Category Archives: Fatherhood

Fatherhood Is More than a Paycheck

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 17, 2005

Anthony Edwards looks down at the cover of the 1998 Sports Illustrated in his hands.  The face of 2-year-old Khalid Minor stares at him.  The headline above Khalid reads Where’s Daddy?   

According to SI, Khalid’s father, Boston Celtics swingman Greg Minor refused to make child-support payments, leading to his ex-wife and three kids being evicted from their home.  Edwards opens up the magazine.  The article chronicles the appalling number of pro athletes–particularly NBA players–who have illegitimate children yet want no part of fatherhood.

SI reporters Wahl and Wetheim lay out the details.  New York Knicks forward Larry Johnson has five children from four women.  Cleveland’s Shawn-Kemp has seven kids, again with multiple partners.  Indiana coach Larry Bird refuses to have a relationship with his teenage daughter. 

“It’s like they don’t even care,” says Edwards, talking with Scott Bordow of the East Valley Tribune.  An Arizona Cardinals’ nine-year veteran in 1998, he adds, “What makes it worse is that they have so much money it means nothing.”

Edwards could have been one of them.  He was 21, a promising wide receiver at New Mexico Highlands University.  A pro football career beckoned.  He didn’t want a child.  It was an accident.  Like modern sports heroes, he could have let the girlfriend take care of the baby.

That was not the path Edwards chose, though.  He quit school, returning to Casa Grande in Arizona to support his new family.  He and his girlfriend Mary Ann slept in separate bedrooms of his parents’ home.  He took a job at Ross Abbott Laboratories, earning $6.50 an hour as a machine operator.  Ross Abbott made baby formula.

“I was 21 years old and boom, everything changed,” Edwards tells Bordow.  “It would have been easy to just pay her off.  But even if we weren’t going to be together, I had to take care of my child.  He’s my flesh and blood.”

Edwards did make it to the NFL in 1989, signing as a free agent with Philadelphia.  He and Mary Ann married in 1990.  Their commitment to each other in marriage is the hopeful solution to a nagging social problem threatening the welfare of American children.

From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined.  Today, 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.  And in 2000, 1.35 million births, one-third of all births, occurred out of wedlock.

Fathers are the missing ingredient for many children.  The results of father absence are staggering.  An analysis reported in 2001 of nearly 100 studies on parent-child relationships found that, in some studies, father love was actually a better predictor than mother love for certain outcomes, including delinquency, substance abuse and overall mental health and well-being.

In other studies analyzed in the 2001 report, after controlling for mother love, researchers found father love was the sole significant predictor for certain outcomes such as psychological adjustment problems, conduct problems and substance abuse.  The importance of Edwards’s commitment to his wife and his children is born out by research.  Fathers do matter.  They matter a lot.

Edwards knows that eventually he’ll have to tell Tony why he was born before his parents were married.  He’ll be honest. “It’s just part of being a father,” he said.  “You take on the responsibility.”

Taking his commitment to fatherhood one step further, Edwards has also worked with teenagers, counseling them to remain celibate until marriage.  His personal story and his role model as a committed father himself are a strong witness to his message, the power of one father to make a difference.

From one parent to the next, whether we are there or not, we pass the seeds of success or failure on to our children.  Anthony Edwards is planting seeds of success that were given to him.  Is the source of his commitment any surprise?  “My father was there for me.”

 

Scott Bordow, “Fatherhood means more than a check to Edwards,” East Valley Tribune, May 7, 1998.

Grant Wahl and L. Jon Wertheim, “Paternity Ward,” Sports Illustrated, May 4, 1998.          

 June 18, 2004 – Me Jane, You Tarzan

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Recipe for Families

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

June 13, 2005

Growing up as a city kid, I lived on dreams of life on a farm.  Those farm kids were the luckiest.  They had everything!

Not until my thirties did I have a chance to learn about farm life from an expert.  Pauline, my co-teacher, had grown up on the picture-perfect Iowa farm.  Her strawberry blond hair was set in tight curls that bounced when she laughed.  And she was always laughing.

I loved to hear about cows covered in snow and five brothers always up to mischief.  But the best talk of all was food talk.  Her mother was the proverbial “best cook.”  We always looked forward to Mom’s treats arriving with Pauline on Monday mornings.

Pauline had had it all, living on a farm.  But, I soon learned that the trick of having it all was figuring out how to do without…when you didn’t have it all.  Living miles away from town, if you ran out of buttermilk, it was no quick trip to the store.

Smart cooks knew how to grab a lemon and squirt it into milk.  Or if no lemon was on hand…then vinegar.  If no vinegar…then cream of tartar.  And if no vinegar…well, maybe there would be a box of yogurt tucked in the back of the refrigerator.

It turned out that the best farm cooks knew how to make everything out of anything.  If you didn’t have it…then find something else…and substitute.  There was no end to what Pauline’s mom could create.  “Yeah,” Pauline laughed.  “She can even make apple pie without the apples!”

Apple pie without apples?  Pauline shared the secret with me over twenty years ago.  And I still can’t believe it possible.

Sure, I love Ritz Crackers.  The commercials are right, “Everything tastes good on a Ritz.”  But I would never grab a Ritz when I had a craving for an apple.

But, yes, there it is.  Online at AllRecipes, there they are…recipes of crackers, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Apple pie?

Now I can truly understand how a lot of sugar and cinnamon held together by wet crackers and baked hot on a cold winter night could taste good in the middle of Iowa.  And I can truly understand how a mother could dream up a quick answer for six children, when Dad asks, “What is this?”

Mom could tell them the truth, “These are cracker crumbs buried in sugar…Cracker Pie.”  And the kids would still probably eat Cracker Pie.  But oh, the creativity of that brilliant farm mother who looked at the row of eyes staring up at her and elevated the simple cracker.  Maybe her strawberry blond curls bounced and most likely her eyes twinkled as she answered Dad.  “This is Mock Apple Pie.”

Recipes give us what we want.  But no matter how close to apples one gets with 30 round crackers, if I want an apple pie, I will make it with apples.

Substitutes are good when we need them.  But they are still substitutes.  A serving of five-star Mock Apple Pie has 503 calories, 24 grams of fat, and 448 mg of salt.  That is a poor substitute for 255 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 132 mg of salt contained in a hot steaming slice of five-star real apple pie.

Substitutes may be just what we need to make it through the tough times.  But if we want a recipe for success, the best way to get apple pie is to buy apples.

Another Father’s Day is here.  I think of how important my own father was in shaping our home.  I am grateful for my husband’s part in guiding our children through the hard times and laughing with them in the crazy times.

Most of all, I pray for my son and daughter, that they will value the role of a father enough to build their own families with Dad in the recipe.  There is no substitute like the real thing.

Happy Father’s Day!

 

Mock Apple Pie:   http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mock-Apple-Pie-III/Detail.aspx

Apple Pie:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Pie-by-Grandma-Ople/Detail.aspx

June 18, 2004:   Me Jane…You Tarzan

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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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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