Single Mothers and Power

A claim has been made, and continues to be made, that children need their fathers or else their “oedipal tendencies” will turn them into hoodlums. Barack Obama was raised without a father; yet he became the President of the United States.

With parenting, as with anything else, it is how it is done that matters. If a father is non-abusive, then yes, children should have the benefits of his company; and I for one enjoy a wonderful relationship with my daughter. That is not however the case with parents who are abusive.

Leaving aside for now the issue of whether there is even such a thing as Oedipal tendencies, most punks aren't punks because they love their mothers and hate their fathers. They are punks because they think that punk is power. Of course they are completely wrong; and most of them wind up in prison or getting shot. That does however give us something to work with.

If a person is driven by power, then there are many legitimate ways in which this power can be obtained. They can go into business; they can go into politics; they can go into the military. All these pursuits afford a legitimate way toward power. Being a gangster does not.

Barack Obama is vastly more powerful than any gang leader, or all of them taken together. That is because he made right choices in his life. He studied hard, he worked hard, and he put his mind to understanding and solving people's problems. Here is a black man, raised by a single mother, who got to the top of the world. Both the people on the Right who think that only people raised in nuclear families can be fine, and the people in the inner city who think that their disadvantages are too great to be overcome, are refuted by his example.

The solution to the problems of inner city is not forcing women to stay with violent men, but getting the young people to think straight. Over the long term, it is the productive and not the destructive forces that win. A person can be successful whether or not he has had a father in the house. And in a country whose most successful citizen was raised by a single mother, it should be possible for many other people raised by single mothers to also achieve.