We
were in church, and he was standing there so firmly rooted, so solid, letting
her sway freely in his arms. Her blond hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her
eyes sparkled. She was wearing a jumper dress with white tights. And she was
SOOOO happy! You could tell by the way she was playfully rocking back and forth
in her daddy’s arms, stroking her daddy’s face and mouth with her hands, and
throwing her head back with carefree abandon. His eyes and his mind were obviously trying to focus on the Mass more than on her, but he was letting her continue touching and
stroking his face, while he held her in his grip.
She
was probably not more than two or three years old, and suddenly I saw myself
in that little girl. It
hit me. I WAS that little girl once.
I felt the stab of loss. What
would she feel, if the next day, she was ripped out of his embrace forever?
Blood splattered all over the front seat. Broken glass. The side
of the car
looked like a smashed soda can. A woman moaned, knowing intuitively
that her
husband’s life had just been snatched away. And the little girl in the
back of the car lost her daddy that day.
What
marks would be left chiseled on the young girl’s face? I am familiar with the marks. I see them in photographs
of myself soon after that tragic day, a little girl just three years old with
lips pursed so serious from the taste of grief, and eyes looking so
sad and lonesome. It breaks my heart.
I
see the marks in a growing child who’s hiding somewhere deep inside herself
when uncles are roughhousing with her cousins. I see the marks in the teenage
girl, insecure and uncertain about her body, wondering why isn’t her father
here to notice her, to coach her, to teach her about the world. I see the marks in a college-bound girl finding her way out there,
wondering and wanting to know what kind of man her father really was.
Fatherlessness.
It’s more common than ever today and very unfortunate. Yet part of our society
tries to tell us that this condition is normal and okay. We get a mixed message
that young girls don’t need a father.
Young boys don’t need to be raised by
a dad to learn about manhood. In fact, we can do away with this institution
called marriage that unites kids with their moms and dads. We can do away with
recognizing this and protecting this for the sake of redefining marriage to be
between any two people who love each other.
Really? This hurts. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard cases challenging California’s Proposition 8 (the ban on redefining marriage) and arguments on
the Defense of Marriage Act. Marriage is hanging in the balance and many people don't even know what is at stake. Some think it's just about letting same-sex couples "participate" in marriage. But the problem with redefining marriage (by removing "man and woman" from the
law and inserting "two people") is that it eliminates the only institution that
unites kids with their moms and dads.
When either a
child’s mom or dad is taken out of the picture, replaced by someone else or
not, the child suffers. Roger Scruton said in his essay from “The Meaning of
Marriage”:
“Take away
marriage and you expose children to the risk of coming into the world as
strangers, untutored by fathers or abandoned by mothers; a condition of
abandonment in which they may remain for the rest of their lives.”
Fatherless and single-parent homes produce children who are more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime and treated for emotional and behavioral problems, as well as more likely to be sexually, emotionally and physically abused and neglected. There
is a physical poverty in this that has its effects on society - 71% of poor families are
unmarried, while marriage alone drops the probability of childhood poverty by
82% - but there is also a huge emotional poverty here that books like Fatherless Daughters and Motherless Daughters so keenly address.
We
should ask ourselves, how is the obliteration of marriage between men and women
contributing to a safer and healthier community and society? After
reading a short, eye-opening little book called
Getting the Marriage Conversation Right: a guide for effective dialogue by Bill May, I have begun to see
marriage through the eyes of a child. I recommend reading it if you want to
know how to to talk respectfully on the subject. Seriously, read it.
I
f we
stopped viewing marriage as an adult-centric thing and started seeing the good
of marriage for children and for society – the public good – we would realize
that marriage essentially is not just a public pledge of love between two
committed persons but that it is in essence an institution of procreative and unitive
forces. It exists to unite a man and woman with each other and any children
born of their union.
Every
child has a biological mom and dad. And every person has a common desire to know, love
and relate with their biological mom and dad. We carry
our parents traits and the traits of those who came before them. We have a family history
running through our blood. We want to know where we came
from, because it’s part of our identity.
Where do I get this head full of strawberry blonde hair from?...This
writerly way of looking at things?...This connection
with all things growing in nature?...This courageous spirit?...Namely, who's history is
written into my very DNA? To intentionally deprive a person of having these
questions answered is to close off a part of the human experience to them.
Let’s stand up for children, marry and be witnesses that the family is the first school of love,
discipline and justice. Building stable and healthy families means building a
stable and healthy America.
Love that little girl and her daddy for witnessing to me in a simple moment the beauty of the father-daughter relationship.
