BY BEN SHAPIRO ON 6/15/18 - Newsweek
This weekend marks Father’s Day—or, as I have taken to calling it on social media, Second Legal Guardian Of Unspecified Gender Day. Obviously, this is trollery. But it’s not pure trollery: we live in a society that purports to champion fatherhood, but disparages fathering at every turn. We disparage the notion that fathers are necessary; we disparage the unique lessons fathers teach. Because some men in America are trash, too many Americans have decided that the problem is masculinity itself. The result hasn’t been a lessening of male perdition, but an exacerbation of it.
As it turns out, men do need fathers—and even more importantly, they need fathers who teach what it means to be a man to their children.
The social science on the necessity of fatherhood is absolutely clear. According to a massive recent Harvard study, the most powerful factor putting young men at risk of criminal behavior and poverty is lack of fathers in the neighborhood—not even fathers in the home, fathers in the neighborhood more generally. A prevalence of responsible men can even help compensate for lack of fathers in the home.
And it’s not a coincidence that girls from single-mother homes fare far more poorly than girls from two-parent homes. Girls from homes without a father tend to engage in more sexually risky behavior, with higher rates of drug use and dropping out of school.
Fathers provide a sense of security to their children, but they also model behavior. For boys, fathers model and teach how to be a protector; for girls, fathers model and teach how men ought to protect them.
There is a large biological component to all of this. Men are, by nature, bigger and stronger than women on average. They are also more prone to violence and more aggressive. This means that men either build and protect, or they destroy. Good men must teach their sons the art of manliness, or societies crumble. Masculinity can indeed be toxic, but only if it isn’t channeled into defense of self and others.
The #MeToo movement says men must be taught not to rape. But no good man has ever been taught not to rape. Good men are taught, generally by a male authority figure, to affirmatively stand up for women, to prevent harm. It’s not enough to teach boys “not to rape.” Boys must be taught to fight rapists. More here.