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By Binyamin L. Jolkovsky
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --The igniters of a debate over the role of the "essential father" in contemporary
society have abandoned the airwaves and printed page, retreating instead to the safety
of cyberspace, where they are re-organizing.
And for good reason, American laity and its press simply are not buying bunk.
Writing on the Psychology of Women Resource List (POWR-L@pete.uri.edu),
the authors of the controversial "Deconstructing the Essential Father," the lead
article in the June number of the official publication of the American
Psychological Association, are pleading for help, claiming that they are
taking an "enormous amount of heat from the popular press," including the
Associated Press.
It is because of that flack, say professors Louise Silverstein and Carl Auerbach, that
they have been "put on the defensive."
In their plea, the two include "talking points" to be shared with
like-minded shrinks in hope of having some sort of bulwark (or, as the help-letter calls it, "support") in the academic community.
"We have decided not to get involved with the popular press, because no matter
how careful one tries to be, our words can be quoted out of context. Our agenda
is to stimulate scholarly debate," the two write in an e-mail obtained
by JewishWorldReview.com.
Indeed, that agenda includes pushing the belief that, among other things:
1)"Economics, not marriage" determines how well-adjusted children will be.
2) There is no "empirical support that marriage enhances fathering or that
marriage civilizes men and protects children."
3)That male-female marriage as an institution hurts women and children
because men waste family resources on "gambling, purchasing alcohol,
cigarettes, or other nonessential commodities" thereby "actually increasing
women's workload and stress level."
Only recently, the APA has begun to recover from the flap over another article the group published urging a
value-neutral approach to sex between adults and children. The group refuses to comment on the current controversy.
Critics of the research, including Dr. Wade F. Horn, JWR columnist and president
of the National Fatherhood Initiative, a
non-sectarian, non-partisan organization promoting "responsible fathering," say
the study is flawed because it was a "non-random sample" of only 200 people and that when
conducting such research "usually only
the most well-adjusted apply." That is, "if you were doing a study of marital
relationships, and advertised for subjects in the newspaper, very few wife
beaters would apply. In a similar vein, when asking for volunteers to
study, it is doubtful that many fathers would volunteer who are abusive or
neglectful. Hence, studying volunteer gay fathers would likely conclude
that all their kids are doing fine."
The two professors, who were to debate Dr. Horn on CNN, canceled minutes
before air time. They teach at Yeshiva University, the traditionally Orthodox
Jewish school in Manhattan, and openly declare in their paper that their
research is motivated by politics --- to serve as
ammunition in the struggle for the acceptance of nontraditional families
and against what it describes as the "neo-conservative" doctrine --- and that
the male-female family unit is not necessaerily the most effective in producing
well-adjusted offspring.
Their article specifically mentions the need to correct
"neo-conservative" belief in order to reverse "social policy initiatives"
that favor a traditional family structure that it claims "discriminates
against cohabiting couples, single mothers, and gay and lesbian parents."
In fact, the authors write in describing their conclusions, "our reading of the
science literature supports
our political agenda." And actually admit that "some of the research we cite to
support our perspective will turn out to be
incorrect."
Yet, despite the duo's very unorthodox belief, in another e-mail to the listserve,
Prof. Silverstein claims the two have received encouragement from their program
chairman and dean. And while members of Yeshiva's rabbinic faculty have
expressed their dismay over the beliefs being pushed by professors who teach in
schools that have mezuzahs on their doorposts, the university's president, Norman
Lamm, while paying lip-service to traditional Jewish belief, nevertheless defends
the paper in the name of academic freedom.
As if opposition from the rabbinic faculty at Yeshiva was not enough, a
conservative Christian group is attacking the professors for their report and
their "cover-up." Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values
Coalition, wrote a letter to Yeshiva President Lamm in which Rev. Sheldon
complained that Silverstein and Auerbach are engaged in "non-scientific,
ideological lobbying which fears the scrutiny of free people -- the same free
people whom (the report) concludes should be under more government control."
Yeshiva, Lamm said in a telephone interview from his summer home in the Catskills, "is a university which has academic freedom, and is not
responsible for what any individual faculty
members say or write, no matter how outrageous it may seem to me as president
or to the ethos of the university as a whole and its
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky is JWR's editor-in-chief. He can be reached by clicking here. Related: American
Psychological Association Prof. Louise B. Silverman Norman Lamm