Where Are All the Fathers?

Invisible fathers damn their children to poverty. “Fatherlessness,” according to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, “is the greatest family challenge of our era.”

Single motherhood is shooting skyward for U. S. families regardless of age, race, ethnicity or economic status. One out of three American children is growing up with one parent. The numbers are only expected to get worse. As many as 60% of children are expected to live with one parent during part of their youth. Already, a majority of African-American children are growing up in single-parent homes. The experts, the academicians, the politicians don’t agree on the cause. They do agree that the absence of a responsible father can sentence a child to welfare.

Fatherless children are five times more likely to live in poverty than youngsters who grow up in two-parent homes. Children from single-parent homes also are more likely to drop out of schools and develop health problems.

Achievement is not out of the question. Many such children do excel as students, and then as parents. Yet, the questions linger, particularly for the fraction who don’t know the identities of their fathers.

Who is he? What is his name? What does he look like? Why doesn’t he live with us? An African-American filmmaker, Marco Williams, looks for answers on the PBS “Frontline” program “In Search of Our Fathers,” to be broadcast Tuesday.

Williams grew up in a household of females--four generations without fathers. No one--not his mother, his aunt, his cousins--knew the identity of her father. And little was known about Williams’ father. The Harvard-educated filmmaker was 24 when he learned his father’s name. Williams, who now lives in Los Angeles, spent seven years tracking down the man he believes to be his father. The reunion created more questions for his family, and, in a sense, the documentary creates questions for the nation.

Where are all the fathers? What social policy can encourage more men to accept responsibility for their children? What government supports can encourage marriages? Are jobs an antidote to widespread domestic instability? Is welfare reform a remedy? Is reducing racial discrimination part of the challenge? Or is this devastating trend somehow rooted in this country’s social values?