Author Archives: jtjim

Bringing Poppa Home

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 22, 2004

Nanny remembers it as “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children; we had seen it happen before.” A brave young girl in Anne LaMott’s All New People, she gave voice to the fears of an entire generation of children…and for the children of two successive generations.

Nanny was a prophetess.  On January 1, 1970, the first no-fault divorce law, California’s Family Law Act, became effective and eliminated the requirement to use one of seven statutory reasons for filing for divorce.  In the following decade, all other states followed California’s lead, making divorce an easy-as-pie solution to “incompatibility.”

In the past thirty-five years, as divorce has become commonplace, another statistic has been on the rise.  Unwed teen pregnancies have given birth to children whose fathers are absent from the very beginning…no divorce needed.

In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.  Poppa’s gone.

Mama is left to handle the children on her own…their lunch money, their bruises and hurt feelings, their temper tantrums, fights at school, homework, dating, proms and first loves.  When children reach for a hand up and when they celebrate with a high five, they aim for one hand…the hand of their Mama.  Papa?  He’s gone.

This is no exaggeration.  About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.

The impact of absent fathers has proven complicit in a wide range of social problems: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

How do we bring Poppa home?  The answer is being melded from many sources.  An Arizona judge requires counseling before divorce.  Legislatures are considering changes in no-fault divorce laws.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a special initiative to support and strengthen the role of fathers in families.

In the private sector, groups like the National Fatherhood Initiative and The Fatherhood Project are reaching out to dads with help on parenting, encouraging them to take an active role in the lives of their children.  And faith-based groups are taking the lead in helping to strengthen marriages and in giving couples effective strategies for dealing with conflict before it leads to divorce.

But the biggest hope in bringing Poppa home…and creating a home where he will stay…comes from a surprising group:  abstinence educators.  Abstinence education is all about placing sex in context, helping students understand that the natural result of sex is to produce children…in families…with parents…with Mamas…and Papas.

Joneen Krauth, who developed Wait Training abstinence programs, has her students begin a marriage file.  She encourages them to collect information on how to create and maintain healthy and happy relationships, and in particular, how to “marry smart”.  What are the compatibility factors that predict survival of relationships?  What are the seven warning signs of a bad relationship?  Is he/she “just a date”…or are they “my soul-mate”?

Students learn that relationships require the same planning, goals, and commitment as college educations and career plans.  They gain hope by realizing that even in a culture of divorce, they can learn how to avoid the mistakes that lead to broken relationships.

Abstinence until marriage…students learn to see sex, not in isolation, but in the full context of human life and relationships.  And in this context, where marriage is valued, students are laying the foundation for families where Papa and Mama come together…and stay together…for each other…and for their children.

October 15, 2004:    Where’s Poppa?

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Where’s Poppa?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 15, 2004

Lorie and I walked to high school every morning for four years, but of all of the mornings we walked and talked, one morning stands out.  As usual, I knocked at her front door, and we walked together back toward the sidewalk.  This morning, however, she was noticeably quiet and serious.

“I guess I can finally tell everyone,” she started.  I began imagining all the possible announcements she could make to explain the pain in her voice and the hurt in her expression.  “My parents are getting divorced.”

Divorced?  Impossible! Neither of us knew anyone who lived in a home with a divorced parent.  In the 60s, divorce was frowned upon.  And it was rare. 

Leave it to another smaller child to describe with poignancy the arrival of divorce and single-parenting in modern American culture.  In Anne LaMott’s All New People, Nanny, a brave young girl, observes with remarkable clarity that suddenly she is living in “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children; we had seen it happen before.”

No-fault divorce.  Initially heralded in as an enlightened approach to deal with unhappy and hopeless marriages, divorce has overtaken the modern world.  The Internet gives easy access to websites calling out:  No Fault Divorce Made Easy.  In Arizona “rapidlaw.net” hustles the unhappy:  “Easy & Fast to Divorce. Great Prices – Start Here!”

Adults are free to come and go without recrimination, making and breaking bonds of “unconditional love.”  Yet, as we grownups speed out of our marriages and into happier waters, we leave pain and suffering in our wake.  David Poponoe in his book, Life Without Father, explains:

The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected and extraordinary trends of our time. Its dimensions can be captured in a single statistic: In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent. By the turn of the century, nearly 50 percent of American children may be going to sleep each evening without being able to say good night to their dads.

No one predicted this trend; few researchers or government agencies have monitored it; and it is not widely discussed, even today. But the decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

Little did we expect in the 60s that no-fault divorce would be only the beginning.  Today, our willingness to abandon marital vows has evolved into an aversion to marital vows in the first place…and to a movement to redefine marriage to mean anything but.

While counselor Joann Condie doesn’t recommend women stay in abusive marriages, she warns that the pain of divorce is significant.  “It’s interesting to me as a marriage therapist,” she tells Citizenlink, “to find out that divorce is hurtful to the children even if they are adult children.”

Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, asks the obvious question.  “If the effects of family breakdown are indisputably calamitous, why are we so intent on accelerating the breakdown?  Whether it’s the refusal to treat two-parent families as normative in textbooks, an increasing problem, or the deconstruction of marriage inherent in the campaign for same-sex ‘marriage,’ the effect is the same.”  Marriages fracture…and children suffer.

