The Product of a Deprived Childhood in a Fatherless Home
Published December 30, 2004
Margaret Romao Toigo
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Some of the individuals and organizations that support the Federal Marriage Amendment also support a multitude of other causes that are based upon loving and generative principles of helping children and families to have more fulfilling lives.
One example is Alliance for Marriage. AFM President, Matt Daniels, is the force behind the FMA, but the broader — and suprisingly liberalist — mission of his organization centers around supporting policies which he believes will ensure that more children are raised in familes that have both a mother and a father, a cause that apparently stems from his tragic childhood.
For what it is worth, I believe that Mr. Daniels is sincere when he says that he is not driven by animosity toward homosexuals but rather by his passionate desire to see other children have the kind of home life he was denied as the only child of a poor and struggling mother and "a gifted and irresponsible aspiring writer" who abandoned his family when Mr. Daniels was only a toddler.
Mr. Daniels' proposed consitutional amendment which reads, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." does not prohibit states from choosing to allow civil unions (his more intolerant counterparts don't like that idea one bit) because Mr. Daniels believes that preserving the right of states to decide whether or not to allow unions other than marriage is necessary to the success of amending the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states.
In an article about fatherless families, which was originally published in The Hill on June 16, 2004, Mr. Daniels writes about the integral connection between the institution of marriage and the well-being of children and how marriage connects men to the children they bring into the world by making fatherhood into something more meaningful than a biological event (does the mere posession of a marriage certificate improve a man's character or is it the other way around?).
Of course, any such article would be incomplete without some supporting statistics such as the 25 million American children who are being raised in familes with no father present in the home, an "overwhelming" body of social-science research which shows that many of the social problems commonly thought to be rooted in race would eventually move from the inner cities to the suburbs since these problems are ultimately attributable to family breakdown and other research that shows that the percentage of fatherless families in a community more reliably predicts that community's rate of violent crime and child poverty than any other factor.
In addition to this emperical evidence, Mr. Daniels shares his own personal experience of growing up without a father in a deteriorating, crime-ridden part of Spanish Harlem, offering it up as "a miniature portrait of the tremendous human and social costs of fatherlessness in America." And his story is truly sad.
Margaret Romao Toigo is a retired stripper, beauty school dropout, and wannabe intellectual who dabbles in a wide variety of fleeting endeavors and life-long obsessions. Although Ms. Toigo is not a real writer, she nonetheless has her very own web site: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave - The Product of a Deprived Childhood in a Fatherless Home
- Published: December 30, 2004
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- Writer: Margaret Romao Toigo
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these problems are ultimately attributable to family breakdown and other research that shows that the percentage of fatherless families in a community more reliably predicts that community's rate of violent crime and child poverty than any other factor.
This could also be attributable to the fathers being imprisoned under the War on Drugs harsh sentencing legislation (which is primarily aimed at poverty stricken minority communities).
Father in prison, child raised by mother alone. Neighbourhood kids become family. No jobs in community or after school programs to enrich the childs life. Drug dealers are plentiful despite WoD. Life of crime and violence begins.
sure just make a law or an amendment and the "problem" is solved
Thank you all for your comments.
I am not certain of how Mr. Daniels, President of Alliance for Marriage, rationalizes that preventing the legal recognition of same-sex marriage will ensure that more children will be raised in familes that have both a mother and a father, but I have noted that Mr. Daniels has received a lot of publicity with his proposed Federal Marriage Amendment and that he appears to have political ambitions beyond the mission of his organization.
Perhaps his interest in the FMA is more about aspiration and opportunity than it is about the rationalization of ethical questions? Or maybe such contrivances of logic are second nature to the people who think they knwo what's best for everyone else?
I have also read about how the War on Drugs has taken a toll on families in poverty stricken minority comunities which is one of the many problems associated with prohibitionist policies that masquerade as solutions to themselves and thus feed a vicious never-ending cycle of children of broken familes turning to drugs, believing them to be the way out of than cycle.
I am also frustrated by the oversimplified thinking of people who believe that our troubles can just be legislated away -- in spite of all the empirical evidence to the contrary.
For example, drug addiction and abuse is a problem that is often oversimplified as being the result of the mere existence of certain drugs of addiction and abuse. Such thinking relieves society from exploring the root causes of drug addiction and abuse, which are not so much conditions as they are symptoms.
Just to pick on a single point out of the many that you raised, Margaret:
"...does the mere posession of a marriage certificate improve a man's character or is it the other way around?"
I presume you made this remark with tongue in cheek. But it is unproductive to needlessly denegrate an entire gender. Our culture needs to cultivate greater appreciation of both male and female strengths, characteristics, and virtues. This is not helped by the trend of our law, which has been to steadily purge itself of any and all recognition of gender. BTW, there are no small number of people today who seriously propose that all our social pathology is the responsibility of solely the male gender.
It was not intended as such, but I can see how the question, "Does the mere posession of a marriage certificate improve a man's character or is it the other way around?" might be perceived as "male-bashing," especially in our current social climate in which such insults are not considered to be "politically incorrect."
However, if the question is taken in the context of how some people believe that marriage connects men to the children they bring into the world by making fatherhood into something more meaningful than a biological event, it is a rhetorical commentary on the somewhat ridiculous notion that the men who lack the character to fulfill their obligations as fathers will suddenly find it if they get married.
It should be obvious that the mere posession of a marriage licsense does not give men (or women for that matter) the strength of character to fulfill their obligations as parents.
The other way around simply means that men who do fulfill their obligations by making a committment (such as marriage or child support payments) to do so are demonstrating that they already have character.
You wrote:
"I also wonder why otherwise kindly and charitable folks do not realize that their fight to prevent gays and lesbians from ever seeking the recognition of their right to the secular, legal benefits and protections of marriage"
I believe that Mr. Daniels proposal as you describe it does not stop them from seeking the secular and legal benefits and protections of marriage, but rather the official sanction of those rights under the name marriage. Legally recognized civil unions could provide all the secular benefits of marriage without the name 'marriage' attached.
Of course the real solution is for the state to stop sanctioning marriage at all and only recognize civil unions even for heterosexual unions, thus leaving marriage for the churches.
Dave
http://www.elitistpig.com
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What a beautifully written and thought provoking post.
Would his survival-driven work ethic have developed if he had been deprived of his childhood hardships?
It's sad that he perceives that he got a worse life than one with a father. It's only a perception though, because there are good fathers and bad fathers. For all he could know, he WAS raised in the best possible environment for himself.
And it's sad that he wants to define, for all families, what the way for everybody should be, based on his own feeling of loss.
mission of his organization centers around supporting policies which he believes will ensure that more children are raised in familes that have both a mother and a father
I wonder how he rationalizes that forbidding same-sex marriage will ensure that? Gay couples cannot get married now and there are already estimates of 2-6 million kids being raised in gay households. Straight couples can get married now, and some have children in wedlock, some out of it. This amendment doesn't address or change any of this in any way.
I don't understand throwing all your resources at a solution that doesn't even touch the problem before you. That makes as much sense as having a problem before us, like say a madman in Afghanistan, and deciding to fight him by throwing all our resources at, say, Iraq.