Essayist Mary Eberstadt has examined the rise of violence in cities, and noted a correlation with youth being raised with no father in the home.\u00a0\u00a0Currently 25 percent of all children, and 65 percent of African American children, are raised in homes where the father is absent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, here\u2019s a new theory: The explosive events of 2020 are but the latest eruption along a fault line running through our already unstable lives. That eruption exposes the threefold crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and patria, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This disruption can be seen on both the extreme right and the extreme left.\u00a0\u00a0Gangs are one of the outcomes of absent parents.\u00a0\u00a0Another is the \u201cstreet families\u201d in Portland, OR, home of some of the worst violence in 2020:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cStreet families\u201d are an especially toxic variant of the current voguish phrase, \u201cchosen families.\u201d Street families are like gangs: poor and desperate substitutes for the real thing, called into being by the absence of the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n