For Father's Day, 2025, It's Time To Acknowledge Fatherhood AS Critical To Our National Future

A recent Harvard Youth Poll result should shock us to the core about the future of fatherhood in America. Quoting from the New York Post about the poll “Out of the more than 2,000 18-to-29-year-olds surveyed for this year’s Harvard Youth Poll, only 48% said procreating is crucial – and even fewer, 46%, believed children were within reach… Having kids was ranked the lowest among the six life goals respondents were asked about in the March survey, behind financial security, home ownership, long-term romantic partnership, marriage and significant wealth.” Breaking it down by political ideology showed a stark contrast, with 69% of Republicans holding parenthood to be important compared to only 43% of Democrats. Marriage being important to 75% of Republicans but only 56% of liberals. (NY Post, May 10, 2025)

These numbers were substantially lower that from previous polls yet coming at a time we are seeing the lowest fertility rates in modern history (approximately 1.6 babies per women when replacement rate is 2.1). For this Father’s Day, it’s time to acknowledge this as a national problem and must change. The history of progressive views on fatherhood and the nuclear family explain why liberals rank procreation and marriage so low and why progressivism must be countered.

The modern progressive movement was heavily influenced, both directly and indirectly by Karl Marx, who published with co-author Friedrich Engels the “Communist Manifesto” in 1848. In the Manifesto, Marx provided a road map for a Communist Revolution, which included a plan to end the traditional nuclear family. The plan was removing its influence through the state upbringing of children. This, according to Marx, would bring an end to the continuity of culture and tradition passed on by fathers. Marx continually decried what he called “Patriarchy” in his writings, which meant normal fatherhood in a nuclear family.

Marxist ideas bore fruit in misery and death for tens of millions with the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917. Communist “Bolsheviks” in Russia immediately went after the nuclear family along with the church. Alexandra Kollontai, People’s Commissar for Welfare, wrote, “The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the ‘new (communist) person’.” During the short lived Hungarian communist revolution of 1919, author and journalist, Mike Gonzalez, noted “(Hungarian Communists) quickly realized that the way to completely change society was to destroy the most important civil society institution, the family. 

Its culture and education commissar, George Lukacs, therefore instituted a system to instruct young children into sexual perversions….. ‘Special lectures were organized in schools and literature printed and distributed to ‘instruct’ children about free love, about the nature of sexual intercourse, about the archaic nature of bour­geois family codes, about the outdatedness of monogamy, and the irrelevance of religion, which deprives man of all pleasure. Children urged thus to reject and deride paternal authority...’” (Socialism and the Family, Heritage Foundation, March, 1, 2022)

Marxist ideas about family and fatherhood continued with the advent of the “new left” and the various critical theories used to ‘deconstruct’ institutions of Western civilization like family and church. Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse (father of the new left) wrote “Eros and Civilization” in the 1950s, pressing for an end of the traditional family through sexual perversion. The Brooklyn Institute declared “One of the most utopian works written in Marxist tradition, and a major influence on early feminist and LGBT movements, Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization opens with the cry: ‘Today the fight for life, the fight for Eros, is the political fight (of the new left).’” Attempting to synthesize Marx and Freud, Marcuse argued that the nature of capitalist oppression in a world of wild material abundance, stemmed from the enforced renunciation of sexual happiness.” (BROOKLYN INSTITUTE for SOCIAL RESEARCH)

Due to the influence of the left in entertainment and media, Americans have been inundated by depictions of incompetent fathers and heroic single mothers or gay couples as normative. In direct correlation with this influence over the past few decades, the percent of children raised without a biological father at home has moved from a tiny minority to around half, with only about 1 in 4 children raised with any kind of male father figure (step dad, etc.) throughout childhood. Additionally, 80% of the single parent homes are led by mothers with diminishing fatherly influence (Statistics Tell The Story: Fathers Matter, Fatherhood.org).

We saw the Marxist and new left influence during the 2020 protests/riots, when tens of millions of Americans endorsed the message of the Black Lives Matter organization, which included the goal “disrupt the…. nuclear family” under the leadership of “trained Marxists” (NY Post, June 25, 2020)

Western Civilization, including family and fatherhood, flow directly from Judeo-Christian principles of the Bible. A man’s ultimate purpose from God is to raise and lead his family, passing on civilization to the next generation. Fatherhood was a primary target of Marx who wanted to “dethrone God” and remains the target of the new left. In Genesis 18, God told us “I have chosen (Abraham), so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.” On this Father’s Day 2025, let us commit ourselves to promoting the institution of fatherhood for all young men to best fulfill their God-given purpose. For family, but also our nation.

Col. Bill Connor——Bio and Archives – Col. Bill Connor is a retired U.S. Army Infantry officer, attorney, and founding partner of NATIONAL DEFENSE CONSULTANTS, LLC. While in the Army, Connor logged multiple deployments to the Middle East, and he has commanded both light Infantry and Ranger training companies. From 2007 through 2008 he was deployed to Afghanistan where he became the senior U.S. military adviser in Helmand Province. Since the start of the October 2023 war in Israel, he has provided analysis to NEWSMAX.