Title: Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for Children and Society - The Hausvater Project
Headings: 
Book Reviews
Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for Children and Society
1. Fatherlessness
2. Fathers in History
3. Why Fathers Matter
4. Popenoe's Recommendations
Evaluation

Content: Fewer men care to be fathers and fewer women admit a desire to have fathers help raise their children. In place of commitment and obligation to others, especially children, marriage has become mainly a vehicle for emotional fulfillment of the adult partners. Popenoe believes that society has seen a change in the purpose of marriage. " In place of commitment and obligation to others, especially children, marriage has become mainly a vehicle for emotional fulfillment of the adult partners” (24). He sees this erosion in the importance of marriage as a result of overzealous individualism. “ This loss of social purpose is part of the broader cultural shift toward a radical form of individualism that accelerated rapidly beginning in the 1960s. With the rise of the 'me generation,' trust in all of our traditional institutions waned. The legacy of this era remains firmly with us, with our attitude toward almost every social institution—government, religion, the law, the professions, education—now marked by a pervasive cynicism” (24). The "communitarian individualism" of America's past, which balanced one's duties to society with the right to make personal choices, has given place to a "radical, expressive, or unencumbered individualism...devoted much more to self-aggrandizement at the expense of the group” (46). In the thirteen years since Life Without Father was published, we have seen the continuation of this progressive individualism.