Well since the thread is still active, here is something a friend of mine wrote for Father's Day.
Titled, The Celebration of the Death of Fatherhood
It's been about 100 years since the first official Father's Day. For 50 of those years, we've been celebrating a dying occupation.
Lyndon Johnson's infamous “war on poverty” was a grand exercise in government expansion that morphed into a war on family. Government won. Our divorce rate has doubled, and three in four of our black children are born out of wedlock. We have 10 times as many people in jail today as we did then, and though we're twice as wealthy, we have 5 times more citizens on welfare.
Lyndon had helpers. Feminist Betty Friedan sought to right gender inequality and stumbled into ironic partnership with playboy Hugh Hefner. Their shared enthusiasm for the pill, abortion and the sexual revolution did more to liberate men than women. We were freed to rent the opposite sex as playthings rather than commit to cherished partners. The result? We saw 44 million aborted children and a society full of angry women treated as toys and emasculated men stuck as little boys.
Big government and liberty are incompatible. Evidence surfaces in the subversion of the rule of law with family courts and social service agencies empowered to rule by law. Their snowballing abduction of parents' rights has done great social harm. Parental responsibility without authority is unsustainable and a major cause of paternal detachment.
Research consistently validates the necessity of intact families in producing functional children and cultural sanity. The number one predictor of adult imprisonment is the childhood absence of an engaged father. A top causal factor for poverty, teen suicide, drug abuse, and about every other social harm imaginable is a bad dad, no dad or a ghost who pretends to be dad.
Men are designed to be heroes. For most, our greatest chance comes with being a good father. A source of reward, opportunity and challenge that few life roles can match.
The fastest path to becoming a stronger man and better dad centers on treating all women as a mother, wife, daughter or sister — period. That equation forces growth, character and maturity and holds the power to save a darkening culture.
We have a yearly opportunity to reflect on the love, values and behavioral examples shown by our fathers. The best dads delight in nurturing and protecting their children and treasuring their mothers. Such men embrace that call as a blessed responsibility — never as a sacrifice. They merit celebration.