Sometimes I wonder if Dan Quayle got it right. Younger readers may be wondering who the heck
Mr. Quayle is. Many older readers will
be horrified at the prospect that I might agree with Mr. Quayle on any
topic. He was after all one of the most
ridiculed and disrespected vice presidents of all time. If Dick Cheney was equated with villains like
Darth Vader, Mr. Quayle was considered analogous to Barney Fife.
There probably aren’t a lot of areas where Mr. Quayle and I
agree. But I remember the brouhaha when
Mr. Quayle in 1992 condemned the sitcom Murphy
Brown for portraying a single woman having a child on her own. Forget the fact that the pregnancy was a
“jump the shark” sort of storyline. It
created a big media firestorm over Mr. Quayle’s outdated thinking. He raised concerns about glamorizing single
mom status and the marginalizing of the role of fathers.
Mr. Quayle was attacked brutally in the media because he seemed
to be condemning single moms. That point
did resonate with me. To many, such
attacks seemed hypocritical at the time because Mr. Quayle was such a virulent
opponent of abortion rights. If one is
opposed to abortion, then it seems like one would have championed the Murphy
Brown character’s decision to not have an abortion after discovering an
unplanned pregnancy with a man who was not in her life permanently. It seemed a low blow to condemn even a
fictional character who chose life in such a situation.
In the subsequent decade, I don’t recall anyone condemning
Bristol Palin for not marrying Levi Johnston.
At least in the circles where I travel, the younger Ms. Palin was respected
for taking responsibility to raise her son despite the circumstances.
I have tremendous respect for all single parents. Parenting is very hard and I frankly don’t
know how single parents do it. Most
single parents are mothers. So, I want
to be clear that I’m second to none in my admiration, support and absolute awe
of single moms.
Nonetheless, Mr. Quayle’s 1992 comment about the Murphy Brown
character “mocking the importance of fathers” has always stuck with me. I am also second to none in my respect for
fathers. I’ve known plenty of families
where fathers have a minimal role in their children’s lives. Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about why
this should be. Typically, in my
observation, such marginalization seems to be self-imposed to a great extent. Two things seem to drive the choices: job
demands and lack of role modeling.
Many dads are the sole or primary breadwinner of their
families. They are particularly
vulnerable to overly burdensome workplace demands. But even if both partners work outside the
home, we all feel compelled to make plenty of sacrifices to keep our employers
happy. We live in a nation without many
employment protections, the job market has been horrible for years, people who
lose their jobs might not get another for years, and unlike most other
industrialized nations, there is not much of a safety net if a family’s
breadwinner loses his/her job. As a
result, there is a fair amount of desperation and fear surrounding the possible
loss of employment. Many people
sacrifice time with their family to keep bread on the table.
In my observation, another factor involving the self-marginalization
of fathers is lack of role modeling. I
know a lot of dads who want to be good dads and who love their kids, but they
were not particularly close to their own dads.
Their dads were often not at home because they were trying to put food
on the family’s table. When those
earlier dads were around, they were often tired and frankly just wanted to
relax. When they did have time at home,
they didn’t necessarily take time to be involved in their kids’ lives. All grown up, their now adult sons often never
really witnessed men as active parents.
Their moms were the main parenting role model as they grew up, but most
men don’t want to emulate their mothers in parenting. In my observation, many modern fathers
frankly don’t know what an active, involved dad looks like.
Not only do many modern adults not have personal experience with
active fathering, we also don’t see a lot of examples in movies or TV
either. I’ve noticed there are
reoccurring storylines of dads who bumble through relationships with their kids—they
are rarely there and when they are, they screw everything up. Robin Williams in particular has made a
career out of playing such characters. I
don’t think such characters are a fluke.
They are representative of what many families experience in the modern
United States.
As we get closer to Father’s Day, I want to spend some time
focusing on the role of modern fathers and reflecting a bit on visions of
devoted fathering. We just don’t seem to
get a lot of that in our culture.
In the meantime, I commend to you an article I found recently
reflecting back on Mr. Quayle’s take on Murphy Brown:
Job 29:16
I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger.
I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger.
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