Divorcees and Social Engineers: Fathers Face off against the Marriage Movement

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IT IS NOW a truth more or less universally acknowledged that children are better off when they have fathers and when their fathers are actively involved in their lives. But where do we go from there? Should the government be promoting fatherhood, marriage, and two-parent families? Or should it simply get out of the way and stop hindering fathers who want to do right by their children? The debate has pitted fathers' rights activists against advocates for marriage and "responsible fatherhood."

The government's fatherhood programs, an offspring of the Clinton era, are thriving under Bush. One Bush-era innovation is marriage promotion: The government has spent millions on programs to encourage poor people on welfare to get married and to help them develop better "marriage skills," an effort that has drawn criticism both from feminists who worry about women being pressured to stay in abusive marriages and from libertarians less than thrilled by social engineering. More recently, some fathers' rights activists have declared the administration's efforts part of an insidious machine that undermines rather than bolsters family and fatherhood.

The first salvo was fired by Stephen Baskerville, a political science professor at Howard University, in a May …