If you had an active father in your life growing up, you probably didn’t realize how important that was. I can’t help but think that that is the way it is supposed to be—it should be the norm. No father is perfect, however, but their role is essential. Father’s are protectors and providers. They prepare us for life, both sons and daughters. They play with us as kids, and teach us boundaries that are essential to life. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Father’s provide a sense of stability to children when they are doing what they are supposed to. And they help us find purpose in life. Statistics show that a father present and active in their children’s lives leads to better school achievement, much fewer school discipline issues and dropouts, greater young adult employment, greatly reduced suicide, drug use, youth homelessness, and adult poverty. All of these issues effect the children into their adulthood, but also have great implications for society as a whole.
What we learn from Elephants
In 1999, in the South African bush, there was a series of killings involving white rhinos, a highly protected species. This story was reported by CBS. Authorities were baffled at who was doing this, blaming it on a new group of juvenile delinquents. It became clear, however, that the killings were not the result of poachers, but who was killing nearly ten percent of the white rhino population? With further research, it was determined that the killers were, indeed, juvenile delinquents, but not the human kind. These were teenage elephants who had grown up without adult male role models— essentially, without fathers. The fathers had been killed years earlier when overpopulation occurred in the parks, and it was decided to kill the adults and keep the children, partly because they could be more easily transported to other parks in order to thin out the population. These orphan elephants grew up without male role models, unchecked, as it were, by the adult males, and left to their own devices. These delinquents also were aggressive towards tourist vehicles, and it was apparent that something had to be done.
The authorities began to identify the culprits, even giving them names. Five of the delinquents had to be killed, because unfortunately “there are no reform schools for elephants.” Then, one of the teenage elephants, named Mafuta, began causing trouble. He turned all the reserve’s orphaned elephants into what could be called an elephant “street gang,” and he became the leader. He began to pick on the rhinos more and attacked them. It was apparent that Mafuta was so out of control that he would need to be shot and killed, a decision that the park ranger found very difficult having developed an emotional attachment to the animals from working so closely with them.
After some more studies of the situation, it was discovered that the delinquent elephants had an excess of testosterone, which also led to their mating early, since they did not know how to handle the raging hormones. In an attempt to resolve this issue, they brought in larger bull elephants. The result was that the adult bull elephants sparred with the delinquents, establishing an hierarchy, that also discouraged the youth from being sexually active, and reduced their testosterone. In essence, it was much like “a group of teenagers who have been acting up who are confronted by their fathers all of a sudden.”
The Real Problem
The parallel between the delinquent elephants left to fend for themselves and the delinquent young people in our country, particularly our inner-cities today, are stunning. After thirty years of working with youth in the inner-city, I can honestly say, from first hand experience, that the problems in our urban cores are not as complex as I once thought, and as many make them out to be. The real issue is being ignored and skirted. Although the solution may not be complex, the pathway back is, because it is as much systemic as cultural. My role in working with teens would have been totally unnecessary if eight-five to ninety percent of the homes in my neighborhood had active, working, fathers in them. I assert that street gangs would be non-existent, partly because the fathers would not tolerate them, but furthermore because they would not be needed. Street gangs provide protection and identity, a weak, yet destructive, substitute for the family. Youth in our inner-cities are too often left to raise themselves and each other. They too often find role models in drug dealers, gang leaders, and rappers who rap racial discord, disrespect for women, violence as a solution for interpersonal issues, money as the goal, and on and on.
Society, however, wants to insist that the father is insignificant beyond a sperm donor. Television sitcoms since the eighties have portrayed fathers as incompetent fools, only to be laughed at, but never taken seriously. The courts, in most jurisdictions, award custody of kids to mothers over the father in the majority of cases. In addition, the women’s movement is increasingly emasculating the male, maternalizing society, and removing all “toxic” masculine traits—in essence, feminizing everyone and everything in society.
If all this change really is for the better, then our crime issues would be non-existent, or on a sharp decrease, since all the “toxic male” influence is out of the way. Children raised in single-parent families headed by the mother should not have an eighty percent chance of living in poverty as an adult. Our streets, especially in the inner-city, should be the safest of all neighborhoods, since few fathers exist in the home. If the father’s role is unimportant or harmful, then even our prison population should be decreasing at alarming rates as the father’s are taken from the home, since most prisoners come from fatherless homes. Our schools would be the safest and best educated. However, we know the opposite to be true, and modern day statistics correlate directly that as the traditional family has increasingly broke down over the last fifty years, as fathers were absent from their families, crime has increased, which now is not only in the urban core, but has spread like wild fire to the rest of the culture.
Now, while the culture vilifies fathers, men in general, it is true that too often, anymore, men are not stepping up to the plate. Today, however, it is frequently due to the lack of cultural role models. Being a father is self-sacrificing, a characteristic that is not valued in an individualistic society, where self-satisfaction is of primary concern.
