Fatherless America?

March 30th, 2008 · 13 Comments

The United States is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today, an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.

This astonishing fact is neglected in many statistics, but here are the two most important. Tonight, about 40 percent of American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live. Before they reach the age of eighteen, more than half of our nation’s children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhoods living apart from their fathers. Never before in this country have so many children been voluntarily abandoned by their fathers. Never before have so many children grown up without knowing what it means to have a father.

Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse to domestic violence against women. Yet, despite its scale and social consequences, fatherlessness is a problem that is frequently ignored or denied. Especially within our elite discourse, it remains largely a problem with no name. . .

The stakes on this issue could hardly be higher. Our society’s conspicuous failure to sustain or create compelling norms of fatherhood amounts to a social and personal disaster. Today’s story of fatherhood features one-dimensional characters, an unbelievable plot, and an unhappy ending. It reveals in our society both a failure of collective memory and a collapse of moral imagination. It undermines families, neglects children, causes or aggravates our worst social problems, and makes individual adult happiness - both male and female - harder to achieve. . .

If this book could be distilled into one sentence, it would be this: A good society celebrates the ideal of the man who puts his family first. Because our society is now lurching in the opposite direction, I see the Good Family Man as the principal casualty of today’s weakening fatherhood script. And because I cannot imagine a good society without him, I offer him as the protagonist in the stronger script that I believe is both necessary and possible.

Tags: Research

13 responses so far ↓

bryan // Mar 30, 2008 at 12:04 pm

It’s a narrow fence I walk here. I am one of those american fathers who go to bed in a house absent of one of his children. I agree that it is a epidemic in society, couples getting married, having children, and not puttting the children first. Not trying to sound holyer than thou, but one of the huge reasons I got a divorce was to give my son a happier and healthier father, even at the expense of the traditional home. He gets to see both his parents in better realtionships and not constantly fighting with one another..
Pete // Mar 30, 2008 at 2:22 pm

Thanks, Bryan. I guess I should have editorialised a little on this, because I wasn’t making a point with it; this came to me in someone else’s newsletter and I wanted to pu the info out there to see what people felt about this.

And I completely support what you’ve said about giving him a better Dad this way. You’re a 110% committed Dad. You have a sense of competence about you when you speak about Dadly things.

I think the sentence that captured my attention in the above quote was this:

“Our society’s conspicuous failure to sustain or create compelling norms of fatherhood amounts to a social and personal disaster. ”

I’ve been working to get a Dads program off the ground locally here and (though there’s a LOT of support from local governement), I’m amazed that the things this man writes about are pretty much a non-issue. In a lot of community care etc, men are seen as perpetrators of the problem rather than people worth supporting, let alone keys to the answers.

Anyway, enough ramble. You yourself certainly DON’T fit the comment in the quote about children being abandoned by their fathers. Thanks again for sharing your journey with us…
Jeremy Neal // Mar 31, 2008 at 2:59 am

While I do think this is an important issue in America, it bothers me a little when your first primary citation is a book that is 13 years old. There are some good points and observations, but it would seem to make sense to make assertions on recent, relevant statistics.
Pete // Mar 31, 2008 at 8:06 am

Fair enough.
Jonathan // Mar 31, 2008 at 8:51 am

Though the citation may be 13 years old, I don’t think the trend has changed direction.

I have stated more than once, about the effect I have seen on children that I’ve taught that have grown up without a father present. When I taught in Detroit, the statistics of kids growing up without fathers were much more dramatic. I once did an informal survey of my students and 88% of those students didn’t have a father in their lives.

Certainly those demographics are skewed because 100% of my students were drop-outs and not the normal population. But the high number of fatherless students coinciding with the fact that they were all drop-outs and most had criminal records (many hadn’t yet been caught, but were open about their sources of income) ought to say something to support what the book is saying.

This is a big issue with me and I’m glad you’ve posted this, Pete. Unfortunately, the men that read your website aren’t the men that need to read book–they are already interested and active in their childrens lives.

Still…the more that are familiar with this concern, the more that can share the knowledge.
Pete // Mar 31, 2008 at 7:06 pm

And I’m sure that though it was tough, you played an important role in those boys’ lives, Jonathan.

And yes, if I’d been preaching there, it would have been to the converted.
Stefan // Apr 7, 2008 at 12:21 pm

My brothers and I are probably in the minority of kids of divorce where we all ended up closer to dad as a result. Mom decided to leave and moved out. So dad stepped up. And we are all better for if, even if still scarred 20 years later by divorce.

As a dad myself now, this makes me realize how much the “good family man” is part of the solution for his own family. But in a fatherless America, the great family man not see the boundaries of his fathering as his own flesh and blood–but invest in and love the fatherless sons and daughters that come into his life through our kids, through our places of worship, wherever…
Pete // Apr 7, 2008 at 5:44 pm

What a great Dad (both yours and you inclusive!). I agree wholeheartedly with you about investing beyond the bounds of the home. As a youth pastor for ten years, it was often my privilege to be the older significant male person in the lives of unfathered young men and I still enjoy a deep friendship with many of them today, guys who’ve in turn contributed something to my life too.

