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Some of the greatest novels - War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Red and the Black, Bread and Wine - exist around the essential struggle of the Grand Dichotomy. Warren Farrell's latest book, Father and Child Reunion, due out January 8, 2001, is not novel; it is fact that lives that great struggle between the two opposites of Fatherhood - its absence and its presence.
Over nine years ago, when I had not been able to see my daughter for over two years, I was in the depths of despair, torn between the pain I knew my little girl would suffer through an intense and continuing custody battle and the pain of her growing up fatherless. Right about this same time, her mother called me up to talk to our daughter. She had not eaten in four days "because her friends were making fun of her because she did not have a daddy." I was staring the devils of the day and the devils of the night in the face. I was ready to give up completely.
Warren Farrell gave me a set of statistics from a proposed chapter in his book "The Myth of Male Power" (which chapter was refused publication) - straight information, cold and
undeniable facts about the effects on children from growing up fatherless. He told me simply: "know this and if you still want to give up, you can." No one had ever given me permission to give up before, no one had told me that I had a choice. And once I knew the hard reality of Fatherlessness, I could not give up. The choice was easy. I have custody of my daughter today.
Father and Child Reunion is the culmination of thirteen years of research and at least nine years search for a publisher. Applaud the courage of Tarcher-Putnam. This book is the most important compilation of the effects of fatherhood on children that anyone interested in Family, Fathers or Children will ever find. It has a most generous set of footnotes citing authority, sources, and studies that allow the reader to think with essential truth.
There are many arguments about Why there is so much Fatherlessness in America, in the
World today. We need to get beyond the why. This book goes right to what happens because there is so much fatherlessness. The problem demands a solution.
What is that solution? Understand the cost of fatherlessness and make it as profitable for children to have that essential relationship with its father as it has been for the child not to have a father. The costs are horrendous - drugs, alcohol, suicide, crime, prisons, prostitution, divorce, more Father absence. Vicious, that circle. There have now been a few generations to verify the extent of the problem.
Warren Farrell has taken a few bold steps beyond the identification of the problem. He has come up with some thought provoking and challenging solutions. Real life solutions. Things we can all do starting today, every day in our own homes with our very own families. Before further problems surface. While the problem still has a solution.
Anyone who has a father or a child should read this book. Anyone who has a father or a child needs to five copies of this book to anyone who is a father or a mother. Anyone who has a father or a child must give copies of this book to their priest or minister, to their teachers and congresspersons, to every judge and attorney in town, to their doctors. Organize a book-fest for the sake of every child who has drawn a breath or will draw a breath in the future. It is that important.
My child has a father. Make sure every child you know has one too.
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