Miguel Ángel Fuentes – Fatherhood in Crisis The Absent Father

The imbalance that assails our society is, in large part, a
crisis of fatherhood. The dissolution of the family is one
of humanity’s most dramatic wounds, and, because of
its consequences, it is the one that best explains the
contemporary crisis. One of the consequences of this
dissolution of the family is the breakdown of the paternal
figure who has become, in a certain sense, entirely absent.
This absence can have very different causes, some of
which do not, perhaps, imply moral culpability and others
which, in contrast, imply great responsibility (be it on the
father’s part, or on the mother’s part, or on the part of
both). In any event, whatever might be the cause, and
without judging the responsibility that weighs upon each
and every father or mother who ceases to fulfill their
essential duty of being near the children who they have
brought into the world, the consequences (or at least the
risk of having consequences) for the children deprived of
this presence are very real and serious. In this book, we will
examine them in order to touch the conscience of those
called to the gift of fatherhood/motherhood and in order
to invite them to prevent this drama or to seek solutions in
the measure that it is possible.