- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Not knowing anything about this program other than what I've read today, it's hard to judge. As a progressive, it's easy to presume this is boondoggle like D.A.R.E. or your typical faith-based initiative (read: federal giveaway to churches). And yet I can't help but think that any program that promotes involved, responsible fathers might not be a bad thing. Maybe I spent too many years living in NE Washington, D.C., seeing the effects of absent fathers almost everywhere I turned. Every fiber of the social fabric of that city is touched by the absence of married men, and boys raised by understandably struggling single mothers and grandmothers.
Yes, women are bound to children by birth. And the physical and physiological part of that men just can't touch. But is it not worth something for the government to try and explore and encourage responsible fatherhood - even in most-likely misguided and heavy-handed programs like this one? And would it kill NOW to admit that fatherhood has a unique value, and that maybe funding one freaking program for men and parenthood would not be the end of the federal gravy train for funding for women's programs (health, family, etc.)? Maybe I'm naive, but even if there isn't already an equal amount of federal money for a "Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Initiative" for women, aren't women inherently better equipped to deal with the very issues this program is trying to address in men?
