By Matt Friedeman, PhD
April 7, 2005

(AgapePress) - Some groups with powerfully good intentions recently came together in our state's Capitol Rotunda and joined hands to promote the united goal of protecting the children of the State of Mississippi. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour was on hand to proclaim April as "Month of the Child" and encouraged citizens to recognize it appropriately.

The special emphasis is actually designed to target child abuse or neglect. But, truth is, emphases like these, while extremely well intended, putter around the edges of the problem.

Want to do something great for kids in a place like, say, Mississippi?

There is a place to start in the Deep South and the rest of the nation, but elected officials and cultural leaders seem mute on the problem. Investigate the many problems of The Magnolia State and you find that most of them are significantly driven by fatherlessness. Indeed, latest statistics available show that in our state 75 percent of African-Americans are born into a single-parent family. The number is 24 percent for Caucasians and, incredibly, 47 percent overall.

Chew on that statistic real hard and long -- half of Mississippi babies are born to a single mother.

Since 1960, the rise nationally in the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been stunning. About a third of American babies are born into a mother-only constellation; in the four decades after 1960, that figure grew well over 500 percent.

And instead of twirling a finger in the air because you are concerned about child abuse and not single mothers, think again; most child abuse occurs at the hands of a non-parent in the home. Says Forrest Thigpen of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, "The most secure place for a child is in a home with two secure and married parents." This is not absolutely the case, but it holds true the vast majority of the time.

Want to "appropriately" recognize the Month of the Child in this state and around the country? Begin deciding today how to address the problem of illegitimate births in your state.

David Blankenhorn takes aim at this crisis in his book Fatherless America. He calls fatherlessness "the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse to domestic violence against women."

The biggest challenge, says Blankenhorn: This problem is frequently ignored or denied. "Especially within our elite discourse, it remains largely a problem with no name."

I have certainly noticed this lesson in our state, and in the nation at large. We want to talk about more money for education, not the familial element that contributes to falling scores. We want to talk about crime, not what most of the criminals have in common. We want to talk about child abuse, not the underlying reason for the harm done.

No politician that I know of has really addressed this problem of fatherlessness, nor has a prominent religious leader. We seem to be oblivious to what ails us.

Blessed is the man, says the Psalmist, whose quiver is full of sons.

Yes -- but it is time for society, churches, cultural leaders, politicians and anybody else that has a voice and some power to change their corner of the world to define "quiver" for the young men and women in this nation.

A quiver is a responsible marriage. Miss that and you will participate in the ruination of your state, your country.