A Letter to Fatherless America

by Derrick Jeter.
Dear America,
Your numbers of fatherless are numbing. So staggering are they both pachyderm and pack animal should blow and bellow. But they don’t because in their constant tug-of-war for dominance over a declining culture the dust they kick up obscures the truth that you are saying because fatherhood is dying.
For all time it is true: fathers are indispensable to the health of nations because fathers are indispensable to the health of families.
And yet, the ideals of manliness and fatherhood within your boarders have become so alien as to be a source of ridicule and scorn by the enlightened minds of the political and cultural landscape. Fatherhood has been shunned from your shores as an embarrassment from a retrograde and antiquated era.

Today, in your progressive epoch, you celebrate the rise of the androgynous.
The androgynous—the amalgamation of manliness and femininity; the potpourri of father-motherhood—this is the pioneering purpose in America today.
It is little wonder then that four out of ten—forty percent—of all your children are born to unwed mothers . . . born fatherless. And it is little wonder then that you care so little.
But without men—real men—and fathers, how will little princesses ever recognize Prince Charming? Without fathers how will little ladies ever distinguish between true love and what a woman can give to merely satisfy a man’s selfish needs and pleasures?
Without men—real men—and fathers, how will little men ever grow up to become Prince Charming? Without fathers how will little gentlemen ever know to love a lady and not just use and abuse her for what can be taken from her to satisfy his selfish needs and pleasures?
Without men—real men—and fathers, how will little boys and girls ever become full-grown men and women who love and respect each other, and have the character and strength to build families and homes?
Theodore Roosevelt said over a century ago that

the tasks connected with the home are the fundamental tasks of humanity. When home ties are loosened; when men and women cease to regard a worthy family life, with all its duties fully performed, and all its responsibilities lived up to, as the best life worth living; then evil days for the [nation] are at hand.

America, I fear evil days are at hand . . . unless you give us men—real men. For those of us in the brotherhood of men and fathers—in the band of the brave—it is men we seek; it is men we need.
We seek men with the iron qualities of true manhood—men of resolution, of courage, of strength to shrink not from the hard work of manliness.
We seek men who will resist and reject the tantalizing temptation of timidity and passivity; men who will step in the breach and take responsibility—day after day, and for a lifetime. Men who with daring-do perform without bitterness or complaint what courage demands—to lead their families, their communities, their nation to where they ought to go.
We seek men who will father their children spiritually and emotionally, not merely father their children biologically. We seek men who are tough-minded and soft-hearted; stout men who sail forth with brawn and brain into the maelstroms of life and bead down the enemies of truth and beauty. Rough and ready men who, if defeated on life’s field of battle, fall facing the foe of all that is good and holy in a war worthy of their dignity and nobility.
These are the men we need. These are the men we seek.
Give us these men, America, and the men of America shall do valiantly for thy name’s sake, and for the sake of thy children. And we shall hold in sacred trust, as an undying creed, that America shall forever remain the land of the free and the home of the brave.