kind of attention from their fathers will be insecure, and have low self esteem. For the rest of their lives.
To you fathers out there who don't manage to make time for your children, or provide money for their support: you're doing an evil thing. You are biologically and socially designed to be half of their support. You know what would happen to your house if half of it's foundation was removed? It would collapse. That is what you are doing to your children: collapsing their lives.
Not only are you stealing your child's childhood. Just like that house with half of the foundation gone, you are setting your child up for failure.
Broken homes lead to broken lives.
You absentee fathers, step up to the plate, and be a father. Before it is too late.
Currently, I am the President of the consulting firm, Brockovich Research & Consulting, where I am involved in numerous major environmental cases 
Comments
First, love the blog, lots of good stuff here that I read as regularly as I can. It's great to know that there are people like you out there who give a tinker's darn about the little people with the big voices. (I often tell people, vote with your pocketbook...sure, you may not have a lot to vote with, but if enough little pocketbooks all vote the same way, it adds up to big bucks pretty quickly.)
Second, pardon the upcoming ramble...it's just that this particular post touches on my life, and what the heck, I'll toss a comment out there.
So, mostly, just had to comment on this particular posting of yours. So many times, I read all these statistics and hear reports of how children raised in single-parent homes are more likely to turn out wrong, whether it be drug use, teenage sex/pregnancy, various criminal enterprises, or just plain rotten grades in school. I am one of the success stories - raised by my mom only, and grew up in what was pretty much poverty although it didn't seem like it to me. Heck, we had oatmeal and Cream of Wheat for breakfast an awful lot of the time, and it wasn't until I had kids of my own that I realized Mom made them because it was what was affordable, NOT because I liked them! :-) (And I'm guilty of the same thing, and glad my kids like them, too.)
I wasn't the greatest student in the world, but I was above-average intelligence in a school district with no TAG program, so I was frequently bored since all the teachers wanted me to be "normal, just like the other students." Thankfully, I got in with some incredible teachers in high school who helped me pull myself together so my grades got up into the low B range for graduation. I did not go out partying and getting drunk, have never EVER even tried drugs on my own (I'm not counting the one time in the high school bathroom when I walked in and some of the girls tried to get me high through sniffing something - and yes, I WAS such a goody-two-shoes that I turned them all in, lol.), and abstained from sex until I was an adult and ready for it.
After high school, I went to college for a bit, then quit to become a homemaker. Eventually, I got divorced, and had a baby daughter to take care of. When my daughter was only 10 months old, I went back to college full-time and was working full-time as well. I took a number of my classes self-study so I could spend more time with my daughter. I graduated 3 years later with an ABA in Accounting, with honors (3.59 GPA...if only I'd managed to get a B in Cost Accounting instead of a C), and seven!!! times on the Dean's List. Oh yeah, and I did all that as a single mom. If you can't tell, yes, I'm extremely proud of all that!
My daughter is growing up rapidly, but amazingly, single parenthood and an absentee/deadbeat father situation hasn't seemed to hurt her a bit. She is an excellent student (barring gym - I can sympathize, as it was my nemesis, too). She doesn't get into trouble any more than the average kid, and generally less. Two generations of single parenthood, and one did beat the odds according to the statistics, and the other is doing a fine job of beating the odds as well.
Granted, my daughter would love to know her father, who wants nothing to do with her, and who is a real pill about paying support. I think the most heart-breaking moment in raising her has been when she was ten and asked me, "Mommy, why does my father hate me so much?" How do you explain to a kid that their father doesn't hate them, he just doesn't want anythig to do with them, and do it without breaking the child's heart? Especially when that child is a wonderful as my girl is (some Mom talking, but I hear from everybody else what a great kid she is, so it can't be all me, haha). But she knows, too, that I love and support her, and sometimes I wonder which house she lives at - ours or one of her numerous friends! And she's extremely lucky, in that she has a LOT of male mentor figures.
And I think that's where she and I both got lucky in life. When I was growing up, I had a ton of great male mentors who made up for no father. My daughter has much the same kind of group, and some of her mentors were men that mentored me as a teen. Great guys, every last one of them, bless their hearts. Because of them, my self-esteem growing up was in the clouds. I grew up thinking I could do anything, be anyone, that I wanted to be. Oddly enough, my daughter has inherited that same independence...if I try to "do the mom thing" and protect her to the point of possibly stifling her, she won't let me. She'll point right out to me that I'm smothering her, and boy howdy, does she EVER know what she wants to do with her life and where she's going with it - at fourteen!!!! Guess I managed to do something right in raising her and finding her a group of male mentors to do those things with her that her father refuses to do. :-)
So I guess it all comes down to one thing for single parents, especially us single moms, since that's the prevailing gender in single parenthood. If your kid's father wants little or nothing to do with them, surround your kids with lots of male mentors. Uncles, grandfathers, teachers, guys from church, neighbors, Scout troop leaders (male and female!) - all are going to be a help and a big influence on your kids. Let them help. They can't replace an absentee father, but they CAN help fill the gap and keep the at-risk kids from becoming just another bad statistic. They can help the at-risk kids become a GOOD statistic instead, helping them to beat the odds.
Like the saying says - any man can become a father, but it takes someone special to be a Daddy. Lots of men who don't want to be either...thank the heavens above for all the men who DO, and who are willing to take on the job of father figure and mentor in place of those who won't.
Posted by: heather r | October 6, 2007 1:06 AM
Thanks Erin!
Your stories,experiences and advice choke me up, they bring tears to my eyes...
I identify with so much you say.
I hope you read my message about mold corruption and tell us what to do.
I am facing a deadline Nov.2!
In Christ, Luz
Posted by: Luz/Laurie | October 9, 2007 4:46 AM