In my years working with urban youth, I watched as one young person after another wondered about their fathers, or dealt with abusive or absent fathers. When there is a man in the home, I have watched the strained relationship between the man and woman (rarely married). There was an expectation by the man to take authority in the home, and a strong fear by the woman to trust him to do so. She knew that he could leave at any moment if he chose and she would be left holding the reins, trying to keep the house going. Too often the man in the home wasn’t the father of the children, or only some of the children, which further complicates things, because the children rarely respect his authority that he is trying to assert when they know he is not their father. Furthermore, the mother was probably abandoned by her father as a child, so she lacked the direction needed in finding a stable life partner to marry, following instead the leading of culture, peers, and hormonal needs. And, if she grew up watching her mother lead the home without the father present, then it would follow that there would be no precedence for submitting to a male authority figure, especially in the home. Without marriage, however, it is futile to even address male and female roles in the home, because marriage, by design, provides the necessary foundation and backdrop for a successful family and home life.
The Way Back
As I stated, the issue can be identified easily enough, but our entire culture and society has moved away from traditional values, which have been vilified as restricting, constraining, and narrow-minded. Sexual permissiveness became the new “norm” in the sixties and has permeated all of society ever since, turning over every leaf from sexual preferences to sexual identity, as though it is all fluid and can be juggled around as desired. Then, we wonder why kids have no sense of purpose or direction, when they have no sense of self-respect or respect for others, when they become violent, and even when they want to end it all in a tragic suicide. With the absence of fathers, like our elephant example above, there is a lack of direction and purpose which has produced similar types of results in our society as experienced by the orphaned elephants.
One of my favorite musicals is “Fiddler on the Roof,” a story of a Jewish family during the time of the early twentieth century in Russia, just on the verge of the Bolshevik Revolution. They live in the little town of Anatevka, and lived by the strict traditions of their Jewish culture. Modern change is on the horizon, but not for Tevye, the main character, a poor milkman in the village. The musical opens with the classic song, “Tradition.” It sets the stage for the story, of how their culture determines roles for everyone–sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. Everyone has their place, and the implication of the song is, that those traditions are not to be messed with. This song becomes a recurring theme throughout the story as Tevye is confronted with new ideas by each of his children, as they come of age, that challenge these traditions, presenting a conflict within him between the traditions he knew and his love for his daughters. But at one point during the opening song, Tevye pauses to narrate and explain,
“Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything… how to eat, how to sleep, even, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl… This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you – I don’t know. But it’s a tradition… Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do.”
Although these traditions may seem to be a bit restricting, they do provide stability in the culture. I am not advocating that our society return to such a non-flexible tradition-based culture. As Tevye had to learn, traditions need to be flexible. Tradition ceases to be useful when it restricts choices that allow a person to fully realize their God-given potential, or when it hinders the culture from doing likewise. However, tradition is the necessary foundation and glue that keeps society and culture stable. It is the inflexibility that makes traditions oppressive. Similarly, when the foundation of a house is cracked and destroyed, the house cannot stand. And those foundations in our society today have been challenged beyond its flexibility, causing damage that threatens the stability and future of our society at large, as well as the individuals that make it up.
The only way back is to return to moral rightness, that which is put forth by our Creator. But here, also, we no longer agree, in that we no longer agree on what is right and wrong. Only some believe in absolute truth, while too many deny even the existence of a Creator. Until we can resolve these issues as a culture and society, we will be at odds with one another. Hence, the absence of any moral absolutes further perpetuates an individualistic relativism, and as long as that state exists, we will continue to have ever-spiraling discord, resulting in anarchy and an eventual takeover by another, stronger culture.
It seems that I have painted a bleak picture, but only to show what will occur if we do not resolve these critical issues. The way back is a complete return to common sense morality and gender roles, borrowing from traditional values, but allowing for flexibility within reason. In the example above, Tevye does adapt as each daughter comes of age, choosing their husbands outside of traditional norms, doing so out of love, not tradition, causing Tevye some deep introspection of his own marriage, which was arranged according to tradition. He ends up asking his wife if she loves him. He, likewise, has to examine if he loves his wife after all these years. It’s a brief, but beautiful moment where we see some vulnerability in Tevye, but that his tradition served him and his wife well. Their love may not have been defined by romantic feelings, but by the day to day actions they performed for one another and the family. And even though their union was defined by their traditions, it could be seen to have resulted in a deeper love based on the needs of one another and not themselves.
Conclusion
It can be seen that the role of the father is indeed critical, even foundational, but the failure of society to acknowledge this, and the role’s resultant erosion, is causing individual and societal fallout at all levels. Failure to acknowledge this, address it, and restore it will result in increased societal discord that will spiral out of control. The father’s role is foundational. Statistics on the results of fatherlessness can be found and used to further support the points of this discussion, but goes beyond the scope here, which was simply to introduce the point in order to show the need for fatherhood to be respected and restored to it’s necessary place. In the first part of this series, I shared my own experience growing up with my dad, and some valuable life skills that he taught me. In the next part, I will address this from the opposite side, what I learned from dealing with fatherless youth in the inner-city, and how that impacted them as youth, and also now that most of them have grown up.
Categories: Fathers, Just For Men, Uncategorized
Beyond Traditon 
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