The Crisis and Challenge of ending Father Absence

When Mama Is Daddy: The Male Crisis and Challenge of Ending Father Absence has become a bestseller on Amazon. The book has started off so well and I look forward in the days ahead to sharing it with more readers.

• Father absence is a factor in nearly everything we do in this country.

That might sound like I’m overstating the problem, but I’m not. Father absence — the state of being where the father is not in the home or emotionally available — affects how our taxes are spent, how our churches serve, how our schools teach.

• Research says we spend $100 billion a year in tax dollars on father absence and its impact.

This is just a conservative estimate. It factors in certain government programs that serve the needs of single-parent homes and their children, but it doesn’t factor in lost income potential due to father absence and other effects.

Churches have ministries that serve the poor or those in single-parent homes. These ministries help make sure children get shoes and mothers have food. These ministries include food pantries, clothing drives, etc.

Our educational system has after-school programs aimed at serving the needs of at-risk children — most likely from fatherless homes. They try to offer programs and projects to keep the children out of trouble.

I’m not overstating the problem.

• In fact, I see father absence as such a big problem that I’ve dedicated my life’s work to raising awareness about it.

My new book When Mama is Daddy takes a hard look at father absence, the reasons for it, and offers solutions to men and women for ways to address it.

In the book, I challenge men to become accountable and responsible in their children’s lives, and I also share some insights with single moms and women on raising their sons and the drawbacks of trying to do it all alone.

Men leave their families for many reasons.

Among those reasons are:

• The parental bond isn’t strong enough

• Unresolved conflict with the mother

• Family court helps push the father away

• Intergenerational father absence

• The expectation and control issues of the Mother

• Illicit drug involvement and incarceration

• Loss of income

• Demanding work schedule or relocation issues

• New relationship conflict

We are also living in such a time where many would have us believe that men are vanishing or are completely unnecessary

• This is a dangerous and half-baked idea.

It is dangerous because of the imminent diminished quality of life for everyone on the planet without men. While the curtailment of male entitlements and the expansion of women’s employment opportunities, and educational, legal, and economic attainments have transformed American life, this hardly signals that men are unnecessary.

• The presence — or absence — of a father can determine how his children will view life, love, family, and relationships for the rest of their lives.

While single mothers can and have been raising their children alone for quite some time now, I believe it is time for men to rise up and be present with their children physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually.

In the weeks ahead I plan to share with you some thoughts on what men can do to help end father absence.

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If you’ve not had a chance to download your copy of:

When Mama is Daddy: The Male Crisis and Challenge of Ending Father Absence, by Kenneth Osborne, PhD

Order on Amazon now.

If you would prefer an autographed copy of the print book, please drop me a request at:

Therapeutic Justice Institute

21037 Coventry Circle

Shorewood, Il 60404

You can also use your Visa, MasterCard, or American Express by dialing

708-527-4282

If you would like to invite me to speak about the topic of this book — father absence and its impact — at your conference, convention, retreat, or other events, please BOOK an introductory call or email me at authorkennethlosborne@gmail.com

In Search of My Father

I promised my story of father absence in the last post.

• Here it is, excerpted from my forthcoming book, When Mama Is Daddy: The Male Crisis and Challenge of Ending Father Absence:

“My mother had four boys. My two older brothers had the same father, but my younger brother and I did not. My older brothers lost their father in their early teens due to a horrible accident on a construction work site. I don’t believe either of them ever recovered from this horrific loss. Their unresolved pain eventually led them to poor life choices and terrible deaths much too soon. Their father was the only man my mom would ever marry.

“My mom was Mississippi born and raised. She was that stereotypical picture of the ‘strong’ and alone black mother who endured all to take care of her kids. I can recall my mother saying, ‘I’m your mama and your daddy’ often to my brothers and me growing up. On the one hand, I wondered how that was possible and on the other, the statement didn’t seem all that unusual. When she disciplined, it could be cruel and occasionally over the top. She didn’t play. This is often what happens when mothers are left to raise their children alone.

