David Blankenhorn

About the author: David Blankenhorn is the president of the Institute for American Values, a family advocacy organization in New York City, and the author of Fatherless America.

Almost half of America's children live with only one of their parents, usually their mother. The increasing absence of fathers is a serious social problem. Americans should take steps to increase the proportion of families with two married parents.

Married fatherhood is disintegrating in our society. Tonight, 40 percent of American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live. This historically unprecedented estrangement of adult males from their children and from the mothers of their children is the most harmful social trend of our generation.

A fatherhood movement

That's the bad news. The good news is that we may be witnessing the emergence...