When the crime rate jumps, politicians promise to do something about it. When the unemployment rate rises, task forces assemble to address the problem. As random shootings increase, the public demands stricter gun laws. But when it comes to the mass defection of fathers from family life, little is said.

Fatherlessness is driving our most urgent social problems:

• Divorce
• Out-of-wedlock childbearing
• Children growing up in poverty
• Youth violence
• Unsafe neighborhoods
• Domestic violence
• The weakening of parental authority

We seldom acknowledge the underlying reason for much of our society’s social problems: the disappearance of fathers from their children’s lives. In fact, we seem to go out of your way to avoid the connection between our most pressing social problems and the trend of fatherlessness.

Studies show that when children grow up without a father, negative outcomes can result. Below is a list of some of those outcomes as presented in the book: The Boy Crisis.

1. Living in a home without a dad has a greater correlation with suicide among teenagers than any other factor.
2. When dad has positive contact with children during the first two years, the children have fewer signs of unwanted and uncontrolled behavior.
3. Roughhousing by dads helps regulate both male and female toddlers’ aggression.
4. Among youths in prisons, 85% grew up in a fatherless home.
5. Girls growing up without a dad are more likely to become pregnant as a teen
6. Among criminals assessed of raping out of anger and rage, 80% came from father-absent homes.
7. Many of the lone school shooters were dad deprived.
8. Kids without dads are more likely to get expelled from school or drop out.
9. Around 90% of run-away and homeless youths are from fatherless homes
10. Kids without dads are more likely to be a bully or be bullied.
11. Kids without dads are more likely to have lower self-esteem, poor grades, and poor social skills.
12. The more contact children have with their dads, the more easily they make trusting contact with new people.
13. The amount of time a father spends with a child is one of the strongest predictors of a child’s ability to empathize in adulthood.
14. Children who grow up without a dad are at a greater risk of drug addiction, mental health problems, and experiencing unemployment and poverty.

I hope this post conveys the importance of dads’ involvement in their children’s lives.

Single parent moms ask me, “So is my child doomed to an unhappy life?”

I don’t have an answer other than to say I’ve met a lot of good men who were raised by a single mother. I’m one of them.

Information for this post was gathered from two books:

Fatherless America by David Blankenhorn
The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell and John Gray