Date:         Sun, 16 Jun 96 07:35:04 EDT
From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Organization: Central Michigan University
Subject:      Father's Day in a Motherless Land
To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY <SOCGRAD@CSF.COLORADO.EDU>
Message-Id:   <960616.081516.EDT.34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Father's Day is a non-event for most people in America.  Some 14%
of the population take it seriously enough to spend a dollar on a
card and a quarter on a stamp...others ignore it assiduously.

I would like to do two things for those of you who are interested in
holy days and holidays.  First, a few observations on the political
economy of patriarchy and family values...then a poem...one of the
very few written for fathers...millions for mothers but not one
line for fathers...more about which later.

The Political Economy of Patriarchy and a Lament for Institution-
alized Cruelty:

1.  Gender Inequality and the historical role of father emerged with
    settled agriculture some 40,000 years ago...that role was one of
    control of property; land, water, buildings, tools, herds, woods,
    and other features of the natural world upon which claims of
    ownership could be levied and enforced.

2.  Women and children became property of males in patriarchical
    societies; men do not protect 'their' women...they protect the
    property value of women on the current marriage market.

    As property, men came to have the traditional rights of usafruct;
    the right to use, abuse and gather the fruit of the labor of
    women and children.

3.  Property rights over animals and human beings is not an easy
    right to enforce.  It takes cruelty, force, violence and close
    control of food and other resources to get such feisty creatures
    to obey the will of the father.

4.  Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution changed all that.  In a
    moment, the ancient rights and privileges of males; the ancient
    norms, roles and statuses of fathers became dissolved.  As women
    and children were brought into the labor market, they came to
    possess resources of their own...outside the control of the
    father/husband/Head of Household.

5.  When males/fathers/husbands do not mediate their relationship
    to the means of production, they become irrelevant...apart from
    some thin emotional gratitude for biological transfers or
    some faint remembrance of kind deeds in childhood, fathers are
    motherless in mass societies...few claim them as significant
    to the human project.

6.  This transformation of the status of the father from Patriarch
    to non-person has been slow and continues as we pause to cele-
    brate Father's Day.  With the passage of Women's Property Laws
    in England and the Americas in the late 19th century, women
    began their long journey from a fatherless family to a father-
    less land.

    Now ever more children are without fathers; and, as time goes
    by, more and more will be without mothers...hostages to the
    good life; hostages to fortune.  Both motherhood and fatherhood,
    as social forms are destroyed/subverted by the market and by the
    state.

7.  The State plays an increasing role in the control of children as
    patriarchy fails and as matriarchy erodes.  Health, education,
    crime and social control migrate from the father to the State.

    And, as the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state continues, the
    state withdraws support for fatherless children...and passes
    laws directing that young women abstain from sex and from
    pregnancy...Light a Penny Candle from  a Star!

6.  But in a land devoid of family feeling; in a land in which
    property rights trump human rights, something must be done with
    those children surplus to the labor market; surplus to the
    life style of the person who fathered them; surplus to the
    budget priorities of the state; surplus to the nation in which
    they were born.

     In Michigan, the solution is to declare them adults and to put
    them in prison.  Jonathan Swift would be delighted at this
    happy solution; George Orwell would roll in his grave at this
    use of the language.

7.  So, today we celebrate Father's Day in a Motherless Land.  And
    wonder why our children deny us.

                        *************************

I do have one poem which praises Father....my own advice to men
who feel badly that their children do not write to them...or call
them on Father's Day is to do as I did...I decided that it would
be better to be a mother to my children than to be a father...so
I did.  They like me better since I ceased to play the father
role...I get cards, calls and poems like this:

              TO MAKE SPRING DANCE

   My father moved through dooms of love,
   through sames of am through haves of give,
    singing each morning our to each night,
   my father moved through deeps of height.

     And should some why completely weep,
    my father's fingers brought her sleep.
      vainly no smallest voice might cry,
     for he could make the mountains grow.

   His flesh was flesh his blood was blood
   no hungary man but wished him food.
   no cripple wouldn't creep a mile
      uphill to only see him smile.

   his sorrow was as true as bread,
   no liar looked him in the head.
    if every friend became his foe,
   he'd laugh and build a world of snow.

   My father moved throught theys of we,
   singing each new leaf out of each tree
   and every child was sure that spring
   danced when she heard my father sing.

                      e.e. cummings  1940

                               with love to all the children,  TR