Should men have the right to opt out on fatherhood?

Should men have the right to opt out on fatherhood?       

Everyone has a father but not everyone is a father. There are reasons why a person is not a father. Well, half of the world’s populations are female and not able to be fathers. Then there are quite a number of males who prefer to seek peace in the monk hood. We also have the biggest proportion of the mankind who are children and not yet be able to father. Last but not least are those who are not able or unwilling to father any child such as gays, transvestites, infertile, etc.  

        But those of us who have eventually made it to be fathers, how many are in fact fathering. Should men have the right to opt out on fatherhood? Across time and cultures, men abandon their children much more frequently than do mothers. In the United States today, about 40 percent of all children do not live with their fathers. Before they reach age eighteen, more than half of all U. S. children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhood living apart from their father.   How about fathers who live with their children? The same question remains. How many are in fact fathering? One survey estimates that 30 % of men today do not speak to their father1. Thirty percent have a prickly or hostile and difficult relationship.  Another survey suggested that the average time a father spend talking to their children is three minutes a day2.  

        This is quite true to my own self experience. Born in a family of old Chinese culture with strict fatherhood teaching, father was someone I could hardly have an intimate relation with. The old Confucius teaching of – (the King wants his servant to die, he must. Father wants his child dead, he must) was things I heard often in my childhood and is still echoing in my ears sometimes.  

        Now, put your hand on your left chess, touch your heart and ask yourself, “Should men have the right to opt out on fatherhood?”

Or go back a few years back while you were still with your father and ask yourself the same question, “Should men have the right to opt out on fatherhood?”

How can men be so cruel to even think of such a question to ask is beyond my imagination? Those who actually opt out on fatherhood will not only be punished by his conscience but will have to face God’s judgment too.   

        This is indeed a serious and urgent problem in all cultures and societies in our modern time on fatherhood. It is a big issue probably more important than global warming or energy crisis or Iraq war. Fathering is a basic and foremost duty of mankind. We can certainly reduce substantial social woes and wipe out completely many other undesired world catastrophes if we would only take up the issue seriously.