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"The deteriorating condition of children - ranging from violent boys and promiscuous girls to abused children of both sexes - has become a regular feature of the daily news. The linkage of these now-familiar conditions to Fatherlessness is empirically verified by a voluminous body of social and behavioral research.
Because children represent the future of our society, these negative consequences are a social calamity in the making. It is a misfortune not just for those children affected by it but for every family member."
- Professor David Popenoe: "Life Without Father".

FATHERLESSNESS AND CHILDREN:

"Almost anything bad that can happen to a child occurs with much greater frequency to the children of divorce and those who live in single parent families."
- D. Popenoe

Child well-being over the past thirty years has deteriorated markedly:

• Juvenile violent crime has increased six-fold, from 16,000 arrests in 1960 to 96,000 in 1992, a period in which the total number of juveniles in the population remained relatively stable.
• Reports of child neglect and abuse have quintupled since 1976, when data were first collected.
• Eating disorders and rates of unipolar depression have soared among adolescent girls.
• Teen Suicide has tripled.
• SAT scores have declined nearly 80 points.
• Poverty has shifted from the elderly to the young. Of all the nation's poor today, 38 percent are children.
• Evidence is now strong that the loss of Fathering is the most prominent reason for all of these conditions, independent of economic issues.

The main source of evidence for the social and behavioral disadvantages to a child of growing up in a single-parent family is five nationally representative, large-scale social surveys. - per G. Sandefur and S. McLanahan: "Growing Up With a Single-Parent."

Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents:

• are three times more likely to have a child out of wedlock.
• are 2.5 times more likely to become teen mothers.
• are twice as likely to drop out of high school.
• are 1.4 times as likely to be idle (out of school and out of work).
• are two to three times more likely to have had emotional or behavioral problems.
• are more likely to have repeated a grade in school, to have been expelled, and to have elevated scores for health vulnerability.
• (females) are more likely to marry and bear children early, to give birth before marriage, and to have their marriage break up.

"Evidence about the negative effects of divorce on the social and behavioral development of children is now legion in the social sciences. Although not always an intended measure of Fatherlessness, divorce-effect studies provide in fact such a measure because most children of divorce end up living in single-parent families apart from their biological Fathers." - D. Popenoe.

The children from divorced homes:

• performed more poorly on a wide range of assessments:
  1. parent's ratings of hostility toward adults, peer popularity, nightmares, and anxiety.
  2. teacher's ratings of school-related behaviors and mental health, including dependency, anxiety, aggression, withdrawal, inattention, peer popularity, and self-control.
  3. scores in reading, spelling, and math.
  4. school performance indices, including grades in reading and math as well as repeating a school grade.
  5. physical health ratings.
  6. referral to the school psychologist.

Per social psychologist Judith Wallerstein, "A significant number of children (of divorce) suffer long-term, perhaps permanent detrimental effects from divorce...":

• Five years after divorce: over one-third experience moderate to severe depression.
• Ten years after divorce: a significant number of young men and women appeared troubled, adrift, and were achieving below expectations.
• Fifteen years after divorce: when the children were now in their thirties, many were having difficulty establishing their own love relationships.

A number of studies reach the same conclusions:

• Data from a national sample of 9,643 respondents collected through the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households yielded this conclusion: "Family disruption during childhood has long-term consequences for the subjective well-being of both women and men."
• From eleven General Social Surveys conducted annually from 1973 to 1985 by the National Opinion Research Center, family scholars Glenn and Kathryn D. Kramer of the University of Texas concluded: "The increase in the proportion of adults who are children of divorce in the next few decades will lead, in the absence of countervailing influences, to a steady and non-trivial decline in the overall well-being of the American adult population."
• Per Sara McLanahan, a noted family researcher in this area: "While some of the problems associated with single-parenthood pre-date parent's separation, others do not. On balance, the average child does worse, not better, after divorce."
• Per a particularly sophisticated longitudinal study of the effects of divorce, done in Sweden" "the experience of family disruption involving parental separation or divorce has negative effects on later mental health whenever it occurs and regardless of the socioeconomic status of the household or of later changes in family structure."

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND VIOLENCE:

"Of all the negative consequences of Fatherlessness, juvenile delinquency and violence probably loom largest in the public mind: There are too many little boys with guns." - D. Popenoe

• Since 1960, while the population has gone up by only 41 percent, there has been a 550 percent increase in reported violent crime. The segment with the fastest growing crime rate is juveniles.
• Between 1983 and 1992, arrests of juveniles for murder went up by 128 percent.
• Studying two groups of Philadelphia boys, one born in 1945 and the other in 1958, found that the later group was three times more likely to commit violent crimes and five times more likely to commit robberies. These findings parallel the increases in fatherlessness.
• From the National Surveys of Children, a major longitudinal study done in two waves, found that family disruption "was associated with a higher incidence of several behavioral problems, negative effects being greatest with multiple marital transitions."
  
• Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), in "A General Theory of Crime", concluded that "such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates."
• Sixty percent of America's rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates come from Fatherless homes. - National Fatherhood Initiative.
• In 1993 there were 3,647 teenage killers; by 2005, criminologist James Fox expects there will be 6,000 of them. If Fatherlessness continues to increase, we face even more dangerous times ahead.

CHILD ABUSE:

"(Much) serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse, is committed by men. The men who have greatest access to their children are Fathers. Since Fathers participate less in the lives of their children today than ever before and children are (most) often under the sole care of their mothers, wouldn't you suppose that the rate of child abuse would have dropped? Unfortunately, quite the opposite has happened. As Fathers have left home, the rates of child abuse have increased, and reported sexual abuse has increased at a faster rate than all other forms of child maltreatment."
"By 1990, when over two million combined cases of child abuse were reported to social service agencies, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect pronounced that the amount of child maltreatment in the United States had reached the level of a national emergency."

So if it's not Biological Fathers, Who is it?:

• One of the greatest risk factors in child abuse, found by virtually every investigation that has ever been conducted, is family disruption.
• Living in a female-headed, single-parent household ranks as especially consequential.
• 43 percent of children reporting as having been abused lived in female-headed, single-parent households; compared with 18 percent in the total population.
• Both sexual abuse and physical abuse are affected by single-parenthood.
• Rates of severe and very severe violence toward children are substantially greater in single-parent households.

Sexual Abuse:

"Why does living in a female-headed, single-parent family have such an elevated risk for child sexual abuse?" First is the decrease in the quality and quantity of supervision and protection children receive. Second is that children from single-parent homes tend to be more emotionally deprived and needy, therefore vulnerable to the ploys of sexual abusers. Finally, Fathers are not around to provide the supervision and protection that children need to avoid sexually-molesting acquaintances and strangers. Protecting daughters from the sexual overtures of other men has long been a major role of fathers. - D. Popenoe

• Despite the fact that immediate family members have the most access to children, less than half of the sexual abuse perpetrators are actually family members and close relatives.
• Strangers make up 10 to 30 percent of the cases.
• The remainder are acquaintances including mother's boyfriends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, religious leaders, and peers.
• Among sexual abusers who are "blood relatives", only a small fraction are Fathers. The great majority are uncles, grandfathers, brothers and stepbrothers, and male cousins.
• Chances of a "daughter" being abused by her stepfather are at least seven times higher than by her Biological Father.
• Forty-seven percent of cases of sex abuse by stepfathers were classified as "very serious", vs only 26 percent of cases by the Biological Fathers.
• Compared to abusing stepfathers, abusing Biological Fathers are more likely to live in circumstances of great personal and social disorganization; are more likely to have very bad marriages; to be suffering from alcohol and drug dependencies; and to be of extremely low income. "In other words, they have been pushed over the edge."
  - D. Popenoe.
• There is evidence that the less confident the Father is that a daughter is really his offspring, the more likely he is to have an incestuous relationship with her.

Physical Abuse:

"An important difference between physical abuse and sexual abuse is that both women and men are heavily represented as abusers." "A mother is much more likely to be abusive and to allow others to mistreat her child when she does not have the support of an actively involved (Biological) Father." - D. Popenoe

• Single mothers tend to be more violent abusers than mothers in dual-parent households.
• Single mothers, in one national survey, reported a 71 percent greater rate of "very severe violence" toward their children than did dual-parent mothers.
• Probably the most serious threat to children in single-parent families is the mother's boyfriend.
• Leslie Margolin, an educational expert, found that 64 percent of non-parental abuse was committed by mother's boyfriends.
• Daycare providers and baysitters accounted for 15 percent of abuse.

Physical Abuse by Stepparents:

• Psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly found that "preschoolers in Hamilton (Ontario) living with one natural parent and one stepparent in 1993 were 40 times as likely to become child abuse statistics than those living with two natural parents.
• Daly and Wilson assert, "stepchildren are not merely 'disadvantaged' but emperiled."
• U.S. data indicates that youngest children (two years and under) have a hundred times greater risk of being killed at the hands of stepparents than of genetic parents."

VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN:

"Fatherlessness appears to generate more violence toward women just as it increases violence toward children." "Modern family changes have not decreased violence against women, they have increased it." "As the number of unattached males goes up, violence toward women increases." "In fact, marriage appears to be a strong safety factor for women." - D. Popenoe

Recent surveys of violent crime victimization (1979-1987: Caroline Wolf Harlow, 1991. "Female Victims of Violent Crime", Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, p.4.) have found that:

• 12.6 married women per 1000 (1.3%) fall victim to violence.
• 43.9 never-married women per 1000 (4.4%) fall victim to violence.
• 66.5 divorced or separated women per 1000 (6.7%) fall victim to violence.

Finally, Fatherless children mostly grow up without a "protector"; without good role models (for sons) and male-relationship models (for girls); without positive models of mother-father interaction; without the kind of supervision that Fathers can provide. These children also grow up being subject to much higher levels of physical and sexual abuse, to say nothing of neglect and emotional maltreatment.