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Washington’s Fatherless Elite
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo (2)
From Obama to Sotomayor, D.C.’s ruling class is defying the truism that growing up with a dad is important. Lisa Carver explores why so many of them are from father-free homes.
I was recently helping a graduating senior put together his college applications, and it about killed me. Whenever I began to fret that the forms weren’t filled out absolutely perfectly, he’d just smile roguishly. He wasn’t prompt, he didn’t worry. He knew everything would work out just fine.
"No it won't!" I wanted to yell. "We have to take into consideration every possible complication! Life is a series of disasters to be narrowly averted!"
“I was a member of the good ol’ boys club,” says one former politician. “It fostered a feeling of belonging in the male world.”
The difference between us? One big one is that he grew up with a loving dad to comfort, help, and support him, and I did not. My dad was in and out (more out than in), instilling in me a persisting sense that no help is coming, that life is mine to tackle alone, that finding a solution is completely up to 6-, or 16-, or 36-year-old me. And it may be that running a country, a state, or a courtroom in today’s world benefits from exactly this type of survivalist, crisis-oriented personality.
Because I can't help but notice that the highest levels of government seem disproportionately stacked with fatherless figures: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former President Bill Clinton, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and of course, our president, Barack Obama.
When Obama was asked in 2007 what made him feel strong enough to make life and death decisions for an entire country, he replied, “I would say the fact that I grew up without a father in the home. What that meant was that I had to learn very early on to figure out what was important and what wasn’t, and exercise my own judgment and in some ways to raise myself." This is an assessment that many people who were raised without a father will recognize as true. When you grow up without a patriarch, you’re making adult-size decisions from a very pre-adult age.
Rand O'Brien, a licensed social worker, says fatherlessness can lead to two personality types, both of which seem fairly well-suited for politics.
"When men lose a father early, two major things happen. First, they can be vaunted into the 'father' role early and looked to by the mother to make 'male' decisions and become parentified, thus taking on decision-making and 'cajoling' the leadership early on and therefore having a lot of practice in leadership. Becoming 'the man of the house.'
"Second, where there is not the model of maleness in the house, then the stereotypical images of being a man become the model,” he continues. “So the man becomes what is seen on the TV, movies, books: He becomes what the society wants as a man…When he gets ready to be the candidate, he is packaged ready to go as the 'man' society wants.
"Of course, today, this model applies to fatherless girls/women as well, in a different way,” O’Brien points out.
I know my own type-A+ personality makes me a pain in the ass to hang out with—I nag, I frown. It makes whatever it is never enough. I've had four books published, but I don't care about them the second they're completed. I am unsatisfiable. I always need more. That's ambition. That's drive. That's the fatherless.
A former state representative I talked to believes his interest in politics sprung directly from his lack of a present father, who walked away from the family when he was 5 years old.
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Just go to your local prison. 80% of inmates come from single mother homes. A 2001 book called The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators discovered these fatherless children account for 63% of youth suicides, 70% of teen pregnancies, 71% of all teenage drug and alcohol abuse, 90% of homeless, and over 90% of runaways. These success stories art the exception, not the rule.
I'm happy that this first comment offers some relevant facts, rather than the speculative fantasy of the article. Carver seems unaware that the rampant failure of ghetto children is associated with the absence of fathers in their hoome.
Go to your local prison -- what you'll find is that most inmates come from homes that are impoverished. Seek out the deadbeat dads of these inmates -- you'll find more folks living in poverty. Let's travel to an affluent neighborhood and visit the single parents raising their kids with more than adequate resources, schools, and caregivers. Are their kids going to prison? No.
Apples and oranges. Putting -- as the government would like to with "responsible father" programs -- poor dads into the homes won't solve this problem. What we need are real anti-poverty programs and education reform that doesn't tie a local school's fate to its tax base
And you're getting all of the appropiate results that go along with the void, whether the Father is present in the home or not. It is called a Depression and the poverty that results from it. These things happen to those who are left unprotected. It is always when you feel most safe that the wolf comes to your door. Who will be on guard while you are napping?
What you don't realize, or fail to acknowledge, is that one thing leads to another in a giant cycle of human activity. Some of those activities are counterproductive and without the guide of experience there to protect, everyone who is left unknowing is taken by the wolf. If you want proof of this, visit Harlem. That'll teach you.
We have, amongst others, a father and son to directly thank for our economic realities in the cycle of human activity. I can't remember their names right now. I'm sure it'll come to me later.
I think though, the ability for a child to adjust, has a lot to do, obviously with the child like the author says, but also with grandparents, and mothers.
I think the big problem might be when it is their turn to be a parent, then the role model of having a father might be missing, unless the grandfather was living and active in the impressionable years.
Lote of people survive with no active parents. Many never adjust, but sometimes the ones that do, become self made people for that reason.
I still think it is a private matter. People shouldn't have to share this private stuff in order to legitimize themselves.
gee, what a surprise: the article that proclaims "growing up without a dad isn't important" was written by a woman.
but, that's O.K. i'm sure there'll soon be a follow-up piece about "why moms don't matter" and it'll be written, just to be fair & balanced, by a man.
The heading of this column is so dumb it is not even worth reading.
