The best social program we ever had was the DAD

In the office of the DAD they had phones like this one

The DAD.

That's not an acronym. It's Dad. Your Pop. The Old Man. He was the best social program we ever had, back in the day when we had them - and only one, mind you, not two.

In an article entitled Urban Pathology And Distance, Don Pesci nails it:

If the root cause of urban pathologies is to be found, as some analysts have suggested, in partial family structures – single parent households abandoned by fathers, or those in which fathers never were present – then a solution to the pathologies must include a restoration of more adequate social structures.

What is the possibility that architects of social policy, including politicians and legislators, will in the future dedicate themselves to writing laws and policies that encourage the formation of traditional family structures, remembering that such legislation must include sanctions that discourage less successful forms?

To ask the question is to answer it. There are many powerful political interests arrayed against such a restoration, and politicians are not celebrated for an excess of courage in opposing powerful and politically well connected interests. Children in the cities are the victims of such timidity, not to say cowardice; and however much money is thrown their way, they will continue to be victimized by a system of sanctions and rewards that is blissfully unconcerned with families and convinced – despite clear evidence to the contrary – that it is possible for a village to raise a child in the absence of honorable, loving and working fathers.

Bingo. Read the whole thing here.

Photo by Bill Gantz. Some rights reserved.