ShareThisAlfie Patten won't be celebrating Father's Day this year, after all.
The 13-year-old English boy was told by 15-year-old Chantelle Stedman that he was the father of her infant daughter, Maisie Roxanne. A recent DNA test has proved otherwise.
Chantelle had been sleeping with more than five boys when Maisie was conceived, so she was only guessing that Alfie was Maisie's dad. But that's the story she told the newspapers.
You might expect that Alfie is relieved to have escaped the responsibilities of fatherhood. Earlier, when asked how he intended to provide for Maisie financially, he replied, "What does financially mean?"
Truth be told, Alfie was devastated that tests revealed the real father to be 15-year-old Tyler Barker. On being identified Tyler complained, "I only slept with her once. All my mates have been teasing me, but it's not funny."
Not funny, to be sure, but also not uncommon. Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in all of Western Europe.
Here in America on this Father's Day there are 14 million single parents raising 21.6 million children. Some 83 percent of single parents are women. About one in three of them were never married but had their children out of wedlock.
The popular image of absentee fathers is that they are "deadbeat dads." In fact, most divorced fathers provide financial support for their children and seek to spend as much time with them as the courts allow. On Father's Day 2009, 17 percent of all single parents are dads raising their kids alone.
Unfortunately, the father is popularly believed to be the expendable parent. Only ask the children of divorce whether that's true and they will disabuse you. Children need two parents.
My wife freely admits to being a "daddy's girl." Her late father taught her self-respect -- to be both tough and feminine, trusting and independent, giving, not grasping. He believed in her and let her know it.
I inherited the confident woman he helped to form and nurture.
Years ago, when Becky sat down to write a coming-of-age novel about a girl raised by her widowed father in King Henry VIII's Hampton Court palace, she prefaced it with this quotation of Sir Thomas More: "A man does not merit the name of father who does not weep for the tears of his children."
Meg Meeker, a physician, wrote a book entitled "Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters," to honor her own father. Her counsel for dads of daughters: You are a hero, her first love, the most important man in her life. Teach her humility. Protect her; defend her. Be the kind of man you want her to marry. Teach her to fight. Keep her connected. Teach her pragmatism and grit.
Throughout his life, Jesus of Nazareth invoked the love of his Heavenly Father. On this Father's Day let us tell our own fathers that we love them.
(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount31(at)verizon.net.)
AMAZING GRACE