• Despite this, I knew she loved us.

“My father was already married with children when they met, but he was not with his family. My mother and he courted, and I was conceived a year before the passing of my grandmother. My mother told me I was born on Mother’s Day weekend, and that I was her Mother’s Day present.

“My father was already married with children when they met, but he was not with his family. My mother and he courted, and I was conceived a year before the passing of my grandmother. My mother told me I was born on Mother’s Day weekend, and that I was her Mother’s Day present.

“I met my father when I was 29. A cousin found him for me in Milwaukee. I called him. He acknowledged me, and I flew into Chicago to meet him, to finally lay eyes on the man with whom I shared genetic material, but no life experience. I was looking at all the well-dressed older black men who walked by, hoping one of them was him. I was still playing the tape in my head of things my mother told me about this smart, handsome, well-dressed guy.

• I was looking for Billie Dee Williams, but the man I found was more like Fred Sanford.

My father walked up, looked me up and down, and said, ‘Yeah, you mine. You look just like my goddamn brother. The car is this way,’ he gestured. ‘Come on.’

“My heart sank and disappointed doesn’t begin to accurately capture the feeling I had in the long car ride to Wisconsin. I was pissed and God and I were having a looong conversation all the way there.

“I began to share with him what I was doing with my life. Growing up, my accomplishments, my battle with drugs, going to rehab, and working with recovering people at that time as a substance abuse counselor in a psychiatric hospital. He was trying to get his mind wrapped around what I did, so he asked whether I was a doctor or something like that. I said no, more like a messenger helping people out the way I was helped. His reply was ‘humph’ and we continued our ride.

“Upon our arrival into town, he took me to his favorite hangout, the….tavern. I figured this was going to be a test of my truthfulness surrounding my sobriety, but it was far from that.

Walking in like he was the prince of the city, he promptly announced: ‘Hey err-body, this my son. He a goddamn doctor.’

• “I told him to stop lying, that I was not a doctor.

• “‘Who the *%$@ cares!?!’ he shrugged. ‘I say you a doctor, so you a doctor.’

“The interaction was funny when I look back on it. It was his way of saying he was proud of me. In the back of my mind, I thought, Wow that’s where I got lying and exaggerating from. The way he walked into the tavern like he owned the joint reminded me of my shenanigans when I was out there bad.

• “Our time together helped to fill many pieces of the missing puzzle of my life.

Perhaps one of the most crucial things I learned was we left home at an early age for almost the exact same reasons. He shared with me that when he was 13 growing up in Arkansas he had done something around the house that met with his mother’s displeasure. He said he was tied up to the front of the house where he lived and was severely beaten. He said he ran away and never returned to live there again. Damn…13 years old and out there on his own, I thought. That didn’t make any sense to me.

“When I was 17 there was no such thing as public smoking laws. You could smoke any and everywhere. Your clothing would often reek of secondhand smoke, as was the case with me. My mother would drill me daily about whether I was smoking cigarettes. She would lie and say other adults saw me smoking. I dreaded being sent to the store or outside. I would go down the household goods aisle in the grocery store spraying Lysol in the fur of my parka, which secondhand smoke seemed to love, praying this woman would not smell smoke on me when I got home.

• One day, thoroughly convinced I was smoking, my mother severely beat and stomped me. I had reached a point of no return. I had to leave.

The physical, psychological, and emotional abuse of my teens served as great fodder in the development of my extremely high tolerance for pain and misery.

“I watched my mother experience all kinds of heartache and disappointment with my brothers. I certainly didn’t want to repeat those heartaches for her. But I could no longer live there. We used to laugh when she would say, ‘boy I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out.‘

“I was no longer laughing. So I saved up enough money from my after-school job and shortly after turning 18, I moved out to take on my new-found role as father and life partner. I was looking for love, looking for a family to belong to, and filled with dread and insecurity.

