David Blankenhorn, “The Unnecessary Father,” in May, Applied Ethics, pp. 352-361.

Blankenhorn argues against the ideal of androgyny and the complete interchangeability of male and female roles in the family.

Androgyny [the reduction of male and female to a single sex] is the ultimate ideal of an excessive individualism, according to Blankenhorn. The androgynous individual is “omnipotential”—that is, the potentialities of both father and mother are combined in one individual. Blankenhorn notes that people have sought the ideal of androgyny, but he describes this ideal as fool’s gold. A person is not a self-contained unit, he argues. Personal fulfillment depends on the presence of another.

To reach one’s potentiality as a person, one must respect his or her own sexuality. Blankenhorn argues that personal fulfillment is not gender-neutral. He maintains that males and females have different roles in different societies, and this division of roles has as its aim the well being of the children and of the societies themselves. Blankenhorn contends that the traditional division of male and female roles is a product of both nature and society. The female’s role in preserving well-being has been defined primarily by nature while the male’s has been defined mainly by each society. He warns that a failure to respect this division could jeopardize the child’s well-being as well as that of the society itself.