ABSTRACT
The importance of cultural change for marriage decline and fatherlessness, in contrast to effects of the economy and public policy, can clearly be seen through a comparison of modern nations. Educational trends have had a serious impact on the preparation of young people for fatherhood and family life. The market economy, for all its virtues, has never been a great friend of fatherhood or the nuclear family. Although a major purpose of government in modern times has been to offset the dysfunctional impacts of the market, in many ways government has also helped to undermine fatherhood and the nuclear family. Two cultural shifts in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both fundamental components of the culture of modernity, had a great effect on fathers and fathering. The first was a change in the nature of marriage. The second recent cultural shift of great consequence is the sexual revolution, in which sexual norms have moved from restrictive to permissive.
