Where are the fathers?

Time and again, I've noted studies and situations in which I was surprised to find little or no discussion of fathers. But I'm still surprised and, shocked, I guess, when I see new examples of it.

The American Bar Association, according to the University of Houston's Children and the Law blog, is holding two meetings in Washington in May: The First National Parents' Attorneys Conference, and The 2009 National Conference on Children and the Law.

I did not do a sophisticated study of the programs; I merely searched the titles and abstracts for the word "father." I found only one instance, on a long, long web page. It was in a session about getting fathers more involved in welfare cases. In other words, the only mention of fathers was in a situation where fathers are delinquent.

I must add a very important caveat; the word "mother" does not appear at all in the document, which talks mostly about parents. So this isn't the clean example I'd like it to be. Still, I worry. Is the ABA, in its deliberations and discussions about children and the law, including fathers as a resource?