Thursday, March 22, 2007
Daddies needed
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
Shanna Flowers
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On Thursday nights, Keith Thomas has a standing 7:30 appointment with his son, Myles, 7. Younger son Jayden, 2, staked out a spot behind them and quietly entertained himself plucking a toy guitar.
"If that's a B, that space is C," said Thomas, sitting with Myles at a keyboard as they studied a music book.
"That's a D!" an excited Myles interjected, picking up where his father left off.
"There you go," said Thomas, breaking into a grin.
They identified a few more notes, and treble and bass clefs.
"OK, now we've got to play it," Thomas said. Myles launched into the scale he dissected with his dad's help.
Thursday may be music night, but every day is father-sons day at the Thomas household in North Roanoke County.
Fathers are missing in action from too many households in Roanoke and across the country. The problem cuts across the races, but it's more acute in the black community. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count, 65 percent of black children are being raised in single-parent families. That's twice the national average and nearly three times the percentage of white children in single-parent homes.
Overwhelmingly, that single parent is a woman.
On the early pages of his phenomenal book, "Becoming Dad," national columnist Leonard Pitts lamented "who can deny that the most immediate threat facing black children is the simple fact that black fathers are not at home?"
Thomas, who has never seen his own father, is a producer/director in Virginia Tech's Television and Film unit. Fathers like him have shouldered their responsibilities. They go to their jobs every day, work hard and come home every evening to their wife and children.
These men are the salvation of the black community.
There are plenty of unmarried men who are actively involved in the lives of their children. But a healthy marriage offers the stability that children need to thrive.
At some point in our society, it became acceptable to have children outside marriage. The consequences have been devastating, for black people in particular.
In a society where blacks have the lowest rate of marriage of any racial group, we need black men to ditch the excuses why they can't or won't take on the responsibility of being a husband and father.
Two-parent households aren't a guarantee for successful families, but statistically, they are a buffer from social forces that have eaten away at the foundation of the black community.
We've all heard the grim predictions for children raised in single-parent homes: They're at higher risk for living in poverty, performing poorly in school, becoming teen parents and so on.
Our escape from poverty, violence and countless other social ills is rooted in restoring the family structure. That means mamas and daddies -- married and in a healthy relationship -- raising their children together, instilling in them the values instilled in previous generations of black children.
Don't tell me it's a daunting responsibility. Of course it is. But it can be done.
It's being done.
Keith Thomas, 29, married his childhood playmate, LeShawn, nine years ago. Because they married young -- he was 20, she was 19 -- some people assumed she was pregnant.
She wasn't.
"I loved her," Thomas said, eyeing his wife. As for marrying so young, he said, "I don't recommend it, but somehow, we made it work."
Two years after they married, when LeShawn Thomas was about seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, her husband admitted to her that the pending challenge of fatherhood was overwhelming.
"I had never been a father," Thomas said last week, recalling the long-ago conversation with his wife. "I didn't have one, and I didn't know how to be one, and to be honest, I'm still trying to figure it out."
LeShawn Thomas, the director of a day care center, said her husband has made good on the promise he made before Myles was born.
"His greatest asset as a father is he's here for them," she said. "He's here and present. He's always thinking about the boys."
Fatherhood didn't come easy for Thomas, who grew up in Lynchburg and moved to Roanoke when he married. Like too many boys, he had no example after which to model himself.
Thomas' father lives in California, and he and Thomas' mother never married. His stepfather showed favor to the children he had with Thomas' mother. The man made Thomas feel inferior and told him he couldn't do anything right.
"I didn't have a man to talk to. My mom said, 'I'm going to be your mother and father.' "
"You can't!" Thomas recalled his angry response to his mother. A boy, he told her, needs a man to teach him how to be a man.
That rings true with Marques Wilson, 28, of Roanoke, who credits his father as his role model.
"I give my father a lot of credit," said Wilson, a married father of four who works at ITT Industries Night Vision. "I saw him get up every morning and go to work."
"Growing up, and now," Wilson observed of his friends, "you can see the difference in males who had fathers in their home."
Thomas has established a phone relationship with his father.
His stepfather and mother divorced about four years ago, but Thomas occasionally thinks of how he was treated as a child.
It drives him to be the father he never had.
"I don't want to neglect my kids," he said. "I don't want my kids feeling inferior.
"I want to provide as many opportunities [as possible] for my boys."
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
