Men in Families Report

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | March 17, 2011

For years UN reports have tried to measure global “gender equality” by counting up how much housework men do each week. So it’s easy to dismiss a UN publication such as the new “Men in Families and Family Policy in a Changing World.” But there are some data in the report worth considering.

For example, while much is made at the UN about an “unmet need for family planning,” this report shows the opposite. For many men around the world there seems to be an unmet need for more kids.

The desired number of children for US men in 1991 (the last year data was shown) was 2.3, while the total fertility rate (TFR) in 1990 was 1.85.

Like men other developing nations, men in Benin wanted 6 children in 2000, while the TFR was only 5.79. Yet UN agencies consistently badger these countries to suppress fertility rates further, apparently against the desires of would-be fathers.

Also notable is the data showing how many children grow up without both parents. American children are about the worst off, with just 70.7 percent living with both mom and dad. This is worse than the OECD average of 84.1 (page 90). Only Estonian children fare worse, with just 66 percent intact families.

The US also boasts the second highest divorce rate in the world, behind Latvia, while Chile has best rate of intact marriages (page 88).

Like Ireland, which also has one of the world’s lowest divorce rates, Chile has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates. It would be interesting to see collaboration between the “Men in Families” researchers and maternal health researchers at centered at WHO.

If they found a correlation between intact mother-father families and improved maternal and child health, could we expect UN researchers to recommend policies supporting the traditional family?

We shouldn’t be too optimistic. The word “father” is noticeably downplayed in this report, most conspicuously from the title.

At one point the report claims “The term ‘family’ encompasses a variety of traditional and non-traditional groupings, including heterosexual and homosexual partnerships, biological and social parents and children, polygamous and polygynous relationships, close friends, and other relatives.”

Thus, there is a glaring disconnect between data that indicate the need for stronger mother-father families and the policy recommendation of looser definitions of the family.

Indeed, in the opening lines the researchers lament the fact that “despite an increasing worldwide focus on the role of men in families and burgeoning research documenting men’s contribution to gender equality,” social policy has nonetheless “attempted to deal with problems in such a way as to ensure the perpetuation of the very constructions of masculinity that had
produced those problems in the first place.”

If that perpetuation means bolstering men’s role as fathers, there could be reason for optimism after all.

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