The core institution of society is fatherhood. Period. Every boy has a father. Every girl has a father. When those fathers are present, and especially when they are involved in their children’s lives on a much deeper level, children thrive. Common sense shows it. Research proves it. Society denies it.

Statistics demonstrate that children born outside of traditional family structures are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to become welfare-dependent adults, more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be poorer than their absent fathers, more likely to become violent criminals, and—if we dare to extrapolate from these facts—less likely to be happy adults constructing a better world for everyone else.

With such destructive effects, why does fatherlessness continue to ruin lives? Nationwide, a third of children are born to mothers who are unmarried. Four out of 10 children—more than 25 million—live without their biological fathers. But more and more children continue to grow up in non-families.

Why?

The truth is, there is an active and successful conspiracy aimed at reducing and ultimately destroying fatherhood.

Fatherlessness continues to destroy young people because leaders and experts will tell you it isn’t even a problem!

Rather than covering what happens when fathers disappear, our leaders and the media cover up the effects of fatherlessness, claiming there is no need for a traditional father, and that any “family” arrangement will suffice.

Thank you very much, scientific studies; thank you very much, common sense, but we won’t be needing a father.

Meanwhile, children growing up in fatherless homes and out on the streets continue to prove that conventional wisdom wrong—while they suffer as a result of it.

In “Deconstructing the Essential Father,” an article dating back to 1999, researchers Louise Silverstein and Carl Auerbach shed the cloak usually used to shroud the anti-father conspiracy, opting instead for a direct, full-on attack. The article asserted that fathers are obsolete and claims that “a wide variety of family structures can support positive child outcomes” (American Psychologist, June 1999).

If you wonder what that means, Silverstein and Auerbach explained, “Neither the sex of the adult(s), nor the biological relationship to the child has emerged as a significant variable in predicting positive development. One, none, or both of those adults could be a father (or mother).”

Elsewhere, the authors stated, “We acknowledge that our reading of the scientific literature supports our political agenda. Our goal is to generate public policy initiatives that support men in their fathering role, without discriminating against women and same-sex couples. We are also interested in encouraging public policy that supports the legitimacy of diverse family structures, rather than policy that privileges the two-parent, heterosexual, married family.”

This assault on family and fatherhood continued: “[W]e do not believe that the data support the conclusion that fathers are essential to child well-being, and that heterosexual marriage is the only social context in which responsible fathering is most likely to occur.”

“The social policy emerging out of the neoconservative framework,” Silverstein and Auerbach wrote, “is of grave concern to us because it discriminates against cohabiting couples, single mothers, and gay and lesbian parents.”

In 2000, the Association of Women in Psychology awarded Silverstein and Auerbach the Distinguished Publication Award for “Deconstructing the Essential Father.”

They received an award for destroying fathers.

Their work was just one blow among a million aimed at the same goal.

And unsurprisingly, fatherhood is failing. Millions of American children and children worldwide grow up with fathers who do not know and do not fulfill their God-ordained roles. Some simply disappear as soon as they hear “I’m pregnant.” Some are too absorbed in their careers to pay any attention to their children when they arrive home in the evening—or even just for the weekend. Some are worse for their families when they are home than when they are absent. Some try to be good fathers, letting their offspring have anything they like, yet their children still become failures, delinquents, criminals.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris, describes a giving, attentive, masculine—though imperfect—father. Millions of children desperately crave the attention, constructive discipline and even the restrictions with which Theodore Roosevelt Sr. governed his family.

Yet even the father of the dynamic, active, iconic 26th president of the United States did not understand the deep truth and awesome meaning behind fatherhood.

But don’t be discouraged. The anguish of our families and our society is simply the last labored gasps of a world that will soon have to admit that it hasn’t figured out how to live. Although fatherhood seems doomed in so-called advanced Western society today, those who would deconstruct it altogether are actually on the losing end.

Soon, the ultimate Father will intervene in human affairs, leaving the voluble and vituperative “experts” speechless. Through His Son, God the Father will re-establish family and fatherhood—which have been under attack since the very first family in Eden—as the core institutions of humanity. He will enforce His laws of love governing family.

As a result, men will learn to not live promiscuously, and embrace a role of leading and giving. A man will marry and love one woman, and together each will help the other grow. Men won’t dream of skipping town after witnessing the miracle of childbirth. They will put their wives and their children above their other pursuits, even their careers. The full, incredible human potential of each child living in this environment will be unlocked. Children everywhere will have a loving, giving, masculine, authoritative father to guide them not into the way they personally think is best, as Theodore Roosevelt Sr. did, but in the right way of living clearly commanded in God’s Word, the Holy Bible.

At that soon-coming time, the true meaning of the Bible will be revealed, covering our global society like deep waters blanket the sea floors.

The change between the children of today and the children of tomorrow will be even more brilliant, even more inspiring than the rise of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. from sickly invalid to adventurer and world leader. And the fathers of tomorrow will amaze and inspire even Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Don’t despair. Fatherhood is coming back!