By Kathy Athearn

“Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL — missing from too many lives and too many homes.” This was a statement by a presidential candidate. Was it former Vice President Mike Pence, who made this declaration? Senator Tim Scott? Vivek Ramaswamy? No, it actually wasn’t said during the recent Republican presidential debate. It was said in 2008 by then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Only 15 years ago, there was wide-held, bipartisan agreement that fathers were important for children to thrive in society. Sadly, you will find no such statement in the Democratic platform today. Instead, it is silent on marriage and family as the foundation of society; it fights for the radical LGBTQ agenda (which often intentionally leaves out fathers through its push for same-sex marriages), and it opposes school choice, including vouchers that enable parents to be able to take their kids out of failing public schools and allow them to attend private schools.

Conversely, the Republican platform fully supports natural marriage, nuclear families, and abstinence until marriage, recognizes that “[p]arents,” not the government, “are a child’s first and foremost educators,” and supports homeschooling, private schools, vouchers, and tuition tax credits.

During the Republican presidential debate on August 23, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said:

“The word ‘privilege’ gets used a lot. Well, you know what? I did have the ultimate privilege of two parents in the house with a focus on educational achievement, and I want every kid to enjoy that. So part of the problem is we also have a federal government that pays single women more not to have a man in the house than to have a man in the house — contributing to an epidemic of fatherlessness — and I think that goes hand in glove with the education crisis as well, because we have to remember, education starts with the family, and the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”

Thankfully, as a result of Ramaswamy’s passionate and well-received speech, Fox News featured at least two segments regarding the importance of nuclear families and fatherhood. On the August 29 segment of “Special Report with Bret Baier,” reporter William La Jeunesse interviewed a young mother who talked about how difficult it was for her to not have her father when she was growing up — wishing she had more stability. In contrast, her husband grew up in a traditional family and said that his father gave him and his siblings a lot of confidence. He went on to say that there is a big difference between his friends who were raised by their fathers and those who were not.

The “Special Report” segment revealed that in 1960, 5% of babies in the United States were born out of wedlock, whereas today about 40% of babies are born out-of-wedlock. Additionally, in the United States almost 30% of children are raised by a single parent. Worldwide, only 7% of children are raised by a single parent. Fatherlessness directly increases a child’s likelihood of living in poverty, having a teen pregnancy, abusing drugs or alcohol, dropping out of school, and going to prison.

Tragically, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, fatherlessness affects black children much more than any other race: half of all black children are being raised by a single parent — 46% percent of them by their mom and 4.5% by their dad. On her August 29 show, Laura Ingraham interviewed Madeline Brame, an African American who had been a loyal Democrat for 40 years because she says that was how she was told she was supposed to vote because she is black. But she changed her party affiliation to Republican in 2020 because she has conservative values: God, nuclear family, and country.

Project 21’s Horace Cooper, author of “How Biden’s Policies Harm Blacks,” was the second guest on August 29’s “The Ingraham Angle.” He observed that President Biden’s policies, including Bidenomics, put African Americans back in chains and compares the Big Government to a deadbeat dad. He says the best advice he can give is:

“Don’t partner with a deadbeat dad (Uncle Sam/Big Government/the check). This deadbeat dad does not care about your child. In fact, this deadbeat dad will push you to abort your child. This deadbeat dad is going to see that you live in the most corrupt and dangerous community possible. This deadbeat dad doesn’t put your interests first, it puts the Green Agenda first, the LGBTQ agenda first. Black Americans have found, under Biden, that their issues are going to the back of the political bus, and more and more black Americans realize the deadbeat dad is not the answer for them.”

More and more African Americans disapprove of Biden’s policies. A May ABC News-Washington Post poll found that just 52% of black respondents approved of Biden’s performance as president, down from 82% when he took office in 2021. In addition, “27% of black voters said they would probably or definitely vote for former President Donald Trump or lean toward him, over double his support in 2020. Trump won just 12% of the black vote in the last presidential election.”

As an increasing number of Americans — across racial lines — see the disastrous effects that Big Government/socialist/Marxist policies have on the country — especially families — it is crucial for Republican candidates in the coming year to speak as much as possible about the importance of fathers and the nuclear family which is, as Ramaswamy said, “the greatest form of governance known to mankind.”