Single fathers today stay to raise their children

Jobs's father, Abdulfattah Jandali

Single fathers are standing by their children, a dramatic turnaround from baby scoop era of the mid-twentieth century. Adoption was the name of the game in 1955 when Steve Jobs was born to a single white woman. Jobs’ biological father Abdulfattah John Jandali, 80, has made news for begging Jobs, who just announced his retirement from Apple, Inc, to get in touch with him before it is too late. Jobs is suffering from pancreatic cancer. Jandali says he is overcome with guilt for abandoning Jobs.

According to Jandali, when his girl friend, Joanne Simpson (nee Schieble) became pregnant, her father forbade him from marrying her. Without a marriage license, she had little choice but to leave her town,
give birth away from family and friends, and abandon her son or raise the little bastard on her own--as he certainly would have been called in 1955.

Today, women no longer have to give their children to strangers in order for them to have a father. It’s no longer macho for men to abandon their girl friends, muttering how they’re not going to let that bitch trick them into marriage or pay support for a kid who probably isn’t theirs. Jobs himself went down this road in 1977. When his girl friend, Chris-Ann Brennan, became pregnant he denied paternity, claiming he was sterile. Brennan supported their daughter Lisa Brennan through government assistance until court-ordered blood test proved Jobs was the child’s father and he began paying support. (Interestingly enough, Jobs named an early computer Lisa.)

Jane

According to the U. S. Census Bureau, single women are keeping their children, over 1.7 million children were born to single women in 2007 (1.2 million to white women) and only about 15,000 were placed for adoption. And men are standing by their women and their children. Today, the first stop for unmarried parents-to-be may well be a lawyer’s office to work out shared parenting and support arrangements.

I have a couple of good friends whose sons are helping to raise their children by women to whom they were never married. My friends are as invested in these grandchildren as any grandmother is, attending graduation ceremonies, bringing their grandchildren to Oregon for visits, and so on. Fellow blogger Lorraine has a friend who has joint custody of a seven-year-old son he never expected to have; the boy spends half of his week with his father and is treated like royalty by his three half siblings--who are all at least a dozen years older than he is.

If the mother of their child declines to join him in nurturing their child, fathers offer to do it solo. Such was the case when Lorraine’s daughter Jane gave birth in 1986. Her daughter’s father wanted to raise her with his mother, but was denied by child welfare authorities.

Other fathers like John Wyatt are fighting unjust adoptions laws in Utah for the right to raise their children. Wyatt’s mother is with him every step of the way and should he win custody, will help him raise his daughter. Other fathers in the same state are also fighting anti-natural parent legislation there to raise their own children. In Ohio last year, Benjamin Wyrembek prevailed in court to stop an adoption in Indiana and won custody of his son after a three year battle with Christy and Jason Vaughn.

Fathers are stepping forward because the sword of marriage no longer hangs over their head. They can help raise their children without being forced into a shotgun marriage. If my daughter Rebecca who was born in 1966 had been born a decade or two later, I think it’s likely her father and I could have come to a joint parenting arrangement. I was not keen on marrying him but at the time, marrying him was the only way I knew that would allow me to keep her. If we had married, we surely would have been divorced within a few years. Divorce with its attendant acrimony was not in anybody’s best interests.

Archie Bunker's Chair in the Smithsonian

The culture shift led by the woman’s movement has contributed to a changing view about parental roles. As the 1979 academy award winning film Kramer vs. Kramer depicted, child-rearing is neither solely a woman’s responsibility nor her exclusive right. Google "Father’s Rights" and you’ll find dozens of website, all devoted to the idea that fathers can be and should be as involved in child-rearing as mothers.

I sometimes hear political conservatives pinning for the “good ol’ days” when “gals were gals and men were men.” I’m thankful they have gone the way of Archie Bunker’s chair, to a museum.

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