Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be

Parke, a psychologist, and Brott, author of The Expectant Father and other books on fatherhood, want to set the record straight: the entire world, they say, is against fathers. Government, cheered on by the media, throws up barriers at every turn. Women are the worst: protective of their power, they have conspired to keep men from their children, even defining the paternal role as purely biological. These accusations, like many of the authors' sweeping generalizations, harbor grains of truth, but the tone of this book is absurdly adversarial. Feminists such as French, Faludi, Brownmiller et al., contend Parke and Brott, have convinced us that the greatest threat to our children may well be their fathers. They claim that a hostile society has ghettoized fathers into types: biologically unfit, dangerous, deadbeats or useless. Arguably, welfare laws have disenfranchised many fathers; accusations of sexual abuse are sometimes used against dads without foundation in custody cases; and children raised by both a mother and a father do, according to some studies, statistically have a better chance at better lives. But Parke and Brott present their argument as new, when, in fact, Americans of diverse conviction have been making the case for dads for some time--whether it's the Christian men's Promise Keepers movement, the Nation of Islam's Million-Man March or working parents lobbying for paternal leave. Author tour. (Jan.)