Is Patriarchy Inevitable?

Answers Secular & Religious
by Allan C. Carlson

These seem to be hard times for the would-be patriarch. The "family wage" system that formerly rewarded the father as "head of the household" has been undermined by equal employment and equal pay statutes. Title IX rules have mandated that much of the once male-dominated athletic world be turned over to the women. Fallout from the #MeToo campaign has discouraged even legitimate male quests to find an appropriate mate. The Boy Scouts organization now produces neutered "scouts." Ritalin tames aggressive little boys. Feminist propaganda celebrating female steelworkers and combat soldiers alongside male childcare givers and stay-at-home dads—this material fills school textbooks. . . .

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Allan C. Carlson is the John Howard Distinguished Senior Fellow at the International Organization for the Family. His most recent book is Family Cycles: Strength, Decline & Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000 (Transaction, 2016). He and his wife have four grown children and nine grandchildren. A "cradle Lutheran," he worships in a congregation of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. He is a senior editor for Touchstone.

more on fatherhood from the online archives

32.2—March/April 2019

The Boy Genius

Finding Him Again Through the Patriarchal Group by Anthony Esolen

14.1—January/February 2001

Fatherhood Uprooted

A Sociologist Looks at Fatherlessness & Its Causes by David Blankenhorn

21.4—May 2008

Attention Deficit

on the Absence That Ritalin Can’t Cure by Bruce D. Woodall

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