Nothing is an excuse for abuse - but that doesn't mean we can't talk about the real-world correlations between things like having been abused yourself or the stresses of trying to raise a child by yourself in poverty.
I also repeatedly said that many (not all) boys without dads CAN do OK - not that all boys without dads WILL do OK. The narrative has been that without a dad at home they are doomed - and that just isn't so. I think George Washington knew who he was and so did Michael Phelps and lots of other fatherless boys or boys like my husband who had an indifferent and abusive dad. And that as I said, doesn’t mean all boys will thrive in that way. But it certainly is possible and pretending it can’t happen is invoking that for boys — which is destructive.
One of the first things I pointed out was that this narrative has been oversimplified and we ought to talk about it in a more nuanced way. These stories have been my attempt to do that although a lot of men are so offended that they don't even seem to care that in many ways this is good news -that these boys aren't doomed as we've been told. But instead, they are so fragile and insecure that all they can do is center themselves in the story and assume that I'm attacking them - when I've done nothing of the sort. And I'm not including you in that category - I think we've taken a while to better understand each other but at least there has been a willingness to try to do that.
I've never said that there is a replacement for a dad - or for anyone. I've said that with the right kind of love and support, including basic economic security, many boys without dads are not doomed as we've too often been told - and that's a good thing because so many of them have been abandoned by their dads. Some women do choose to have a child on their own, but that too speaks to dissatisfaction with a patriarchal world and I can't really blame them. Poorer women are less likely to marry that more economically stable women.
Poorer and less educated women are the least likely to marry, which accounts for much of the drop in overall marriage numbers. In-depth interviews with low-income mothers revealed that most of them believed that they simply could not afford to marry a man who was not financially stable or who might become an economic drain on them. Source
And, a huge percentage of fatherless kids have been abandoned. Lots of dads go and start a new family after divorce, and the kids from the first marriage are the ones who are actually treated as disposable.
As you may have noticed, this is my profile descriptor: Dispelling cultural myths with research-driven stories. I am a traveler and a map maker. That's where I'm coming from. And as I said, I'm a pragmatist. I care about what is actually happening over the philosophy of something. I get that you may approach things differently, and that's OK.
