Dad Is Not Optional

For molding, guiding and teaching a child, the wise mother knows how invaluable a father is.  The Hebrew language imparts tremendous insight on this subject. …

A profound insight to reality is disclosed by there being no singular word in Hebrew for “parent.”  The word, horim, only exists in the plural.  An individual is a mother or a father; an individual can valiantly try to fill both roles, but being parents is possible only for a couple.  We should not really speak of “single parents.”  You can be a single mom and you can be a single dad, but it is foolish to think you can be single parents.  This is a painful reality for the valiant moms and dads who do their best to raise children without a spouse.  Feeling and even exhibiting compassion and support for these Americans is highly appropriate.  Converting their predicament into normality buy using language (single parent) that disguises reality is misplaced compassion.  It may help elevate the self-esteem of single moms, but it may also contribute to an increase in their numbers by pretending that dads are superfluous.

While trying to be helpful to those who have either embraced the lie or been victimized by it, we must protect the future by telling the truth.  Parenting is an activity similar to the one that conceived the child in the first place; it is incomplete when done without the active, loving, principled participation of a partner of the opposite sex.  When a child is bereft of a father, he is, according to the Bible, considered an orphan.  All those biblical commands to be kind to the widow and orphan refer not to a child who has neither mother nor father, but rather to the widow and her child.

As the traditional “till death do us part” marriage has been traded for serial marriages or no marriage at all, undesirable patterns have evolved.  Statistics about youth and young-adult crime are staggering.  An overwhelming proportion of those who have been in trouble with the law did not have loving fathers involved in their upbringing.  How much more does one need to know than that?  Children who are to become assets to society need to be nurtured and instructed by both a mother and a father.  In other words, “father” is not the title one earns for impregnating a woman; any male animal can impregnate.  Being a father is far more complex and demanding.  Without one, children, particularly boys, stand a pretty good chance of hurting their community more than helping it.  Everyone already knows how easy it is for boys raised without a father to become neighborhood predators.  What is less known is how frequently girls raised without a father become the prey of those young predators.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.179-181