SUFFERING
WITHOUT DAD

Topics: Child Rearing; Crime; Divorce; Family; Fatherlessness; Fathers

References: Proverbs 22:6; Mark 10:14; Ephesians 6:4

Are fathers necessary in the home? Consider these statistics:

•     Children in single-parent families are five times more likely to be poor, and half the single mothers in the United States live below the poverty line.

•     Children of divorce suffer intense grief, which often lasts many years. Even as young adults, they are nearly twice as likely to require psychological help.

•     Children from disrupted families have more academic and behavioral problems at school and are nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school.

•     Girls in single-parent homes are 2.5 times more likely to have a child out of wedlock.

•     Crime and substance abuse are strongly linked to fatherless households. Sixty percent of rapists grew up in fatherless homes, as did 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 70 percent of all long-term prison inmates.

Bottom line? Most of the social pathologies disrupting American life today can be traced to fatherlessness.

—Charles Colson, How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale, 1999)