Children suffer…yes.  And for so many children the common unhappiness flowing from the breakdown of marriage is the absence of their father…daddy…poppa.

Poppa?  A fortress of strength we all long to hug…he’s gone the way of a marriage abandoned, a temporary fortress built of sand.  The current debate over marriage is controlled by adults:  legislators, gay activists, psychologists, all of them championing their special path to adult happiness inside…and out…of traditional marriage.  But where are the voices of our children?

In all the debate about marriage, there is a tragic absence of attention to the most significant problem facing us today.  There is no greater question deserving our attention as we talk about marriage than the question coming from our children…where’s Poppa?

The Power of a Father

June 18, 2004:  Me Jane, You Tarzan

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Breaking the Silence

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 8, 2004

“I can’t take it.  This is too much to handle.”  As Kelly talked with the distraught woman on the phone, rescue workers were racing across the city to reach her before she could pull the trigger of the gun in her hand.  She had just had an abortion.

Kelly has seen it all in her twenty years of work counseling women who are considering abortion.  Her voice is gentle as she describes the women she has met…women who choose to come back to Kelly when they are hurting.

Why do women choose to talk with Kelly about their abortion pain?  She is an openly pro-life person.

When we break the silence about abortion, there is a lot to learn, not only about what abortion is, but about what it is has done to millions of women.  And these are the women who talk with Kelly, the women Gloria Feldt fails to acknowledge, both in her leadership of Planned Parenthood and in her editorials defending the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt campaign promoting America’s abortion-on-demand policies.

If Ms. Feldt is truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, she has a lot of explaining to do.  Women who have had an abortion and who wish to break the silence would welcome her support.

Silent No More is a national campaign giving voice to women who regret their abortions.  They wish to break the silence about abortion.  It hurts.  They hold press conferences and testify at legislative hearings.  Yet, they are treated with disdain by members of Planned Parenthood and the media.

There are others who have worked to break the silence about abortion.  In her book REAL Choices Frederica Mathewes-Green sought out the involvement of abortion providers to talk with women who had had abortions.  “I got either cold shoulders or cold feet. Usually there was no response at all.”

Mathewes-Green penned the famous quote embraced by both pro-life and pro-choice advocates.  “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche.  She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Her research confirms testimony from Silent No More women.  They “uniformly talked about pressures in relationships; the abortion was done, each told us, either to please someone or to protect someone.”

If Ms. Feldt is truly sincere about breaking the silence on abortion, I invite her to join me in a call to the nation’s universities.  Stop promoting abortion and start teaching about abortion.

Where are the college courses that open the window on partial birth abortion procedures, forced abortion in China, and sex selection that is aborting a generation of girl babies in India and China?  Where are the college panels that include Silent No More women sharing the long-term aftermath of their abortions?

Will Ms. Feldt herald courageous suffragists like Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony who denounced abortion?  Does she agree with feminist Naomi Wolfe that pictures of aborted fetuses should be brought to the table?  As Ms. Wolfe points out, how can feminists truly support “a choice” they refuse to look at in real life?

If Ms. Feldt truly wants to “throw off that mantle of secrecy”, I suggest she redesign her own Planned Parenthood website.  In a search under “fetal development” the top 2 of 31 listings shout:  “Why do guys have nipples?” and “Donating Fetal Tissue.”  Where are the pictures of real fetal development…the living, thriving babies in utero?

And if Planned Parenthood is willing to talk about “donating fetal tissue,” what do they say about selling fetal tissue?  What should we know about the doctor who worked out of a Kansas abortion clinic and and was filmed on “20/20” negotiating separate prices for pieces of babies: feet, eyes, brains and spinal cords?

If it takes a t-shirt to break the silence, I hope Planned Parenthood sells millions of them.  And when the talking starts, I encourage Ms. Feldt to join hands with the women of Silent No More to tell both sides of abortion.  I hope she implores the press to open its eyes and ears to all the truth.

All the truth?  If Ms. Feldt will join in a campaign for all the truth about abortion, I will buy a t-shirt.  It’s a small price to pay to break the silence.

Unplanned Pregnancy?

June 25, 2004:    Unplanned Joy

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End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 24, 2004

I’ve always been a fairly normal person.

Growing up, I helped my mother make biscuits, played flute in the band, did enough homework to get good grades, and envied girls who made out a lot with boys between classes.

Things didn’t change when I entered Arizona State University (ASU) in 1969, over thirty years ago.  Even though I bought wire-rimmed glasses, let my hair go straight, and quit going to church, I remained a fairly normal person.  I still did my homework and never found it worthwhile to cut classes.  I changed majors twice, hooked up with a boyfriend, and hung in there to the end, to graduate.

So, it’s no surprise that I have lived a fairly normal life for over thirty years.  Like most women I know, I balanced a marriage and raising two children with full-time work as a teacher, a real estate saleswoman, and an accountant.

Little did I know that everything would change when I went back to Arizona State University in 2000.

