Glenn Discusses Single Motherhood by Choice on the Dennis Prager Show (Audio)
I discussed the Single Motherhood/Fatherhood by Choice movement on the nationally-syndicated Dennis Prager Show yesterday. Guest host Mark Taylor and I covered many aspects of the problem during our hour-long discussion, but the exchange below where we both remembered our breadwinner fathers' roles in our lives when we were kids was something we don't hear nearly enough of--fathers getting credit for what they do for their children.
Glenn: One of the things they do is dismiss the role of the breadwinner. You see this in women’s advocate groups' approach towards family law. The only real parenting is done by the primary caregiver. If you were out working 50 years, 60 hours a week, you can sacrifice to give your wife and kids a good life, a good standard of living for them. Somehow that doesn’t really count. You’re out really doing what you need to do. You don’t really matter.
Not only is that tremendously unfair, fathers who are out there doing what their wives need them to, and their wives want them to. It also very much sells them short, their bond and their love, and their father.
Mark: There is no fatherly love. No male role modeling, he is really bringing nothing to the table but a paycheck?
Glenn: Yeah basically. I just think of my own upbringing. My father worked 6 days a week for 35 years. He was the big figure, the hero in my life. My father loves to tell this story--when I was 3 or 4 years old and he had to go out of town on business. When he came back, I would turn my back on him. I wouldn’t even speak to him because I was so upset, because he wasn’t there.
[My mom says] every day [when] I would hear his car in the driveway, he was coming home, I would rush to the door and I would bang on the screen and couldn’t wait for him to come in.
When Rosanna Hertz and Peggy Drexler and some of the other apostles of single motherhood by choice were telling us is essentially because of fathers like my dad worked hard to support their families, they don’t matter. They aren’t around as much as the moms, the primary caregiver.
Mark: I had similar experiences too. My father had to work two jobs part of when I was growing up. I would see him coming up the street and I would run to meet him so I could be with him while he ate before he had to go off to his other job to support us. He had a huge impact on our lives...
To listen to the audio of the show, click here.
(The sound levels on the podcast are a little off between the host and myself and the callers.)
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