HUSBANDS? WHO ARE THEY?: David Blankenhorn

In Sunday's NYT, a front-page story says that U.S. Latinas are "shifting to smaller families." Accompanying the story is a nice photo of a young Latina woman, Rocio Yniguez, and two of her children.

What's amazing about the story is that it says next to nothing about fathers. Ms. Yniguez is obviously a single mother, but the point is not mentioned in the piece. A couple of times, in discussing the decision-making of these young women, the report refers to "boyfriends"--in one comment, in which the reporter can barely hide her disdain, we learn that some Latina women "still" believe that having lots of children will "keep their men faithful"--but basically, men are absent from this story. Husbands are completely absent, except for a casual mention of the fact that Ms. Yniguez’s mother (you know, one of the older set, with all those kids) happens to have had, you know, a husband.

It's as if the reporter never heard of the fact--or perhaps more precisely, is straining hard to avoid by ostentatiously ignoring what she considers to be a bad fact--that babies have fathers as well as mothers and that across human societies, including in the U.S., it is considered normative for children to be connected to their fathers as well as their mothers, typically through marriage. ...

By the way, as a simple empirical matter, doesn’t it seem likely that the spread of father-absence might have something to do with the trend toward smaller Latina families? Oh, well.

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posted by Eve at 5:26 PM VOTE

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