ABSTRACT
Throughout the world people distinguish between mothers and fathers; mothers and fathers, in turn, usually differ in their conceptions and styles of parenting. Their absence is said to be a principal cause of serious social ills, especially the poverty of their children, their own and their son's violence, and their son's frantic yet failed masculinity. John Edgar Wide-man, pained by white racisms denial of fatherhood to African-American men and their sons, translates theoretical and social absence of fathers into personal longing. Many psychoanalytic theorists are quick to reject correlations of symbolic paternity with characteristics of actual fathers. Belief in paternal rationality can also be supported by recent studies of moral development, associated most prominently with Carol Gilligan. Lacanian theories seem intended to buttress distinctive paternal authority while different-voice theories intend to legitimate a voice culturally defined as feminine. Paternalor parental rights excuse or actually encourage violence among those already inclined to bully and hurt.
