Two African-American Female Newspaper Columnists: Fatherlessness can be result of mother’s choices
In 'Deadbeat Dads' an insult to reality (Philadelphia Daily News, 5/26/09), editorial board member Fatimah Ali discusses the cost of "America's broken families" and, instead of just blaming it all on men, writes:
I also think many women must share some of the blame for deciding that we can go it alone...Far too many women are willing to go it alone and risk poverty and instability for shallow reasons of 'self-empowerment' rather than trying to work out their marital challenges.
Fatimah Ali's commentary is reminiscent of a powerful column on this subject last year by S. Renee Mitchell, also an African-American female newspaper columnist. In Mom might be the reason dad's absent (The Oregonian, 8/20/08), Mitchell wrote:
This afternoon, my 12-year-old twins fly back to Detroit, Mich., to resume living with their father and stepmother. Our one-year co-parenting experiment turned into a pledge to keep them through high school...this is my way of making amends for contributing to the epidemic of children being raised by single parents. I've come to realize: Fatherlessness can sometimes be a result of the mother's choices.
When I made the decision to divorce my children's father and move to Portland when our twins were age 2, I thought I was the only parent my sons, Alex and Zavier, would ever need. I was mistaken.
No matter how much love I poured into my children's hearts, my sons were starving with "father hunger" for the man named Lee, who named them and held them when they were just a few seconds old.
So, about a year ago, I had an epiphany. I decided to let go of what went wrong in the marriage and I shipped my boys off to Detroit, where they were born, to experience puberty through their father's eyes.
I owed them the chance to discover all of their father's charms as well as his failings and be shaped by Lee's modern day initiation rites, where a father teaches his sons secrets that only men know.
When they returned to me for the summer, my now-taller and hairier sons took awhile to get readjusted. They too-often repeated the warnings their father drilled into their heads: Don't be a burden. Offer to clean up. Be respectful...
I share this journey with readers because I know men aren't always the only ones to blame when Daddy isn't a part of his children's lives. Women have a larger role in that than we'd like to admit...women of divorce need to lose the anger so our children don't become unintentional pawns in a game to prove how much we don't need a spouse to survive. At times, a man's character, life circumstances or domestic violence keep children from having access to their father. Sometimes, though, women just need to get out of the way.
Both columns tell a powerful truth about modern fatherlessness--one largely ignored by the mainstream media and political leaders.
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