Honoring Thy Fathers

By W. BRADFORD WILCOX
June 13, 2008

For millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation's children -- more than 20 million kids -- now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father's Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children.

Our nation's epidemic of fatherlessness is just the most salient indicator of what University of Chicago theologian Don Browning has called the "male problematic" -- the tendency of men to live apart from their children and to invest less emotionally and practically in their families than women do. the rest