A new analysis from Pew using data from the stellar National Survey of Family Growth brings a small bit of good news on the fatherhood front, but also some very bad news.
The bad news: More children are living without the tremendous advantage of having daily access to their fathers in the home.
The good news: Of those who do have a father in their home, their dads are 2.5 times more likely to be closely involved in their children’s care than live-in fathers were in the 1960s.
But this is little consolation against the very dark cloud of fatherlessness — 21 percent of white fathers, 44 percent of black fathers, and 35 percent of Hispanic fathers live apart from their children. Twenty-seven percent of absent fathers say they have not seen their children even once in the past year.
And fatherlessness marks a distinct class divide, as 40 percent of fathers who never completed high school live apart from their children, while only 7 percent of fathers who graduated from college do.
While it is well known how important a father’s involvement is to healthy child development, a very interesting and lesser known finding comes from a 26-year longitudinal study which says that the strongest factor indicating whether children practiced high levels of empathic concern for others in their adult years was whether they had an involved father in their life. In fact, father care was a stronger indicator here than the three strongest maternal factors combined! The study explained, “These results appear to fit with previous findings indicating that pro-social behaviors such as altruism and generosity in children were related to active involvement in child care by fathers.”
Fathers matter in many unlikely ways. And when fewer children have less access to their fathers, that matters for the children, and it matters for all of us.
— Glenn T. Stanton is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family. He is also author of the recent book Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo me it all comes back to radical feminism in the sixties and seventies. Remember their slogan? "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
that begat a long period of outright discrimination against men in general. And here we are now. We've marginalized the men and are reaping the bitter fruit of the tree the feminists planted.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAfter some time as a welfare worker and a prison data analyst, I began to work on a theory.
Currently, welfare laws allow for benefits if a father/mother is incarcerated. The child is deprived and the remaining parent or legally responsible relative is entitled to assistance.
The idea is to limit welfare benefits for incarceration. If the incarceration occurred before the enrollment, the child may remain eligible until the sentence(s) is complete. However, once enrolled, if the parent becomes incarcerated, the other parent or LRR can only receive benefits for 5 years (clock can start and stop). Once the five years are used, no more cash benefits can be paid out.
The question would be: Does the threat of losing welfare benefits encourage informal social controls (i.e. women getting pregnant by repeat offenders) that would correlate to a drop in crime?
Would the women:
Continue activity as normal, or
Refuse relations with men who seem to be churning through the criminal justice system, or
Coax, cajole, etc. the men in their lives to refrain from activities that result in long prison sentences.
Now, I know that there’s almost no chance such legislation could pass. I’m also aware that the five year clock they tried with work/school essentially got smudged out of existence in the welfare offices around the nation. Still, I often wonder what would happen if such a law passed and would that lead to stronger families due to better decision making. Or would it explode in a massive “unintended consequence” and see welfare/crime figures shoot through the roof?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am curious about your use of the term "father". Do you mean biological parent?
I am asking because I've watched the welfare system create some truly perverse incentives. With the dramatic rise in single parent births and the dramatic rise in the incarceration rates, is it possible that you've discovered yet another of these perverse incentives? Is a biological father in prison worth more cash flow than a husband at home?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, the welfare law is fairly clear. You typically have putative fathers, until paternity is proven. Then, it's a biological matter. Welfare recipients must pursue paternity testing in order to collect benefits.
The actual cash per child isn't much. Years ago (1998 or so), the first child only provided the household $205. Each subsequent child increased the allowance marginally (something like $70 per month per child).
Of course, this is different than Food Stamps, which is a program run by the Dept of Ag and subject to a different set of guidelines.
There's a problem figuring out how much a LRR (which can be the mother) will receive, because there's medical coverage, Section 8 housing subsidies, cash, food stamps, community aid (not disbursed via welfare office), LIHEAP, WIC, etc.
I was drawn to the idea more from a criminologist perspective. Would informal social controls (i.e. women) curtail criminal activity if there was no "safety net" provided by the state?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFirst, thank you for a thoughtful response.
next, it seems that the situation you describe can result in some cash flow for the single mom. Is it more that if the biological father was not incarcerated?
but I take your point too. If the benefits themselves were tied to behavior, would the behavior change to preserve the benefits?
I think so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, that would rest on whether the father had a good job prior to incarceration. It's been some time and my memory is subject to anecdotes, so I don't really want to say if most of the fathers in jails were recidivists.
That said, I was in an urban area that was has been in a slow economic slide (Harrisburg, PA - home of America's next big bankruptcy). Even in good economic times, jobs for felons or folks with records were scarce.
A good number of jobs for unskilled are in businesses that are cash-based. Not the type of place that hires jailbirds. The other jobs are your retail jobs. Good and bad with those is that you could get them at almost anytime, so there was less incentive to work hard to stay at Home Depot or wherever.
Until there is a radical reshaping of the culture in certain areas (and I'm not speaking in any racial code, because this was across races and geographically centered), nothing will change.
If you're a teenager, you are far more likely to mimic your family than any other influence. If your family has lost hope in hard work paying off, if your family is half in jail and half on welfare, if your family is four brothers to four different dads - your only reliable message is, "This is what life is."
I apologize for the tangent.
It's funny. Working at a welfare office and in the crim research field (pretty liberal) as a conservative only strengthened my convictions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSpeaking of fatherhood, how about that Joe Walsh? Could someone help him find his checkbook? Apparently, he's been so busy espousing Tea Party virtues (individual responsibility, fiscal restraint and family values) that he couldn't locate it.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHell hath no fury like an ex-wife who sees you with a new girlfriend.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs fewer people marry and instead live together and have children, obtaining a formal custody agreement is necessary to secure their rights to see their child in the event they separate. Otherwise dads have already lost the battle. We all know the default position is for kids to go with mom.
I'm saying there is no law that prevents one parent from not allowing the other parent access to their child once they break up. The only recourse for the alienated parent is to sue. Nine times out of 10, the alienated parent is the father.
Been watching this nightmare unfold for my brother. I'm shocked at how little value courts give to fathers and fatherhood.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI know one of the likely responses is that the court tries to ensure minimal disruption to the child's living condition and most men move out - so the default position is that the child stays with the mom.
I don't want you to post private info, but if your brother moved out of the house, even to maintain "peace," the court will count that against him. Judges may claim otherwise, but in every divorce I've seen, that sad songs plays.
The courts, like the police, just want to settle issues and it's far easier to get the man to leave the house than a woman.
It will cost you, though.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAppreciate your response.
Actually, Mom left the house where the child had lived his whole life.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI had a contractor working on my home who told me he that he would soon have to report to jail.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI asked him what for, and he tells me he called his kids to wish them Merry Christmas and his ex wife filed a criminal complaint for harassment.
So having two fathers should be doubly beneficial?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, I have heard that one plenty of times, dnak.
The fatherhood effect is not cumulative, and children face struggles when mom is left out of the picture as well.
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