David Blankenhorn Quotes

• Even with all its problems, I will support marriage as an institution until something better comes along.

  David Blankenhorn

  Marriage, Support, Problem

  46 Copy quote

• The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.

  David Blankenhorn

  Children, Growing Up, Father

  53 Copy quote

• The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the twentieth century is the re-creation of fatherhood as avital social role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American experiment. For unless we reverse the trend of fatherlessness, no other set of accomplishments--not economic growth or prison construction or welfare reform or better schools--will succeed in arresting the decline of child well-being and the spread of male violence. To tolerate the trend of fatherlessness is to accept the inevitability of continued social recession.

  David Blankenhorn

  Children, School, Men

  13 Copy quote

• Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal.

  David Blankenhorn

  Children, School, Two

  8 Copy quote

• The most urgent domestic challenge facing the United States at the close of the 20th century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a social role for men.

  David Blankenhorn

  Men, Challenges, Fatherhood

  4 Copy quote

• Defining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles.

  David Blankenhorn

  Father, Winning, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• When a man does not live with his children and does not get along with the mother of his children, his fatherhood becomes essentially untenable, regardless of how he feels, how hard he tries, or whether he is a good guy. Almost by definition, he has become de-fathered.

  David Blankenhorn

  Mother, Children, Men

  5 Copy quote

• More broadly across time and cultures, it seems, one perennial piece of advice to father has been the importance of acting tenderly toward their children. The New Father, it turns out, is an old story.

  David Blankenhorn

  Children, Father, Advice

  6 Copy quote

• We’ve been fighting about gay marriage for what, 15-20 years now. Is there any evidence that fighting gay marriage is contributing to a greater appreciation among the broad society of the marital institution? Is there any evidence that the re-institutionalization of marriage is happening as a result of opposing gay marriage? And the best answer I can give to that is 'no.'

  David Blankenhorn

  Appreciation, Fighting, Gay

  7 Copy quote

• To recover the fatherhood idea, we must fashion a new cultural story of fatherhood. The moral of today's story is that fatherhoodis superfluous. The moral of the new story must be that fatherhood is essential.

  David Blankenhorn

  Fashion, Ideas, Fatherhood

  6 Copy quote

• Legislators in Kansas, Arizona and 23 other states who are properly determined to protect religious freedom can begin by asking themselves: Does any religious conviction justify denying lesbians and gays a basic legal promise of non-discrimination in hiring, public accommodations, and housing? Surely the answer to this question is no. Correcting that inequity would begin the process of recognizing that both sides - gay couples and religious objectors - have rights and that reasonable accommodation is possible only when both sides have something to gain.

  David Blankenhorn

  Religious, Couple, Gay

  4 Copy quote

• A good father does these basic things: provides for his family, protects his family, and gives spiritual and moral guidance.

  David Blankenhorn

  Spiritual, Father, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• We would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.

  David Blankenhorn

  Sex, Would Be

  David Blankenhorn (2013). “The Future of Marriage”, p.2, Encounter Books

  6 Copy quote

• Commenting on paternity establishment programs: What these millions of children want and need is not a name on a form or a promise that the sheriff will arrest these guys if they don't pay child support. What they want and need is in-the-home, love-the-mother fathers,. . .

  David Blankenhorn

  Mother, Children, Father

  4 Copy quote

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