Dennis Prager Show - From "Father Knows Best" to "Fathers Are Unnecessary"
Aired: 2021-06-09
Duration: 04:49


=== Are Fathers Necessary? (04:41) ===

[00:00:00]  Anyway, apropos of the subject, the subject is not, are fathers necessary?
[00:00:07]  That's tangential.
[00:00:09]  We all know they are.
[00:00:10]  They're unbelievably necessary.
[00:00:12]  The question is, how did it develop that people would think they're not?
[00:00:17]  We went from Father Knows Best, a major sitcom of the 50s, to Fathers Are Unnecessary, Inside of a Generation.
[00:00:25]  And apropos of this...
[00:00:27]  Ali has a magnificent documentary now available.
[00:00:31]  It's at SalemNow.com as it happens.
[00:00:33]  The Streets from My Father, about fathers, and about God for that matter.
[00:00:38]  And my video was up at PragerU this week, also about fathers being necessary.
[00:00:46]  So we're talking about how this happened.
[00:00:51]  And you gave a very important and honest answer, saying it wasn't just ideology.
[00:00:57]  Because there are bad fathers.
[00:00:59]  There are abandoning fathers.
[00:01:01]  There are molesting fathers.
[00:01:05]  All of this is true.
[00:01:06]  But as I said, it's like saying, because there are so many car accidents, we don't need cars.
[00:01:14]  One has nothing to do with the other.
[00:01:17]  And so it's mostly been ideology.
[00:01:20]  All right, let me take some calls here, and of course, I'd like you to react as well, obviously, Lee.
[00:01:27]  Kim in Castaic, California.
[00:01:29]  Hi.
[00:01:31]  Hi, how are you?
[00:01:32]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:01:34]  Thank you.
[00:01:35]  So I just had this conversation with my best friend of 35 years.
[00:01:39]  I grew up with my dad, my grandparents, my grandfathers, both of them, seven uncles.
[00:01:45]  She grew up with...
[00:01:47]  No father in the house, no male, just her mother, her grandmother, her aunties.
[00:01:53]  And she just told me the other day that her daughter, she thinks, is a lesbian.
[00:01:58]  And we had a conversation about that.
[00:02:01]  But she felt like it's because her father was not a good father and she didn't really allow her father to parent.
[00:02:10]  It's like she protected her daughter from the father as if, you know, he wasn't needed.
[00:02:17]  And I've seen her basically teach her daughters now, a next generation of young black girls, that men are not necessary.
[00:02:25]  Fathers are not necessary.
[00:02:27]  And I think that my theory on that is because it justifies, in her case, her bad decision making and her values that she was taught.
[00:02:38]  which I think are wrong.
[00:02:40]  And I think that that's why a lot of black women accept That's fascinating.
[00:02:59]  So first, let me comment quickly on the lesbian issue, because I distinguish, I've done massive research on homosexuality.
[00:03:12]  Last 15 years, no, not 15, 25 years ago, I wrote a 17,000-word essay on the subject.
[00:03:20]  And I believe that female homosexuality and male homosexuality have little in common.
[00:03:29]  They have some things in common.
[00:03:30]  They're obviously both same-sex attraction.
[00:03:34]  But I think female sexuality is not as...
[00:03:40]  Built in, to use a non-scientific term, as male homosexuality.
[00:03:45]  But in any event, I just wanted to comment on that.
[00:03:48]  But again, there's a lot of dysfunction, unfortunately, in the black community with regard to fathers.
[00:03:59]  And she is saying, this black woman who just called, it leads to some bad decisions like, men are not necessary, I'll have a baby anyway.
[00:04:08]  I think, though, Lee, that the government and policies have added a tremendous amount, unfortunately, of substance to that belief, I don't need a man.
[00:04:21]  Any thoughts?
[00:04:22]  No, there's no doubt.
[00:04:24]  Look, when you have welfare rules that reward a woman for keeping the man away, and that if the man joins and they earn just enough money, they lose all their health benefits.

=== Faith of the Fatherless: 1999 (00:22) ===

[00:04:34]  They lose their medical benefits.
[00:04:35]  There are actually incentives that just...
[00:04:37]  Cut the wrong way for folks.
[00:04:39]  But, you know, Dennis, back to that experience.
[00:04:41]  It was a tremendous book, and I know you did this back when the book came out in 1999 called Faith of the Fatherless.
[00:04:47]  All right, hold it there.
[00:04:48]  Hold it there, Lee Habib.