One Christian’s Review of “Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem” by David Blankenhorn

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Even though the increase in fatherlessness in America has leveled off somewhat since David Blankenhorn’s book, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, was published in 1995, fatherlessness still remains at historically high levels and Fatherless America still ranks as the classic critique of our fatherless epidemic.

David Blankenhorn: A National Leader in the Fatherhood Movement

David Blankenhorn is the founder and president of Institute for American Values, an organization focused on family and social issues. A graduate of Harvard University, David became the leading voice for the fatherhood movement in America with the publication of Fatherless America.

Fatherless America Defends Fatherhood Sans Religious Arguments

Though Blankenhorn was raised in a Christian home where church and family were central, his defense of fathers as “irreplaceable” in families does not rest on biblical, theological, or religious arguments. Rather, he offers strong, well researched, and documented critiques of the modern substitutes for fathers – or, as he calls them, The Unnecessary Father, The Old Father, The New Father, The Deadbeat Dad, The Visiting Father, The Sperm Father, The Stepfather and the Nearby Guy – from a secular viewpoint. Through the process of elimination, Blankenhorn arrives at the conclusion that no other type of “father” truly substitutes for biological fathers who are committed to their wives and children.

So far, so good.

Fatherless America Assumes Fatherhood is a Mere Human Invention

The problem with this secularized approach toward supporting biological fatherhood, however, is that Blankenhorn is forced to assert that fatherhood is nothing more than a human invention. “In a larger sense, this book is a cultural criticism because fatherhood, much more than motherhood, is a cultural invention. Its meaning for the individual man is shaped less by biology than by a cultural script or story — a societal code that guides, and at times pressures, him into certain ways of acting and of understanding himself as a man” (emphasis his).¹

That is, according to Blankenhorn’s secular analysis, fatherhood has no grounding in objective reality. Fatherhood is simply a “cultural script,” a “societal code,” that lacks the force of a universal imperative. Instead of insisting, even demanding, that men should be a father to their children because it is morally self evident that they should be, Blankenhorn reduces fatherhood literally to playacting: Men, you will like playing this fatherhood role, so try doing it. It’s good for you.

Fatherless America’s “Solutions” to the Fatherhood Crisis are Unrealistic

At the end of his book, this merely pragmatic approach to fatherhood infects all twelve of Blankenhorn’s anemic recommendations for restoring fatherhood to its proper place in our culture, and dooms them to failure. To solve the fatherhood crisis, Blankenhorn suggests, for example, such idealistic notions as a national fatherhood pledge for men, an annual Presidential report on the state of fatherhood, forming neighborhood father’s clubs, and encouraging married couples to move into public housing.

Right. I’m sure these recommendations have sent waves of contrition through the consciences of every man in America.

So how have Blankenhorn’s recommendations succeeded in “obligating men to their offspring,” as he puts it? After all, it has been twenty-six years since Fatherless America was published. So far, none of his recommendations have been implemented on a large scale. The result? Fatherlessness in America continues unabated.

Fatherless America Never Asks Why the Fatherhood Crisis Happened in the First Place

The glaring omission that is obvious from the very beginning of Fatherless America is Blankenhorn’s failure to ask why, beginning in the 60’s and 70’s, forty percent of all adult men in America suddenly decided en masse to abandon their wives and children in the first place. After all, sociologically speaking, nothing like this blatant male desertion of the very ones men are supposed to protect with their lives had ever happened before in the entire history of humanity. One cannot treat an illness if one has no understanding of what caused it in the first place…or worse, if one refuses to acknowledge what caused it.

What Blankenhorn refuses to acknowledge in Fatherless America is the correlation between fatherlessness and the cultural rejection of the Christian worldview that also occurred in the 60’s and 70’s, the one that centers the universe around God as Father and that undergirded fatherhood in America for hundreds of years, and in western civilization for almost two millennia. Blankenhorn calls this worldview a so-called “script.” It was quite natural, then, that men, understanding the relative nature of this view, simply decided they didn’t like the “script” and decided to write, produce, and star in their own one act play that ends with them simply walking off the stage.

And all the while, God the Father has been watching while millions of women and children suffer.²

““My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:13

Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.

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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

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1. Blankenhorn, David, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, Page 3.
2. For some additional thoughts on fatherlessness, please see my article, “A Comprehensive, Church-Based Ministry to Fatherless Boys.”