The absence of a father has serious consequences for both children and the community.
The absence of a father has serious consequences for both children and the community.
G rowing up, I always found Father’s Day one of my favorite days of the year. My two younger brothers and I would wake up early that morning and go fishing with our dad. We never really caught much, but that was beside the point: casting lines off the beach with dad. To this day, those are some of my favorite memories.
We never had much, but because of how hard my dad worked, I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have enough. My dad was, and is, the consummate American father, the strong silent type. He worked his butt off to make sure we had chances he didn’t, and we were never able to get away with much.
Now, as a father to a one-year-old, I find that Father’s Day again has a special place in my life.
Unfortunately, America is in the midst of a fatherhood crisis. As of 2019, 34 percent of kids are raised in a single-parent home. That number has more than doubled since 1968. In 83 percent of these homes, the parent who is absent is the father. That amounts to more than 18.3 million kids living in homes without a dad.
Single mothers do heroic work, working multiple jobs, raising children on their own, and maintaining order in the home. Still, the absence of a father has serious consequences for both children and the community.
The difficulties stemming from growing up without a dad are legion. Kids who grow up in a home without a father are four times more likely to grow up in poverty and twice as likely to drop out of school, and daughters are seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teenager.
On perhaps no other area of life, however, is there a greater impact than on delinquency and criminality.
Children who come from fatherless homes make up a substantial majority of gang members and are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors. A state-by-state analysis by the Heritage Foundation found that a 10 percent increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes leads to a 17 percent increase in juvenile crime. These children are also three times more likely to end up incarcerated than children from intact families. The same principle holds true for school shooters. A 2018 analysis found that 75 percent of the 25 mass school shootings since Columbine were perpetuated by shooters with abusive or absent fathers. The shooter in Uvalde, Texas, reportedly complained frequently that his absent father didn’t love him.
Thankfully, the reverse is also true. The more time that a biological father spends with his children, the less likely their children are to engage in juvenile delinquency and crime or to have contact with the juvenile justice system.
That means that, even if Dad isn’t in the home, having an engaged and involved father can make a big difference. It ought to be at the forefront of policy-maker considerations when thinking about a variety of social ills. A comprehensive review of fatherhood programs and relationship-skills programs have found that those types of initiatives can have positive impacts on dads’ involvement.
But ultimately, it’s going to fall on dads to step up both in the home and in the community. Last fall, in response to growing violence in a Louisiana high school, a group of dads came together to walk the halls and patrol the school. Their stated goal was to “show a strong male presence on the campus.” The effort received national attention and near-universal praise.
If every kid in America had the chance to go fishing with a dad like mine, our nation would be in a lot better shape. This Father’s Day should be a wake-up call: It’s time for dads to step up and be there for a generation of kids who desperately need them.
Joshua Crawford is the executive director of the Pegasus Institute, a public-policy think tank in Louisville, Ky., and a Young Voices contributor.