David Brooks is a prominent columnist for the New York Times, America's leading liberal organ.  But he's also managed to cultivate a reputation as a centrist, by tipping his hat occasionally to the right and thereby earning the affection of its political and religious leaders.

I have no reason to doubt Brooks' earnestness, but I've always felt that his centrism was born from intellectual timidity rather than thorough analysis and sound judgment.  Consider Brooks' June 16, 2017, column entitled "Why Fathers Leave Their Children" (published two days before Father's Day).  The column tries to give a voice to one of the most maligned segments of society: deadbeat dads.

That Brooks would attempt even a minor rehabilitation of fathers who abandon their children is admirable in its own right, and certainly speaks to Brooks' moderating impulses.  He is not afraid to find an overlooked perspective and examine it.

In this case, he begins by pointing out that absentee fathers are generally unhappy about having no relationship with their children.  This is an important initial note: these men abandoned their children regretfully not gleefully.  Moreover the abandonment occurs not in a moment as a rash decision but gradually over time — the slow disintegration of emotional bonds.  

Obviously, the saga begins when the man initiates a sexual relationship with a woman.  They use contraception at first but become less worried about that as their emotional bond grows stronger.  Inevitably, the woman becomes pregnant — but interestingly, three-quarters of future deadbeats dads are excited by that news.  Maybe this shouldn't surprise us: the birth of a child represents a turning point in life, a moment to assume responsibility, gain respect and have purpose.

So what goes wrong?  According to Brooks, "The key weakness is not the father’s bond to the child; it’s the parents’ bond with each other."  The father's commitment to his child becomes difficult to maintain when his commitment to the child's mother wanes.

To be sure, mother and father likely both bear some blame for their break-up, but in any event the children will stay with the mother.  And eventually she invites another man to move in, a man who – practically speaking – assumes the father's day-to-day role.  And at that point, neither the mother nor her new lover are enthusiastic about the father's continuing presence; the mother resents the demise of their relationship, while the new boyfriend views him as a rival.

Understandably, the mother still wants the father's money to support his child — but once he feels the most important thing he contributes is a paycheck... well, it depersonalizes the whole relationship, and soon the father's emotional bonds to his child begin to dissolve.  After all, now someone else is raising the child every day, and he's just a faceless provider of monthly checks, like another branch of the government.

Brooks views this gradual unwinding as an avoidable tragedy.  The fathers' "goals and values point them in the right direction" — but those goals and values gain no traction because the fathers are "stuck in a formless romantic anarchy."  (Formless?  What an interesting word, Mr. Brooks....  We'll return to that momentarily.)  He acknowledges that this pattern is destructive for everyone involved; after all, "the stable two-parent family is what we want."  So how do we change things, Mr. Brooks?

Before I criticize him, let me first commend him for at least having timidly taken a few steps in the right direction.  Rather than jump to institutional racism or heartless multinationals or any of the left's other favorite scapegoats, Brooks acknowledges that the first cause of the breakdown of the American family is the most obvious and least conspiratorial one: individuals choose to break up.  He is to be commended for noting that the deadbeat emperor has no clothes.

But Brooks loses the courage of his convictions when he suggests what we should do to help renew the stability and longevity of poor families.  He says,

It would be great if society could rally around the six or seven key bridges on the path to fatherhood.  For example, find someone you love before you have intercourse.  Or, make sure you want to spend years with this partner before you get off the pill.  Or, create a couple’s budget to make sure you can afford this.

Let us think back to the "formless romantic anarchy" that Brooks decried earlier, the romantic anarchy that he sees as underpinning men's abandonment of their children.  His first response to this anarchy is... to "find someone you love before you have intercourse"!

How silly that Brooks thinks this solves something.  Generally people already think they are in love with their lovers — and who knows, maybe they are.  But whether or not they are, "being in love" is a thin and unstable state.  Brooks must see it is insufficient to support the long-term commitment of child-rearing, which is why he suggests that, once you've leapt the very low hurdle of "being in love" to justify sex, you "make sure you want to spend years with the partner before you get off the pill."

