Trees in the Lake

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Every week as I drive to and from Topeka, I pass a lake, a man-made lake. I know it is man-made, because sticking up out of the water are the skeletons of trees. Each time I see them, I wonder at the tenacity that keeps them upright. Their black arms and fingers stretch to the sky, but under the water there must be stubborn roots holding them straight. Why didn’t someone cut them down before damming up the river?

Too often, we come up with solutions in society that are like that lake. We flood the area with good intentions, but we fail to cut into the source of the problem and so it never goes away. One problem like that is fatherhood.

Recent studies have shown that seven in ten men who are incarcerated were the product of a family without a father. Think of that: seven in ten. More than half. Nearly three-quarters. I find that mind-boggling. We have known for a long time that children raised by single mothers have more trouble in school, are more likely to be juvenile offenders, and too often wind up in gangs. Until recently, those children have mostly been boys, but we are starting to see girl gangs now.

This flocking together is not a new phenomenon. What is new is that the initiations required are often violent and the gang members carry guns. A myriad of programs have tried to address the problem. Some believe in after-school centers where children can receive homework help or engage in sports in a secure environment. Some believe in midnight basketball to keep youths off the streets. Others support education, believing that classes in life skills will lead to better citizens.

The damage that leads to a life of crime is not done in the teenage years, however. It is done in earliest childhood, the time when children absorb the rules of life by watching the adults around them. If those adults are mostly immature teenage girls, the rules absorbed are not likely to be the ones we would wish for. Even if those adults do occasionally include the child’s father, that father is likely to be a teenage boy, and the child probably soaks in behaviors that will not lead to success in life.

So when we have teenage boys impregnating teenage girls and those girls trying to raise the resulting baby by themselves or with minimal help from their parents, we have a recipe for children who will grow up to repeat the patterns of self-indulgence and lack of discipline they have observed. Cutting those children loose from the roots of their behavior is a lot harder than helping them develop better core behaviors to begin with.

I’m not saying that there should be no programs to keep teenagers from sinking into gang violence or just general delinquency. Those programs are important. I am saying, however, that teenagers would need those programs less if we spent some time and effort on them as children. But who should provide that time and effort?

The best solution is for the child’s father to do so, but too often the child’s father not only doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know that he is needed. Many times, he doesn’t know what it means to be a man himself, so how is he going to teach his child?

We have many educational and support programs to help young women be better mothers, but few to help young men be better fathers. Maybe it’s time we re-examined those priorities. But we should help the young men as well as the young women, not instead of the young women. Children need two parents to learn from.

And if all children have them, maybe we won’t see so many trees in the lake.
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