He's tall and lanky and sports a Mississippi drawl. And when he steps up to the podium to give his lecture he doesn't hide behind it, instead, he grabs the mike and lurches about the room, voice booming, like a southern preacher hell-bent on salvation, immersed in his own personal crusade. And, in a way, he is. David Blankenhorn's mission in life is to reestablish the importance of the traditional dad.

    When you talk to Blankenhorn you sense his commitment to his vision, as well as his anger. Blankenhorn is mad. He's mad that society has shifted its idea about what a family is, he says. He's mad that the importance of dads doesn't seem to be a part of that idea. He's mad that we're not doing more about it. He's mad that "academics and feminists" seem to have it out for him and the fathering movement. He's mad that men and women and government don't seem to be doing enough to encourage taking men's pain and fathering seriously. And finally, he's mad that no one appears to care whether we have fathers or not. "Everything seems to be fine, as long as we have mothers," he says in a later interview.

    For Blankenhorn, 42, author of the best-selling book Fatherless America and founder of the Institute for American Values, that simply isn't good enough. Fatherhood is at a crossroads he announces, and his personal mission is to impress that point on whoever will listen.

    Blankenhorn is in Toronto at the first annual conference held on fathering in Canada, organized by York University. But why a conference on fathering? And why now? Conference co-chair, York professor emeritus Harold Minden, says fathers are absolutely necessary to a child's healthy development and sense of well-being. He says we haven't been paying enough attention to the role they play.

    "We estimate two million kids in Canada wake up everyday without fathers. We wanted to sponsor a conference that looked at two main problems: the father who is home but not really involved, and the absentee dad," says Minden. "Study after study shows that kids with ineffective or absent dads don't do nearly as well as kids where the father is involved and present. The future is what concerns us. What are kids learning when they don't see a normal parenting relationship and have no role models? The consequences for kids and society are disastrous."

    Blankenhorn says fathers are "the single most predictive factor that determines how a young man will turn out." U.S. statistics indicate that more than half of American children will spend a significant part of their childhood without a father in the home, and that 30 per cent of all children are born to unmarried women. For African-American children, the figure is closer to 68 per cent.

    Blankenhorn is upset about what he sees as a moral void within our society that says fatherlessness is normal, even "acceptable". Men have been marginalized, he says. And maintains it's a gender script that will get us into trouble. The father is the boy's example, he shows the son the basis for being a strong man, says Blankenhorn.

    "Do children need fathers? I think today we've changed our minds. I think we're saying 'not necessarily'. We're saying,'well maybe we'll give people more child support, or substitute male role models in schools.' We've rationalized the basic proposition. We've moved into the assumption of paternal irrelevance. I think they [feminists/academics] think women raising children on their own is a woman's right. I don't believe it. I don't believe that's anyone's right."

    It's exactly this kind of sentiment that makes many people critical of the fathering movement. "So much of what they [in the fathering movement] say ties into the idea that a 'bad' woman is a woman without a husband," says York history professor Molly Ladd-Taylor, mother of three. Ladd-Taylor teaches U.S. history and recently co-edited "Bad" Mothers: The Politics in 20th Century America. Says Ladd-Taylor: "In the early 20th century we had a maternalist movement where motherhood became a metaphor for creating a society/social network that took care of people. But nobody's saying that about the fathering movement. I don't think they're dealing with the issue very effectively." Ladd-Taylor says it's widely recognized that absent fathers are a problem in the black community, but says she hasn't seen any alternatives. "Mother blame isn't helpful and neither is holding up a return to the mythic family ideal, which is mainly a white European model, I might add."

    She says it isn't the fathering movement's consciousness-raising about men's roles and responsibilities that's bad, but the polarization of the sexes, the seeming need of the movement to return to a patriarchal model. "The crisis isn't over men not being part of the family, it's with the family itself in terms of support. The issue isn't single parenthood. It's the lack of social support which makes it a crisis. And saying children need stability isn't at all like saying they need a father!"

    Fathering movement critic Andrea O'Reilly says that in her more negative moments she thinks the movement is a backlash. "A lot of this is coming from men's pain," says O'Reilly, who teaches a course on feminist theories of mothering. She says she's worried that "the focus is more on sons than daughters. I'm worried it is just going to reproduce more traditional masculinity."

    "Not so," says Blankenhorn. "Fathers are just as important for daughters as for sons. Fathers are examples. They are the first man in every girl's life, and well fathered girls are more likely to develop their own love worthiness and ability to love a male, and be loved by a male."

    National Center for Fathering president Ken Canfield, who spoke at the York conference, says it's important for the fathering movement not to be seen to exclude women or daughters, or anyone else. "We need to acknowledge the importance and vital role mothers play. We don't want to say 'we're home now and we're taking over'. That's not what we should be about."