First, men have been devalued in the workplace. Beginning in 1973, wages
for production workers - the 80 percent of employees who hold no supervisory
positions - started to sag and have continued on a downward curve ever
since. The wage squeeze first affected blue-collar workers, but pay reductions
gradually fanned out across the workforce so that by the early 1990s wages
were falling in all occupational categories, except management. Wages for
men have fallen faster than for women, and young men have suffered disproportionately.
Overall, since 1973, wages are down 25 percent for men 25 to 34 years
of age, and the pace of decline has quickened since 1990. According to
economist Alan Kreuger, the median wage has eroded particularly rapidly
in recent years, falling 5 percent between 1989 and 1997. The implications
of these figures for family life are dire. Thirty-five percent of all men
between age 25 and 34, when working full time, now earn less than the amount
necessary to keep a family of four above the poverty line.
If mainstream workers are increasingly squeezed, poorly educated minority men are failing to find any kind of foothold in the labor market. According to figures recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 36 percent of adult males between the ages of 16 and 64 were jobless in 1997 - they were either unemployed, had stopped looking for work or were in prison. This extraordinary rate of joblessness has led to a dramatic fall in the number of minority men who can reasonably expect to get married or support their children. There now are only 40 employed black men for every 100 black women.
Second, since the mid-1960s government policy has moved against fathers. For example, Aid to Families With Dependent Children was set up in a way that deliberately excluded fathers. For 20 years, welfare agencies staged unannounced midnight raids to make sure that there was no man in the house. If a man was found, the mother lost her AFDC benefits. The effect of these raids was to cause men to be literally pushed out of the nest. Not only did these regulations create a huge disincentive to marry; they made it extremely difficult for poor men to become fathers to their children.
Much more recently government has aggressively cracked down on "deadbeat dads" - fathers who fail to pay child support. This is despite the fact that 38 percent of absentee dads have neither custody nor visitation rights. It's hard to imagine that men will pay for kids they have no right to see. But rather than encouraging loving contact between fathers and their children, government simply goes after the paycheck - driving many more dads underground.
Third, the popular culture increasingly demoralizes husbands and fathers, portraying men as redundant to family life. Movies such as "Thelma and Louise" and "Waiting to Exhale" show strong, vital women battling the odds and in the process shedding a series of unappealing, inadequate men. Gloria Steinem's quip that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" has become part of conventional wisdom in Hollywood.
The war against dads has been particularly hard on black men. African Americans are still living in the shadows of slavery, which demolished the male protector/provider role and the dignity and strength that came with it. Black males are thus especially susceptible to the belief that they are disposable and dispensable. Many black boys growing up are used to hearing that "black men ain't s-, they ain't never going to be s-, and you are just like your daddy."
It is important to remember that slavery, like its modern descendant, AFDC (now called TANF) had distinctly different effects on men and women. Even under slavery, females were able to fulfill their most elemental gender-specific role. Males, however, were completely stripped of their identity as men. One of their basic roles - to provide - was assumed by the master.
In the late 1990s, as pay cuts and single parenthood increasingly threaten the security of middle class life, white men are beginning to understand what it means to be irrelevant and redundant. Perhaps the time has come for dads to stand up and ask for the honor and support they so desperately need if they are to come through for their kids.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and founder of the National Parenting Association in New York. Cornel West, professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, lives in Boston. They have published a new book, "The War Against Parents" (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, June 19, 1998, p A23