This is Molly Hemingway, encouraging you to listen to my favorite podcast,

Issues, etc. Every day you get in-depth interviews with host Todd Wilkin asking expert guests,

substantive thought-provoking questions on all of the important news and issues of our day.

The expert guests are in culture, law, ethics, philosophy, theology, and apologetics.

Expert guests, expansive topics, always extolling Christ, issues, etc.

We have more evidence than we need. It is abundant, super abundant,

that fathers are necessary. Without fathers, not only do lives turn out less than they could be,

but society at large is harmed, and not just over the short term, over the long term.

Welcome back to Issues, etc. I'm Todd Wilkin.

We're going to talk about the necessity of fathers Delano Squires joins us.

He's a research fellow for the DeVos Center for Life Religion and Family

at the Heritage Foundation. He holds a Master's of Public Policy degree from George Washington University,

and he's author of a recent column for the Federalist,

titled, We Need Committed Dads to Quiet Our Cultural Chaos. Delano, welcome back.

Thank you for having me, Tom.

Describe if you would what you call the social engineering of the last half century surrounding fathers.

Sure. When I think back over that time period, I think about the ways in which the government policy has been used,

I would say, to undermine families. So, for instance, thinking about the 1960s and reforms to welfare

that incentivized single-parenthood, so there were policies like that that basically gave the message

that a check from the federal government was sufficient to replace a father in the home.

So part of it is public policy and law. Part of it, I would say, has been changes to culture.

So, for instance, even something as simple as how dads were depicted in earlier generations, right?

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