NONFICTION - March 31, 1996

LIFE WITHOUT FATHER: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society by David Popenoe (Free Press: $25; 275 pp.) It is certainly true that there are more and more single-parent families, headed mostly by women, and more women choosing at some point in their lives and careers to make use of available technologies to have children alone. So the question that David Popenoe, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, raises is worth pondering: Do children need fathers? But although statistics cited here and elsewhere show the decline of the nuclear family, they do not indicate that the decline is entirely a matter of choice; most people would probably still prefer the home in which two biological parents cherish and lovingly raise their children. Fatherhood is shrinking, writes Popenoe, and the results are dangerous for children and for society. Fathers do things for and interact with their children in ways that mothers do not. Biological fathers are (in all but extreme situations) irreplaceable, and their removal from family life causes irreparable damage. “The proliferation of mother-headed families now constitutes something of a national economic emergency,” he writes, citing one recent study showing that children from “single-parent families or step-families were two to three times more likely to have emotional or behavioral problems than those who had both of their biological parents in the home.” Children of divorce exhibit everything from nightmares to lower test scores to lower physical health ratings. It is a terrifying deluge of statistics, causal relationships and unnecessarily defensive justifications for fatherhood. And although Popenoe is not entirely blind to the contexts in which the difficult decision to head a family alone can be made, the book would feel better balanced and slightly less hysterical were Popenoe to take a few more steps back into the homes that fathered single-parent families.