The idea of a nuclear family is over. In many parts of the world and for a long time now, the 'family' includes cousins, aunts, grandparents, neighbors, etc, as noted by exploora already. The isolated lifestyle that we have conjured up in the U.S. is the problem, more so than missing fathers.
Also, the hard part of growing up, the building of relationships and the dirty work involved with the everyday grind is viewed as such a chore instead of a valuable experience and part of life's learning curve.
While so many successful people were able to make it without a dad many of these same people understand that dads are so important. And as others have written it seems that those that are successful without dads are the exception to the rule.
Tony Dungy's All Pro Dad organization recently sent an email that stated most men in prison hated their dads.
If sons -- or daughters -- are being pushed into adult-sized decisions as a child, then they are not being adequately parented -- or cared for. I was raised by my mother, my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents. My brother and I had more than enough care -- in fact, more than once as children I just wanted to be left alone inside our large, intergenerational home.
I'm glad we're thinking about the participation of fathers; men should do more to bring up their kids. Mine wasn't a great person and I'm far healthier -- as is my brother -- for not having him in our lives. I wasn't pushed to grow up early because of my fathers absence and we should be careful about stereotyping female headed households. Even with my grandfather present, my grandmother was the real head of our family and it never fell to my brother to take up that role.
"...his interest in politics sprung directly..."
The past tense of "spring" is "sprang".
This post has several problems: You quote Obama as saying, "I would say the fact that I grew up without a father in the home. What that meant was that I had to learn very early on to figure out what was important and what wasn't, and exercise my own judgment and in some ways to raise myself."
But Obama didn't grow up without a father! He grew up without his father. His mother remarried when he was 5 and there was a father figure in the home in Indonesia until he was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents (grandfather as well as grandmother) so he could attend a very prestigious prep school. I get so tired of this "Obama grew up the child of a single mother" meme -- in an attempt to characterize his childhood as being like that of so many black children who grow up in poverty in America. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Then you say:
"This is an assessment that many people who were raised without a father will recognize as true. When you grow up without a patriarch, you're making adult-sized decisions from a very pre-adult age."
So, both you and Obama are claiming that mothers are so infantile that they are incapable of making adult decisions. In most of the homes I am aware of, whether or not there is a father in residence, the mothers are making most of the decisions concerning the children's welfare. I don't know anything about your mother, but from what I've read about Obama's, she was highly intelligent and quite capable of steering her child in the right direction.
The reason that so many high-achievers come from homes without fathers is that single moms have to work twice as hard -- three times as hard -- as men in order to provide stable homes for their kids and they provide great role models for their children. Additionally, many fathers have alcohol problems and are abusive and their presence contributes to a very dysfunctional home environment. Single moms, without the distraction of abusive partners, can focus on making sure their children are well brought up.
The fact that the prisons are full of people who grew up in fatherless families says far more about the inequality of the educational system, the inability of uneducated women to find work, and the uncompromising attitude many employers have toward women with children. It is a lack of financial stability, not a lack of a father that is the primary problem.
There are many good fathers out there, but I get so tired of this contempt for the single mom.
Additionally, are you trying to say that mothers are so infantile that they can't make adult decisions for their children. This post is so pathetic!
If you read Obama's biography he had a father. His grandfather took him everywhere.
Yes, exactly as others have commented here. Obama talks at length about the role his stepfather and grandfather played in his life. And if you look more closely at his comments about loneliness and what he felt he was missing as a teen -- it was about largely about being black inside of a white family, not simply missing a father. Obama's journey -- seen in both Dreams from My Father and Audacity of Hope -- is largely about what it means to be a bi-racial, African American man.
willing to bet if you ask any of them which they would have preferred, they would have wanted a loving and present father.
talent, when nurtured thrives.
like my father's subtext for his neglect: tina turer owes eveything she is to ike.
the beautiful and heroic triumphs by especially talented "shatupons"' makes great copy, but doing the math shows that many more less plucky but perhaps MORE talented artists or more important leaders are left in the gutter.
ever get an orchid to bloom by not watering it?
not to denigrate the dandelion, they have value too, the root is GREAT for the pancreas.
Even though they are both amply qualified, they both - and to their own public admission - have benefited from an entire generation of systematic affirmative action policies to the point where they wouldn't likely be in the positions they are in were it not for their race/gender/ethnenticity. Obama has stated so much regarding Sotomayor, it's no secret. So maybe - we can fix 'fatherless homes' by having affirmative action policies for all of them. Which would be too bad, for a white, Christian male like me, who didn't have a father at home either.
The fatherless home is at the root of 90% of societies problems.
It's interesting that we see two articles in a row about the minimal effects of a fathers' absence on their children's success later in life: this one, and one written by Michael Lewis.
As a kid whose father was in and out, and who captialized on his family when it suited him, I can relate to Carver's personal story, and I do think there's some merit to mining the specific qualities we develop from a (virtually) single-parent household.
But I wonder: if we prove through graceful prose that kids from father-less and quasi-daddy households come out on top, does this further relinquish the future reluctant father set from their responsibilities?
Well, I thought about your wonderment:
Men relinquish their responsibility. What if women just went off after having a child? Women don't do that (typically) and men shouldn't either. The men need to turn this around and start taking responsibility for their families.
Thank you.
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