The High Cost of Delinquent Dads
On a micro level, it has recently dawned on me what high-cost delinquent dads are to society. During my time teaching at an Ivy League school, more than half of my office hours were spent with male students looking for direction that had little to do with their academic work. They needed life skills, not an explanation of why they earned a B- on their term paper. If the institution they enrolled in paid any attention to the true meaning of a humanistic education — which means helping students become more human (and hence young men more manlike) — perhaps there would be hope for the trying-hard-to-become-men on campus.
Young men don’t know how to treat women with respect, young women don’t know how to maintain it.
Sadly, however, by the time they leave home and enroll at the university, the opportunity to have the kind of role model they need is practically over. Not that there aren’t male professors on campus who are exemplary, but these men are too wrapped up in their own families to serve as surrogate fathers to others.
This makes me wonder whether young men who do not go to college are, in fact, better off these days. Almost everyone in higher education ignores the alarmingly low rate of male enrollment. According to Pew Research Center data, there are approximately 1 million fewer young men in college than a decade ago, but only 0.2 million fewer women. College men make up 44 percent of campuses today. If the data are correct, many of these men preferred to skip college to take up an apprenticeship in some line of work that interests them. Part of me says, “All power to them.”
A lot of college male freshmen discover by the end of their first semester that they are wasting their time and money listening to the woke gibberish of their history professor. When Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, and Warren Buffet hint that the skills they are looking for are not really learned in college, smart men listen up. Although I still think that they should think twice before skipping college, I know that I would certainly be tempted to do so in a way I was not in the 1980s. In many ways, my own undergraduate years were a waste of time, but, thanks to my day, I know the investment was well worth it.
In any case, the conspicuous preponderance of women on campus would seem to work in favor of college men seeking a life-long mate. The problem is that they hardly care to or know how to talk to them, let alone court them. My dad taught me both. I’m pretty sure I’d be clueless if it weren’t for him (though Mom and Sis certainly had their roles). Hence absent fathers must be partially to blame for the lack of true romance on campus.
I recently caught a glimpse of a couple — heterosexual nonetheless — holding hands as they walked to class, and it struck me how long it had been since I had seen anything like that. I also had a male and female student come to my office separately, apparently for relationship advice. It was only after they had come a few more times that I realized that they had been dating each other for two years! I had both of them in class during that entire stretch and had barely seen them look at one another, let alone talk.
It reminded me of another young man who had come to my office several years ago to share his own dating problems. It was only on his third visit that I realized he had been talking about a young lady he had never met in person. Their sole interaction had been on the internet.
The absence of even the smallest sign of mutual affection on campus is even more appalling when you overhear stories of weekend hookups and surreptitious sexual escapades in the library stacks. I recently heard a young woman casually mention to her friend between classes that “it’s gonna be another Tinder Tuesday” to get her through the week. For complicated reasons I can’t go into here, I’m convinced that fatherless homes are equally to blame for Tinder Tuesdays as campus coed culture.
The lack of a dating scene stands in stark contrast to Title IX fervor. Title IX, originally intended to prohibit sex-based discrimination, has essentially become a tribunal for date rape and sexual assault. Again, I suspect deadbeat dads have something to do with it. In no way do I wish to downplay the seriousness of date rape and sexual assault on campus, but having served on numerous Title IX panels, it seems to me that most of these cases boil down to a regrettable mix of intoxication, indiscretion, and foolishness.
Young men don’t know how to treat women with respect, young women don’t know how to maintain it, and both wake up in the morning smothered in guilt and regret. I know that sounds harsh, but the reality is that the kinds of events that used to be a source of such great fun and social maturation in college — dances, sing-alongs, and mixers for instance — have been replaced with binge drinking and shameless grinding, if not awkward stares across a dark room filled with deafening rap music.
But back to delinquent dads. When I’m not giving advice to college males on how to get out of bed and get dressed in the morning, I spend time with my seven-year-old son in the yard. Other boys in the neighborhood have started to come over and join in our pick-up basketball and football games. Few of them have a dad at home.
I now know how to figure that out before they tell me. All I have to do is watch and see if they treat my wife and daughters respectfully and notice whether they destroy my house before leaving and whether they know how to fix the chain on their bikes. If they do, they have a dad at home. If not, they either used to or have never had one.
I wish I had more time to be a role model for them, but even if I had all the time in the world, I am in no better position to play surrogate father to them than I am to my college students.
Truth be told, I am afraid of calculating the cost of fatherless homes at the macro level. The micro level is terrifying enough.
READ MORE:
10 Studies That Show the Powerful Impact of a Father
Father Knows Worst: Kamala Harris’ Marxist Dad
Neglect of Fathers Is Neglect of America
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