I think the important thing to take out of this situation isn't so much, "Every family needs to have a father," as it is, "Every community needs to be able to respond to the realities of its constituent family situations." Women's liberation ends with a net positive for a modern economy, but whenever norms are roiled, you have people caught in the confusion who fall through the cracks. I was a victim of a similar situation, where the leadership and curriculum of my major at my alma mater was in "transition" while I was attending; this meant spending entire courses on outdated technology or learning current standards from older professors who barey understood them themselves. There was nothing wrong with the new paradigms, but getting caught between the old and new was what squandered the potential of a lot of us.

Ideally, you forecast these shifts and make preparations, rather than being dragged into the future, as seems to be what happens with institutions responding to these civil rights social movements.

But I agree that support systems, rather than "grit" or "personal agency", are almost always the most important aspect of healthy development, in pretty much any arena. Teaching, job training, child rearing, legislation development, entrepreneurship, on an on, the failures happen when people decide or are expected to go it alone.