Most of the time he wasn't raised by just his single mother. While his father bailed early on, there was a second husband. And for a number of years he was raised by his grandparents, one of whom was a bank vice-president.
It's interesting that he wrote his stepfather and grandfather out of the male-role-model role.
And he still dodged a point: Among my high-school students, there are those who won't be able to support their kids. (Yes. They already have kids.) That's lamentable. They could have chosen advanced classes. They could have chosen to work in school. They could have chosen a different path. Many of their peers sitting next to them in school from elementary to their senior year did. They did not.
Reprehensible, however, is the attitude by some of the kids. They're proud to have gotten a girl pregnant. Shows they're a man. (Well, at least a sexually mature male human.) They also have no intention of dealing with those girls again.
I tell them that it shows that they're sexually mature male humans and can breed. This take take offense at, saying it's racist. I tell them that they're not being fathers, they're not being responsible, they're not being men. They're like a male dog that you pay for a few rounds with your bitch, and as far as their kids are concerned the "father" is as important and as much a man as a turkey baster used by a woman who pays a mail-order sperm bank to send her semen ejaculated into a little jar by some college student watching porn. "Two hundred years ago somebody might have paid somebody to have you visit and do the same thing. Slave owners screwed up families then and was evil. Now you screw up your own lives."
When the kids act proud, I refer to them as turkey basters, but cheaper--have to buy turkey basters. "Then again, they don't spread diseases or leave the lid up on the toilet, so the turkey baster's actually a better choice." Counter pride with a put down.
I tried telling them the facts. How much more likely their kids are to not even finish high school. Get low paying jobs. Turn to drugs or crime. The different in life expectancies. In child abuse. Some really don't care about their own kids. Some think their kid, certainly, won't be like that--even if it does describe their own lives. Some say that their lives are just fine.
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