When society decided that raising children was women's work and that making money was the single-minded point of men's lives, fathers became too busy for their children and boys began to grow up without fathers. That would not have been critical if there were uncles and cousins and grandfathers and older brothers around to model masculinity for boys. But our ideas of mental health and the goals of the housing industry required that families trim themselves down to the size of a married couple and their children.
Reducing the family to such a tiny, isolated, nuclear unit made it mobile enough for the purposes of industrial society. Workers were no longer rooted in the land or community. Now nothing came between a man and his job. Companies could extract the utmost loyalty from employees by making them a part of the family of work and cut them further away from the family of home. Men on the Daddy Track were severely penalized, much as women on the Mommy Track are now.
The children of this generation may grow up with the idea that a father's life is his work, and his family should not expect anything more from him.
I recall one man, talking about the problems of his son, saying, "I don't know what Betty could have done wrong raising that boy. I know it wasn't anything I did, since I was busy working and left it to her. I barely saw the kid so I couldn't have done anything wrong."