Until Tuesday, Patterson was a special assistant in the state's Welfare Department, where he helped set policy for welfare recipients. But he resigned after the Inquirer began asking about his side gig as editor of The Family in America. It's a quarterly journal of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, which advocates for the "natural human family . . . established by the Creator."
So, to hell with single mothers, gay families, divorced people and married moms who work outside the home. What the Creator wants, the center says, is "child-rich" families whose stay-at-home moms eschew birth control and whose dads pay the bills.
That point of view is reflected in Patterson's essays, some of which are quite misogynistic. Presumably, this is why he left the state Welfare Department, whose clientele he must detest.
Exhibit A: Patterson opposes certain proposed changes in Social Security because, he wrote in his journal's spring 2011 edition, they may "encourage more mothers to betray the home and join the full-time labor force."
Note that Patterson doesn't think that fathers "betray" the home by working. Just us treasonous moms do.
So, forget that, say, famed inventor and NASA scientist Barbara Askins, also a mother, used her brain to improve photographic technology used in space, which was later adapted to improve the clarity of X-rays.
Forget the lives that Askins has saved. Forget the role model that she is to her children for how to use your God-given gifts to do something incredible for your fellow man. In Patterson's world, Askins would have been better off at home with a glue gun.
Exhibit B: Patterson refers, in another essay, to a study that says that kids of single mothers are more likely to be overweight because the women don't have the time or energy to fix a decent meal and play with their children.
His solution?