It seemed a good way to spend the Christmas break with my daughter.  Together, we drove to ASU, walked to and from classes, and spent two weeks buried in notes and tests.

She learned the basics of psychology.  And me?  I learned the basics of feminism in women’s studies.  My daughter warned me.  “Don’t come whining to me,” she scolded.  “You’re choosing to do this yourself, so I don’t want to hear you complaining.”

I was expecting a few surprises to pop up here and there.  After all, my own kids were in college, and life has changed in thirty years.

Indeed, there were little surprises in every class, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  I learned the distressing news that I was married to a patriarch and was also raising a patriarch, my son.  So sad.  I had always considered them the best of the new breed of man.  Until women’s studies, I didn’t know patriarchism was an unavoidable genetic trait.

I learned that women still focused on their body types.  Boy, was I glad to go to college and gain this insight!  Now I finally understood the significance of having cheerleaders on Monday Night Football shaking their cleavage at the camera.  I just never could figure that one out.

And I learned that even after thirty years of feminism, it seemed still worthwhile to discuss who should open the door for whom.  Thankfully, the male student sitting in front of me was just as mystified as I.  “What’s the problem,” he asked.  “Who got there first?”  For the rest of that class period I kept imagining somewhere in America a little old hippie lady and her hippie dude stuck in an elevator like Charlie on the MTA, unable to get out because they didn’t know who should go first.

These were the little surprises.  But they were absolutely nothing when compared to the big surprise, the mind-blowing news that I was no longer a fairly normal person.

Imagine my surprise the day my professor told the class my marriage license was nothing more than a contractual exchange of sex for money.  That little piece of paper was my formal promise to give sex and my husband’s promise to pay me for it?  Licensed prostitution?  I was a prostitute?

It was probably a good thing the bell rang just before I was able to close my mouth and open my eyes.  In the entire semester’s study of marriage in a class dedicated to issues of feminism, we spent five minutes reducing marriage to a contract for prostitution.  And that was the end of our consideration of marriage in Women Studies 300.

Watching the professor erase the board and stack her books, the immediate shock wore off.  I mulled things over.  Too bad I didn’t know about this prostitution deal back in 1970.  Sure would have paid better than teaching!

Following students out of class, going down the stairs to meet my daughter, I couldn’t wait to enlighten her.  “Guess what I learned today?” I teased.  She raised her eyebrows to warn me.  “I married your dad for money.  He married me for sex.”  I laughed.

Like always, she knew the perfect way to sum up two weeks of feminism.  “Well, it serves you right.”

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Cutting Crime

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 17, 2004

The expiration this week of a ten year ban on assault weapons has kicked up a debate on American crime rates and how to cut them.

Fighting crime has become a way of life for Americans.  We build more prisons.  We enact new tougher laws with mandatory sentencing.  We hire more police, put gates around our communities, and install metal detectors in our schools.  And we tell the unrepentant criminal, “Three strikes, you’re out.”

Many of us can remember a time when life in America was safer.  In 1960 your risk of being a victim of crime in the United States was 1.89%, and of a violent crime 0.161%.  In 1996 nearly forty years later, your risk of being a crime victim was 5.079%, and of a violent crime 0.634%.

The United States Crime Index Rates Per 100,000 Inhabitants went from 1,887.2 in 1960 to 5,897.8 in 1996. By 1996 the crime rate was 313% the 1960 crime rate. Crime in the United States accounts for more death, injuries and loss of property than all Natural Disasters combined.

It’s tempting to think of guns and gates and laws in an effort to protect ourselves and our families from crime.  But there is a better way.

We each hold the key to the primary method of cutting crime.  Rather than dealing with the aftermath of crime and relying on punishment to deter, this method cuts crime off at the very beginning where it starts, in the heart and soul of a young person who needs guidance to keep him or her on the path to success.

The method?  The key?  Our families and our fathers.

In his book Life Without Father David Popenoe explains another statistical trend that has followed the trend in crime through the past forty years:

The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected and extraordinary trends of our time. Its dimensions can be captured in a single statistic: In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent. By the turn of the century, nearly 50 percent of American children may be going to sleep each evening without being able to say good night to their dads.

Why does this matter?  The subject of families may seem a private matter that we should back away from when looking for the solutions to our crime problems and creating public policy.  But Popenoe says otherwise.

[T]he decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

What about the young people you know?  Do you see their hearts aching for a strong and healthy relationship with their fathers?  Do you see their eyes light up at the sight of dad in the audience at their band concert, of dad in the stands at their football games?  Statistics speak to the issue.  But our children and their hearts prove the truth.  Dads count.

As we hear politicians talk tough on crime, we must listen for the cures they offer us.  And at the top of their list, we need to expect a plan to strengthen families by helping mothers and fathers raise children inside of healthy marriages.  This is good for children, good for parents and, most of all, good for America.

Cutting crime at the most basic level has less to do with subtracting guns and adding prisons.  And it has everything to do with how we raise our children.

If we want children to walk away from a life of crime, we would do well to make sure our fathers are leading the way.

THE POWER OF A FATHER

June 18, 2004:   Me Jane, You Tarzan

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