From "Father Knows Best" to "Fathers Are Unnecessary"

Anyway, apropos of the subject, the subject is not, are our fathers necessary? That's tangential. We all know they are. They're unbelievably necessary. The question is, how did it develop that people would think they're not? We went from Father Knows Best, a major sitcom of the '50s, to fathers are unnecessary inside of a generation. And apropos of this, Ali has a magnificent documentary now available. It's at SalemNow.com, as it happens, The Streets Were My Father, about fathers and about God for that matter. And my video was up at PragerU this week, also about fathers being necessary. So we're talking about how this happened, and you gave a very important and honest answer saying it wasn't just ideology, people thinking Because there are bad fathers, there are abandoning fathers, there are molesting fathers. All of this is true. But as I said, it's like saying because there are so many car accidents, we don't need cars. One has nothing to do with the other. And so it's mostly been ideology. All right, let me take some calls here. And of course, I'd like you to react as well, obviously, Lee. Kim in Castaic, California. Hi.

Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call.

Thank you.

So I just had this conversation with my best friend of 35 years. I grew up with my dad, my grandparents, my grandfathers, both of them, 7 uncles. She grew up with, uh, no father in the house, no male, just her mother, her grandmother, her aunties. And she just told me the other day that her daughter is— she thinks is a lesbian, and I just— we had a conversation about that, but she felt like it's because her, you know, that her father, uh, was not a good father, and she didn't really allow her father to parent. She's like, she protected her daughter, uh, from the father as if, you know, he wasn't needed. And I, I've seen her basically teach her daughters now, a next generation of young Black girls, that men are not necessary, fathers are not necessary. And I think that my Theory on that is because it justifies, in her case, her bad decision-making and her values that she was taught, which I think are wrong. And I think that that's why a lot of Black women accept all of these intellectual theories, because it pads— it keeps them from having to take responsibility for the fact that they have failed a whole generation of young people.

That's fascinating. So first, let me comment quickly on the lesbian be an issue because I distinguish— I've done massive research on homosexuality. And last 15 years— no, not 15, 25 years ago, I wrote a 17,000-word essay on the subject. And I believe that female homosexuality and male homosexuality have little in common. They have some things in common. They're obviously both same-sex attraction. But I think female sexuality is not as built in, to use a non-scientific term, as male homosexuality. But in any event, I just wanted to comment on that. But again, there's a lot of dysfunction in, unfortunately, in the Black community with regard to fathers. And this, she is saying, this Black woman who just called, it leads to some bad decisions like men are not necessary, I'll have a baby anyway. I think though, Lee, that the government and policies have added a tremendous amount, unfortunately, of substance to that belief. I don't need a man. Any thoughts?

No, there's no doubt. Look, when you have welfare rules that reward a woman for keeping the man away, and that if the man joins and they earn just enough money, they lose all their, their health benefits, they lose their medical benefits. So there are actually incentives that just cut the wrong way for folks. But you know, Dennis, back to that experience. So there was a tremendous book, and I know you did this back when the book came out in 1999, called Faith of the Fatherless.

All right, hold it there, hold it there. Lee Habib, back in a moment.