• Without question, this was definitely a design for disaster. I was between a rock and a hard place.”

And so that was my story, as shared in When Mama Is Daddy: I grew up in a home without a dad, found him, only to see in him my own frailties.

My young life seemed to repeat his pattern, as I left home after an altercation with my mother, just as he had done in his own youth. It seemed that my father, though he was absent for much of my life, was somehow programmed into some part of my DNA.

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If you’ve not had a chance to download your copy of:

When Mama is Daddy: The Male Crisis and Challenge of Ending Father Absence, by Kenneth Osborne, PhD

Order on Amazon now.

If you would prefer an autographed copy of the print book, please drop me a request at:

Therapeutic Justice Institute

21037 Coventry Circle

Shorewood, Il 60404

You can also use your Visa, MasterCard, or American Express by dialing

708-527-4282

If you would like to invite me to speak about the topic of this book — father absence and its impact — at your conference, convention, retreat, or other events, please BOOK an introductory call or email me at authorkennethlosborne@gmail.com

Women Need Men — Period

Women are doing their thing. They are graduating from college at a higher rate than men. They own homes and can do things stereotypically reserved for men. Today, women are founders of organizations and company presidents.

In many areas, women seem to have it going on.

• But do women need men?

Of course, they do! Now, before you start to think I’m tripping, hear me out. I’ve heard from women that it is possible for a woman to survive and do well without a man; however, they also state that this is often done out of necessity. Truth be told, your social, educational, and financial elevation should not be translated into a lack of necessity of men. With the old control paradigm shattered that many of us participated in, men are left to discern: What is it we need to do now?

Men and women need each other in order to help balance out life. This should not be dumbed down to a one-or-the-other proposition.

• I can’t imagine a world with Michelle but no Barack, Angelina but no Brad, Jada but no Will, Lucy but no Desi.

The bill of goods being sold is that women can live in an age of peace and prosperity, have more money in their pockets, enjoy great careers, reproduce through the wonders of science, and enjoy social freedom and expression uninterrupted by men.

• This idea is lulling many women into a false sense of believing that the world can do just fine without men.

This false notion is fed by an undercurrent of anger and resentment surrounding historical male dominance, privilege, exploitation, greed, war, and the left-up toilet seat.

A world without men would imbalance every corner of our social and cultural development.

• You need us to grow up and face our fears.

• You need us to be consistent.

• You need us to walk beside you in this life, not ahead of you.

• You need us to feel and stop acting like machines or losing the power of speech when talk of feelings comes up.

• You need us to help make the world safe.

• You need us to realize taking care of our children is more than just paying child support.

• You need us to stop leering and staring at you in full-tilt lust, and remember that there is a head, heart, and emotions attached to your body.

Much of modern civilization as we know it exists because of what men have built. I believe it is unconscionable for anyone to stand and declare women do not need men who stand in homes, airplanes, trains, and buses; who drive cars, use computers, take medicines, utilize technologies, or connect to power sources created, built by, maintained, and improved upon by men.

• Like it or not, the quality of all lives is better when men are around.

I say these things not to diminish the accomplishments of women, but I am just pointing out the obvious.

So, despite this idea of the modern woman who is able to do and have it all alone, reality doesn’t support that. Women are amazing beings and have accomplished much in the last generation, but when it comes to eliminating men from the picture, just because you can do it doesn’t make it a good idea.

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If you’ve not had a chance to download your copy of:

When Mama is Daddy: The Male Crisis and Challenge of Ending Father Absence, by Kenneth Osborne, PhD

Order on Amazon now.

If you would prefer an autographed copy of the print book, please drop me a request at:

Therapeutic Justice Institute

21037 Coventry Circle

Shorewood, Il 60404

You can also use your Visa, MasterCard, or American Express by dialing

708-527-4282

If you would like to invite me to speak about the topic of this book — father absence and its impact — at your conference, convention, retreat, or other events, please BOOK an introductory call or email me at authorkennethlosborne@gmail.com