Who needs fathers anyway?

One of the unintended consequences of the Pill and assistive reproductive technology is this:

We want sex without children (non-committed contraceptive sex)

and children without sex. (IVF, surrogate mothers)

Crazy, huh?

God has a divine plan for marriage which includes the joyful experience of married relations, and we throw it away, saying, "no, I don't think this gift of married love will work for me, but I'll keep the box and the wrapping paper, thanks. "

So fathers are consigned to the dustbin of history, their vital role in shaping souls for this world AND the next is diminished, disregarded and degraded.

I saw this full force last Sunday at Mass. I attend Mass in gorgeous old church, in a down-on-it's-luck town with a high population of single mothers. In the pew in front of me were a mother and her two single twenty something daughters and their three, cute as a button, but very hyperactive sons. Mass behind this crew was a three ring circus, and my heart was breaking to see those three adorable little boys acting up in a way that suggested that they were fatherless.

Some man needed to model proper behavior at Mass, and the mothers were obviously burned out by just getting them dressed and there. They had no more to give, and no fathers to tag team them and take over.

I looked over at my own daughter, who is no model of decorum herself, Christina can pose quite a challenge at Mass, however, with Daddy to cuddle her and hold her in his lap, she is MUCH easier to handle. I know, because I take her to Mass during the week, and spend much of it in the vestibule trying to keep her from climbing the stairs to the choir loft. Once she beat me up the stairs and disappeared into a tiny crevice behind the organ, giggling at my efforts to extricate her. I really appreciate it when Daddy is able to make it to Mass with us.

I wished those women in front of us could see them, cheek to cheek, in a Daddy's little girl hug. Why didn't they choose that for their own little boys? Maybe then they wouldn't have been swinging in the pews, wrestling, running down the aisle, punching, talking loudly, and generally irritating those trying to pray. How much more of a challenge will they be when they start school and learn bad habits from little boys whose mothers don't even bother to take them to Mass? I admire the efforts the single moms make, but the first and most important investment a woman can make in her children's future is to MARRY FIRST HAVE BABIES LATER!!!

Yet society, even Catholic society is starting to treat this ill advised life choice as normal.

Helen Alvare at the Culture of Life Foundation said,
"The recent news of the nearly 40% out of wedlock birth rate in the United States should pretty much rock our world as citizens and as Catholics. According to the Centers for Disease Control report, this means 1.7 million children were born to unmarried mothers in 2007, a figure 250% greater than the number reported in 1980. The implications for our society loom large. According to empirical data published over the last several decades in leading sociological journals, these children, on average, will suffer significant educational and emotional disadvantages compared to children reared by their married parents. They will be less able to shoulder the burdens that “next generations” traditionally assume for the benefit of their families, communities and their country. They are likely to repeat their parents’ behaviors. The boys are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and the girls to have nonmarital children."
Read the entire article here.