May you have time and strength to do just that, my friend.
Eric // Apr 20, 2008 at 12:38 pm

Interesting article. However, I think there are other societal phenomena that are very much intertwined with fatherhood. One is the shifting and morphing of gender roles in general.

It’s an easy thing to say that fathers basically just need to stick around and “be better fathers,” but unasked is the question - why are we in this predicament in the first place?

My opinion is that we are reaping what we’ve sown when it comes to the blurring of the gender roles. Men in many cases have been virtually castrated and muzzled when it comes to the idea of being the leader and final authority in their home. I’m not suggesting that they rule dictatorially, but the basic paradigm of Dad as Leader has been under attack for decades.

You can see it all over the place in pop media. Almost every sitcom on TV portrays Dads as bumbling, out of touch idiots who couldn’t brush their teeth without the helpful guidance and smart alecky comments of their wife and kids.

I think a lot of this can be attributed to the general outcomes of the feminist revolution.

Just understand, I’m not some backwards dunderhead who thinks women belong only in the kitchen or anything like that. I’m all for women voting and having equal rights. However I do think there’s a cornerstone of the family that has been kicked out - the structure in which the man is respected by his wife, and the wife is loved by her husband - and men are being asked to perform a task without the needed support to perform it.
Pete // Apr 20, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Eric I value your comments and I think your final phrasing “men are being asked to perform a task without the needed support to perform it” is a very real issue in many homes across both our countries.

I’m about turning that about in anyway I can. As a positive support to both the father and the mother, but with my emphasis on the dad… basically coz I’m a guy.

The other side to this is (and this is from recent research) in Australia, we have over a million kids who don’t live with their Dad. Now there’s a whole lot of reasons and stories and circumstances behind that statistic of course but that’s 5% of our entire population who are in some way “removed” from Dad (not to mention the Dads that are unwillingly removed from their kids).

And I agree that we’re in a time of transition where the roles are blurred and couples themselves (let alone commentators) aren’t able often to articulate what they expect, what they want of their own role, or negotiate a happier arrangement that works.

Here’s hoping we’re transitioning to something better…

Gotta go, my son is yelling that his nintendo is “stuffed” from the other room. Mr Fixit to the rescue!
jonathan // Apr 21, 2008 at 1:30 am

Great comment Eric, I am in total agreement with you. Man and woman are different for a reason. Each has a distinct role in a family and both are equally important. I’m not talking about getting petty and divvying up every task into a “man’s” role and a “women’s” role. Such as diapers are only for women and bringing home the bacon is a man’s job.

Men can and ought to be changing diapers. But, there are places men ought to step up and recognize they do have certain roles that they will have a bigger impact. For instance, a recent study on a man’s impact on his children’s faith was done. The study interviewed Christian’s in their twenties and early thirties and asked them how often they attended church as kids, who attended with them, and how often they attend now.

The biggest find? A mother’s influence had little impact on on whether a child continued to follow the faith. Only 1 out of every 52 children continued to attend church regularly without a father present. On the other side of that, if the father was the one that took the children to church, then 1 out of every three children continued to attend church regularly in their studies.

I’ve seen similar impacts on a child’s abilities in education. In households where there is a father and mother present, a father that reads to his kids has a far greater influence on a child’s reading level and confidence in test taking, than if the mother is the one that does the reading.

These are only two examples where a male role has a significant repercussions on the life of a child. But, I think it begins to show, that there are some very specific roles each gender needs to play in a child’s life.

Whether you believe in a higher intelligence that has designed us this way (as I do) it seems pretty obvious that we are meant to have specific roles. But, if you believe in evolution then one needs only look at history to see that we have evolved from a long tradition of very specific roles that are probably now ingrained in us. For example, until that last 100 or so years, the male has been the one doing most of the educating. From hunter/gatherer days, the men took the youth out on the hunt and taught them the ways. Then in our agricultural days, men and kids worked side by side planting and harvesting. It wasn’t until the industrial era when men left the families to go to work and the raising of the children was thrust upon women.

Either way, we need to consider roles in the family.
Eric // Apr 22, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Jonathan, those are some very interesting stats re: church attendance. 1-in-52 and 1-in-3, that is something that gives me a lot of pause.

Maybe it’s because fathers are seen as acting out of their “will” when they do those things, whereas in some cases mothers are seen as acting out of their emotions, or emotional needs. Maybe I’m way off on that, but just thinking back to my own parents. Dad was more stoic but therefore he emphasized the deep, meaty “why you believe what you believe” part about faith - the rationality of it. Mom always tended to get more caught up in the emotional part which isn’t bad in the short term, but you can’t really base a life of faith on emotional experience because it varies so much.

Thanks for the food for thought!
jonathan // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:12 pm

I wonder too. My father and mother divorced when I was young. My mother had me attend church with her. My father never showed any interest in God. I eventually abandoned my faith for a good many years.

Perhaps, a surrogate can also influence the statistics? I attend church regularly and wonder if it isn’t because I sort of adopted Tolkein and Lewis as male role models. Lewis definitely modeled the rationality part of faith.