Fix Fatherlessness, Fix America: An Unapologetic Special | Unapologetic

prison time homelessness drug abuse and alcoholism neglect domestic violence single parenthood teen pregnancy dropping out of school what do all of these issues have in common well if you grow up in this country without a father you are more likely to experience all of them right now in america we are experiencing an epidemic of absent fathers now i already know what some of you might be thinking i've already heard this covered by the media on both sides of the aisle and this is simply a black issue but what if i told you that fatherlessness is an issue that affects every single one of us in more ways that we could ever possibly know how did we get here and is there anything that we can do about it let's break it down [Applause] [Music] my parents got divorced when i was around six years old and suddenly i was just seeing my father less and less weekly visits became monthly visits became talking to each other once a year that was my new normal familiar strangers to be honest it didn't really affect me that much one parent was enough but i would come to find out later in life that i happen to be super lucky not because i didn't need anything from my dad or that there was nothing that he could truly give me but because i managed to escape some of the horrific outcomes that can be attached to growing up with an absent father so what are these outcomes well i found that when compared to children from two parent households fatherless kids had a two times greater chance of infant mortality they were more likely to face and perpetrate abuse and neglect they were more likely to experience obesity they were more likely to become pregnant as teens more likely to drop out of school more likely to abuse drugs and more likely to go to prison and those are just a few of the negative outcomes that we can trace back to fatherlessness imagine all of the things that we're missing now i didn't know this but according to pew research center the united states has the highest share of single parenting in the world and the issue of fatherlessness and single-parent households is an issue that continues to grow in this country according to u.s census data in 1968 about 15 percent of u.s kids were living in a single-parent household jump forward to now and that number has doubled to 30 percent now i live in los angeles a city that's notorious for running rampant with drug abuse and homelessness and crime and oftentimes when i see these things happening right in front of my face i failed to make the connection between that and fatherlessness when really the odds are that all of these people that we're seeing have grown up without a dad like i said before many view this to be a black issue because the black population does have the largest percentage of single-parent fatherless homes about 66 but this isn't just a black problem in the latino and hispanic community about 42 percent of children grow up in single-parent households for white people this number drops to a still whopping 34 and asians follow at 20 so on average about one in three american children are growing up in a single-parent household this is a problem for everyone so how did we get here well if we're looking at a single-parent household we're typically dealing with a single mom as of 2020 there were 14.84 million families with a single mother in the united states and you might be thinking well sometimes marriages don't work out and as a result moms are left to take care of their children and that statement would have been true in say the 1960s where four percent of single mothers had never been married flash forward to today and that has jumped to over 52 a 13-fold increase meaning my mother's story of divorce and single motherhood now represents a minority in today's day and age women are getting pregnant out of wedlock and raising the children alone this goes to show that marriage is not really just a piece of paper marriage is often the barrier between a single-parent household and a two-parent household not only that it can be the barrier between poverty and success and the numbers are stark if you grow up with a single unwed mother you are four times more likely to experience poverty than somebody who lived with married parents so we know the issue we know what these families look like and we know we're all affected by it so why is fatherlessness still a growing issue in this country there's two areas we have to look at politics and culture politically the welfare system comes into the discussion in the 1960s some well-meaning policies were put forth that ended up not doing so well in fact they actually incentivized single mother households specifically in 1964 president lyndon b johnson launched his great society an initiative with the goal of beating poverty reducing crime and promoting equality in america his welfare system was very generous particularly for single mothers but there was one rule that ruined it all the man in the house rule which essentially said that if you have a working or able-bodied man living in your house we cannot help you they even went as far as to send federal agents to these households to make sure that no man was living there if i was a mom at the time i would throw the man out of the house too to get that check these things don't exactly promote marriage this is exactly why we shouldn't judge policies based on their intentions but actually on their results and these results don't bode well speaking of things that don't bode well culturally radical feminism in hollywood has completely destroyed the view of not only the american man but the american dad it is now a commonly held belief that men are toxic in nature and oppressive forces of patriarchy that must be overcome not exactly a person you'd want to marry or have kids with in hollywood young girls have gotten used to watching these ever-present archetypal characters like dumb dad a whole boyfriend prince charming who doesn't exist and the dreaded girl boss a woman who is a subpar man values her career over her family is sexually promiscuous and utterly unattached if i got paid every time i heard the whole i don't need a man thing i'd be the one buying twitter it seems as though feminism values single motherhood over married parenting couple our cultural problems with our political ones and you have a recipe for disaster these two things clearly explain the situation that we find ourselves currently living in so you know everything now except for what can be done for starters we need a culture that values good men good fathers and good role models can you imagine how our perception of men would change if the media started showing good well-rounded men taking on the responsibility of fatherhood we need to step away from the toxic masculinity narrative and into one that values the inherent traits that men have politically we should be looking at policies that don't incentivize single motherhood maybe take a look at that welfare system and do a little bit of tweaking so of course hollywood's not going to start making these wonderful movies tomorrow and we're certainly not going to get legislation in the coming days that suddenly changes all of these problems what can we do right now to fix this well there's a lot of things that we can do as individuals first reject these modern narratives of radical feminism and toxic masculinity they're clearly not leading us down a good path and not doing anything that builds a fruitful society except the fact that two parent households are ideal and that's not to denigrate the work of single mothers and single fathers but we should all be striving towards what is best for our children and that is a two-parent household and let me make this clear we cannot wait for hollywood our politicians to come in and fix these problems we have to fix these problems and the fixing starts when we celebrate appreciate and honor fatherhood in our country by building a new culture that has a deep-seated love for parenthood and family so that when that beautiful moment does come for them they take on all the responsibilities that come along with it gladly and to all the fathers and the future fathers watching this we need you we need you to be there as a good friend a good role model a good husband a good dad and you might be thinking that's way too much pressure you don't know how to be a father how to take on that role and certainly not the responsibilities that come along with it but statistically speaking just by being there you can change the world [Music] you