This suggestion is even more inane than the previous one.  Just how should we "make sure you want to spend years with the partner"?  Intense self-examination?  Perhaps this introspective decision-making process would be more successful if it were thoughtful, structured and weighty... if some kind of formal, even legal, commitment depended upon it... if this important decision were marked by ceremony and social expectations... if the choice were witnessed and affirmed by friends and family... if perhaps a veneer of religious significance were applied to it.  Yes, if only we had some kind of social institution to help us "make sure [we] want to spend years with the partner"...

No more hints, Mr. Brooks, the answer lies in plain sight.  Obviously it's marriage, that institution present in every significant human society the world has ever known, and which fills the gaping hole in our society that Brooks laments.  Why doesn't Brooks recommend it, when it solves the problem he's addressing?

I suspect it is because even David Brooks doesn't know how to confront the well-intentioned-but-degenerate madness of our if-it-feels-good-do-it society.  For fifty years our society has been indoctrinated that "marriage is just a piece of paper," so the idea that something so old-fashioned could offer hope for our social problems just feels embarrassing to him.

While the free-love set viewed that "piece of paper" as a great drawback, it should now be clear that the paper — and the legal, moral, social and familial obligations it represents — are marriage's great distinguishing advantage, because to generate marriage's greatest benefits you must first accept its weightiest burdens.  It is the obligations of marriage that build bonds of spousal affection which survive over time.  And that means that the best way a father can love his children is to love their mother first, placing her interests above his own, over time, despite circumstances, and allowing himself to be held accountable to it.

A quick look around tells us that rarely happens outside marriage, and even inside marriage it is certainly easier said than done.  Is there anything we can do to make it easier for people to sustain those kinds of sacrificial commitments?  

Let me propose one: we should power up that great machine of intimate self-sacrifice that God gave us – sex.  Sexual activity is primarily neither a tool of reproduction nor of pleasure but of intimacy.  While Brooks understands that sex is not simply an instrument of personal pleasure, his recommendation that we only have sex when we're "in love" misses this point.  Being "in love" is not the same as "loving," and it is even further from "loving till death do us part."  

If we want to create the kind of rock-bottom intimacy that turns two flesh into one, we should use our great intimacy device only where we need, deserve and demand the greatest intimacy: marriage.  By restricting sexual desire to marriage, we use it to foster intimacy between couples, which in turn builds mutual self-sacrifice, which in turn leads to marital stability — and ultimately happy, warm homes for children, who then develop and flourish as every parent wants for them.

Obviously this is not an easy pitch in our all-sex-is-good-sex culture.  Certainly few unhappy fathers want to hear that sacrificial love for their wives, and restricted sexual options, are the key to maintaining an emotional bond with their children.  After all, it sounds easy to love your children, who have to listen to you, whom you can discipline, who are looking for heroes... but it is not so easy to love your wife, who has her own ideas, who might not share your goals, who may be looking for a scapegoat instead of a hero.  

But if we want to do something to help that father be the father his children deserve, we can do so by reverting to that old idea of expecting — of insisting — that sexual interest be confined to marriage.  That means more coverage on bathing suits, less vulgarity in our teen comedies, more repercussions for adultery, more zoning restrictions for strip clubs, etc.  It means crawling back up that slippery slope we've slid down.

What hope does such a program have, when it seems so counter to all of society's expectations?  That depends on how serious we are about helping poor children living in broken homes.  Until we take seriously the role of sexual desire in the dissolution of families, and take seriously the effect of the dissolution of families on children's well-being, we'll never achieve any lasting change in the war on inequality that so many are concerned about.  Children's flourishing rests a great deal on marriage, and marriage rests a good deal on sex.  Not a bad Father's Day message, Mr. Brooks.

If you wish to discuss this post with me, I'd welcome receiving an email from you.  Please email me at language.on.holiday@gmail.com.