A prominent scholar who once sat on the board of the National Organization for Women is now sounding the alarm on what he calls a “crisis” of fatherlessness.
While feminists often call for society to “dismantle the patriarchy,” Warren Farrell, who has taught at seven universities, said he has tracked a dismantling of fatherhood in many communities that has wreaked a devastating toll on boys and men, including a rise in gangs, homelessness and domestic and foreign terrorism.
During the 1970s, Farrell served on the board of NOW, the liberal feminist group co-founded by Betty Friedan. While he was traveling the world speaking about the importance of feminism,” Farrell told “Just the News AM” television program, women — “teachers, usually” — would come up to him after his speeches and say, “You know, in my classroom, the boys are having more problems than the girls.”
He delved deeper into the problem to write a book, “The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It.”
Farrell identified 10 causes of “the boy crisis,” but he found that holding constant for all other variables, fatherlessness — what he calls “dad-deprivation” — was the driving factor in social ills ranging from drug dealing to susceptibility to ISIS recruitment. Farrell said his research showed “that 85 to 90% of the mass shooters had two things in common: They were male, and they were also dad-deprived.”