A Sort of Prelude:  I wasn't sure that I needed to spell this out, but I will anyway.  My arguement is not that forcing men to be fathers (and hopefully good fathers) is a bad thing.  When dealing with men, force is often needed even if the men are intelligent.  Men tend towards selfishness.  Having laws to force men back into the family is a necessary component of civilization, in my view.  This is essentially a problem of "freedom" that the sexual revolution has unleashed.  Men are now free (sexual and otherwise), but what kind of freedom is it when the children of these men are shackled by the fatherless family?

I've finally finished mulling over Plato's Lysis which, as I've written in an earlier blog, centers around the question "What is a friend?"  The dialogue is between Socrates and a group of young men or boys.  The two main interlocutors are Lysis and Menexenus. Hippothales, another young boy, asks Socrates for advice on how to entrap Lysis and make Lysis his lover.  Socrates, as he tries to help Hippothales, addresses Menexenus and Lysis both separately and together throughout the dialogue and thus demonstrates to Hippothales what is to be done to capture someone's love.

Toward the end of the dialogue two drunk angry men, sent by the boy's fathers, show up cursing in a foreign language.  Socrates leads a rebellion against the foreigners and, by extension, the boy's fathers.

The fathers, by sending the drunk servants, have to use force to coerce the boys away from a possible new friend (Socrates) that poses a threat to the family and, by virtue of obvious connections, the city. 

Socrates does not use force on the boys to keep them around him.  As a matter of fact he attacks their opinions time and time again.  He seemingly pushes them away in this manner and yet the boys remain.  Meanwhile, the father must use force via his slaves to reunite the family.  The strange and new attract the boys even as the strange and new put the boy's morals and ethics at risk (think of college professors or highschool teachers and freshmen).  The family must use a type of force to remain united.

On a similar note, a friend of mine and I were talking about the "men's rights" cases in Michigan.  For those unfamiliar with the case, it is/was being argued that, in the case of an accidental pregnancy, men should be able to have a choice as to whether they want the child to live or not (just as the mother does).  In cases where women decide to keep their unborn child then the man should have a legal way to opt out of the commitment to level the "rights" playing field. 

The point here is not whether this is right or wrong or whether it should be right or wrong. 

Notice that there is a problem with fatherhood.  Laws and force must be used for this institution to exist.  As the title of this blog suggests, fatherhood is against nature.  It is not natural.

Women have the children, women are equipped to feed the children, they stop menstruating so long as they are nurturing the baby, so on and so forth.  Further, if custody of the child must be determined between the two parents, our courts seem to take their cues from nature and apparently prefer that the child stay with the mother. 

So when we look at the nuclear family we can see its sub-familial components: children, mommy, and daddy.  Of the three, daddy isn't overtly a natural part of the formulation.  Of course his seed is needed, but the role of the father is essentially undetermined especially when we look at the relationship between father and mother and then, separately, father and son.  What I mean by pronouncing that the role is undertermined is that the father is not compelled by nature to feed the child, love the mother of his child, and so on.  If the door is left open, no pressure is placed on him and the man is given the option , he will leave more times than he stays.  It is bad according to our society's standards (at present at least), but it is also natural. 

A little clarification may be needed here.  By "leaving" I mean abandoning the family so that the mother and the child are left to fend for themselves whether the father is still part of the home or not.

The detached father in most cases may as well be the absent father.

It hardly has to be pointed out that in today's society men feel little pressure to stay with women that carry their children.  We have an entire societal system that does little more than frown when the father leaves the mother or forces the mother to leave him.  We have stopped forcing fathers to act as fathers.  Once we entered civilization and women could be taken care of by the state or by someone other than the father of her children, we opened the door to one of the most important inventions since the rule of law: fatherhood.

Technology has also helped.  Condoms, ru486 pills, and other birth control free up the libidos of our nation's horny.  Little thought is given to the rights of the child. 

When I use the term "child," I do not speak of aborting a child.  That is a lengthy topic that will have to wait.  I speak here of the children who are born and then subjected to one parent families because the father is no longer held accountable for his actions because the mother has become so selfish that her pride to raise her child on her own ignores the needs of that very same child.  The ego of both parents gets in the way of what is best for the child (I speak here of selfish parents and not of abused women and men).

Society has changed, but nature has not.

The mother in most cases is the nurturing part of the family that looks to the future.  She is apt to look to the future simply because she cares for someone other than herself.  She sacrifices her dreams and goals to help establish a foundation for her children so that they can reach their dreams and goals. 

The father, if he wanted access to sex, companionship, and an orderly home (his castle), was bound to the woman who helped to provide this for him.  Men, who naturally seek glory and honor, could be guaranteed a sort of immortality by staying at home and helping to raise and feed his children.  His 'lineage' would remind future ages, at least in his mind, of his existence.  The accomplishments could at least partially be credited to his actions as father.

This has all been done away with because we no longer see the natural weakness of the human condition.  The inventions of the myth of fatherhood must be reinstated.  However, myths are not highly regarded in our culture.  Within the new world of the positivists, that is, people who want absolute proof of the existence of a proposed idea or inclination, cannot believe in the nature of men and women because the foundation has been covered up under years and years of laws and fads and 'studies'.  Human nature and social conditioning are not so easily discernable.  To put it another way, when a doctor looks through the microscope he no longer sees Dan the heart patient, father, and brother, but only particular heart cells.  The patient becomes dehumanized.  If we can only believe in what we see and refuse to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with accurate myths then the gaps turn into societal pot holes that can badly damage us over time.

The sexual revolution gave men more freedom and power than they could ever have asked for.  Men leave not only their wives, but entire communities (!!!) for the lure of a new and exciting sex partner.  They do this because they are not forced by society, through laws and communal morals, to stay.  They are free to do as they wish which says nothing of their child's right to grow up with a father.  The once defender and coeducator is now an ego-centric, violent, sexual nomad and his absence breeds more of the same (the same seems to be true for elephants).  Meanwhile, the mother has to work two jobs to pay for the day care center that has taken her place because she has taken the man's place.

There is utter selfishness at the heart of most divorces.  There is a kernel of narcissism at the heart of every broken home.  This all can be laid at the feet of the men who are no longer forced by a stronger power to stay.