Monday, June 19, 2006
Who Needs Fathers?
According to the CDC, DoJ, DHHS and the Bureau of the Census, the 30 percent of children who live apart from their fathers will account for 63 percent of teen suicides, 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions, 71 percent of high-school dropouts, 75 percent of children in chemical-abuse centers, 80 percent of rapists, 85 percent of youths in prison, and 85 percent of children who exhibit behavioral disorders. In addition, 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. In fact, children born to unwed mothers are 10 times more likely to live in poverty as children with fathers in the home.
"[The causal link between fatherless children and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime," notes social researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, adds, "[The absence of fathers] from family life is surely the most socially consequential family trend of our era."
We'd better hurry up and suppress this information, however. After all, women have fragile psyches and we don't want single parents to feel guilty about their perfectly valid lifestyle choices.
Who knows what irrational decisions they might make?
Everybody started hating Linda, apparently, when I published an article in the progressive magazine the American Prospect last December, saying that women who quit their jobs to stay home with their children were making a mistake. Worse, I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.
5 Comments:
By 
Pax Federatica, at
Mon Jun 19, 11:29:00 AM:
Does this study make any distinction between biological fathers, stepfathers and adoptive fathers? That is, if a kid lives with a stepfather or adoptive father but has no contact with the biological father, are they at the same level of risk as kids living with no father at all, or (as I suspect) somewhat less? And what about sons vs. daughters? Are boys at more risk than girls in each of these cases, or vice versa? The statistics being cited might have been a worth more if they weren't so generalized.
By Cassandra, at
Mon Jun 19, 12:01:00 PM:
I think the point was that a father's influence was needed, and there have been numerous studies which show girls also do worse in life without a father in the home.
This is just one:
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2003/06/dodge605.html
"We knew that a number of studies had identified the link between absent fathers and risk for daughters' early sexual activity, but the risk had been ascribed to more generalized family problems, such as poverty and stress," said Kenneth A. Dodge, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Dodge was one of the co-principal investigators of the study. "Our research shows clearly that father absence itself during the first five years of life is a unique risk factor."
Dodge, Ellis and colleagues noted that girls whose fathers left the family earlier in their lives -- before the age of 6 -- had the highest rates of both early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy, followed by those whose fathers left at a later age, followed by girls whose fathers were present.
"Clearly, it is not just the father's absence, but the timing of that absence that is critical," Dodge said.
Added Ellis, "This issue may be especially relevant to predicting rates of teenage pregnancy, which were seven to eight times higher among early father-absent girls, but only two to three times higher among later father-absent girls, than among father-present girls."
Even when the researchers took into account other factors that could have contributed to early sexual activity and pregnancy, such as behavioral problems and life adversity, early father-absent girls were still about five times more likely in the United States and three times more likely in New Zealand to experience an adolescent pregnancy than were father-present girls.
While researchers said these findings need to be replicated in non-Western countries
By 
, at
Tue Jun 20, 11:54:00 AM:
You'll also find a direct link correlating poverty and all of those statistics. Studies like this need to seperate the samples into one where the subjects are below the poverty line and another where the subjects live above the poverty line. The results will still be alarming, but not nearly as pronounced in the above poverty line.
By Cassandra, at
Tue Jun 20, 02:53:00 PM:
I agree, but some of the studies did account for poverty. The more distressing stat is the strong correlation between fatherless homes and poverty.
I think where poverty really hurts single parents is in the inability to isolate your children from the surrounding environment if it is toxic. Rich kids get into trouble too - all the time - however wealthy parents can create a buffer around their families. Poor folks don't have that option - they generally live right on top of each other, making it difficult to reduce the influence of delinquent peers.
It is difficult to treat poverty and fatherlessness as independent variables when in reality they are tightly linked.
By , at
Thu Jun 22, 12:15:00 AM:
More fathers less suicides great idea
