Those who say it does believe that children have a right to know their family of origin because that

knowledge is central to the healthy formation of their identity. The most plausible interpretation of this idea
is that healthy psychological development requires a mental reservoir of family resemblancesideas of
people related to you and the particular traits, behaviors, and mannerisms that make them who they are
from which to construct an identity. However, this family-resemblances justification of the right to know
presupposes that only biogenetic kin can be a source for family resemblances. This assumption is mistaken;
family members do not need to be biological relatives to serve as the basis for identity formation. Therefore,
this alleged need cannot ground a supposed right of the child to know his biological kin.
What children should be told about their family is, rather, a question of their welfare. That it appears
otherwise in the case of children not living in their families of origin, including those adopted after being
abandoned, is symptomatic of the widespread acceptance of a bionormative
conception of the family and the corresponding prejudice against families formed in other ways.
Five consequences that result from the absence of a loving father:
1. Lack of Identity.
The individuals identity is established by the father. The father is responsible for providing or establishing
the identity to everyone who comes from him. Natural and spiritual children who grow up without fathers
are insecure and unaware of their identity as individuals or as sons and daughters of God.
2. Ignorance and the inability to be a good son and father.
Men who never experience the love of a father do not know how to behave like fathers. Unless God
intervenes, men will not have the knowledge and guidance needed to understand their responsibilities as
fathers. For a man to be a good father and practice his role and responsibility as a father, he must learn from
a good role model who is visible, easy to imitate, and easy to learn from.
3. The absence of a loving father affects our relationship with the Heavenly Father.
The inability to establish this relationship has nothing to do with God but with themselves and the bad
experiences they have endured with their natural fathers. Abuse, cruelty, maltreatment, rejection, lack of
love, lack of protection, carelessness, and abandonment prevent people from establishing a healthy
relationship with their Heavenly Father.
4. The absence of a loving father causes society to become violent.
Juvenile delinquency increased as divorce became an accepted practice in society. Divorce led to a
breakdown in family values and to the destruction of those values that allow people to have better and
improved relationships among themselves.
5. The absence of a loving father produces a curse to fall upon the family.
Men cannot simply be fathers simply because they have the ability to procreate but rather because it is a
supreme task that was entrusted in them. A mans success is measured by how good a father he is with his
family, his church, and his disciples not by his diplomas, wealth, or fame. A man is also said to be a good
father if he does a good job in the role that God has entrusted him to do, that of a father in His Kingdom.
You must be healed of the pain in your past which was caused by your earthly father. Each person must
decide for himself to forgive his father. Perhaps, you must forgive him for not being there when you needed
him the most, for rarely demonstrating his love for you, or maybe because he physically, emotionally, or
verbally abused you; or the fact that your father was never home or died. Forgive and overcome the
emptiness and the feeling of abandonment that you have as the direct result of not growing up with a
paternal figure.
2. To develop the heart of the father you must establish a close relationship with the Heavenly Father.
Approach your Heavenly Father with confidence and call Him Daddy or Father. How can you develop a close
relationship with your Heavenly Father? This can be accomplished by believing that you are His son or
daughter and that He is your Father. Our Heavenly Father wants the best for His children and His greatest
desire is to have a relationship with each one of us; His children.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in
time of need. -Hebrews 4:16
3. To develop the heart of the Father, God must give us His heart. As we develop our relationship with our
Heavenly Father, God begins to teach us how to develop our paternal heart. He imparts into our spirit His
paternal heart to help us be better fathers and role models for our children.
Fathers are the first and most important men in the lives of girls. They provide role models, accustoming
their daughters to male-female relationships. Engaged and responsive fathers play with their daughters and
guide them into challenging activities. They protect them, providing them with a sense of physical and
emotional security. Girls with adequate fathering are more able, as they grow older, to develop constructive
heterosexual relationships based on trust and intimacy
Why does living without a father pose such hazards for children? Two explanations are usually given: The
children receive less supervision and protection from men mothers bring home, and they are also more
emotionally deprived, which leaves them vulnerable to sexual abusers Even a diligent absent father cant
supervise or protect his children the way a live-in father can. Nor is he likely to have the kind of relationship
with his daughter that is usually needed to give her a foundation of emotional security and a model for
nonsexual relationships with men
Some of the additional "poisoned fruit" deeply planted and rooted in young women by the "enlightened,
anti-marriage, male-hating feminists" include difficulty for girls in building a stable family in adulthood,14
Whereas parents in general are not supported as parents by our social institutions, divorced fathers in
particular are devalued, disparaged, and forcefully disengaged from their childrens lives. Researchers have
found that for children, the results are nothing short of disastrous, along a number of dimensions:
-childrens diminished self-concept, and compromised physical and emotional security (children consistently
report feeling abandoned when their fathers are not involved in their lives, struggling with their emotions
and episodic bouts of self-loathing)
-behavioral problems (fatherless children have more difficulties with social adjustment, and are more likely
to report problems with friendships, and manifest behavior problems; many develop a swaggering,
intimidating persona in an attempt to disguise their underlying fears, resentments, anxieties and
unhappiness)
-truancy and poor academic performance (71 per cent of high school dropouts are fatherless; fatherless
children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills;
children from father absent homes are more likely to play truant from school, more likely to be excluded
from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional
qualifications in adulthood)

-delinquency and youth crime, including violent crime (85 per cent of youth in prison have an absent father;
fatherless children are more likely to offend and go to jail as adults)

-promiscuity and teen pregnancy (fatherless children are more likely to experience problems with sexual
health, including a greater likelihood of having intercourse before the age of 16, foregoing contraception
during first intercourse, becoming teenage parents, and contracting sexually transmitted infection; girls
manifest an object hunger for males, and in experiencing the emotional loss of their fathers egocentrically as
a rejection of them, become susceptible to exploitation by adult men)

-drug and alcohol abuse (fatherless children are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, and abuse drugs in
childhood and adulthood)

-homelessness (90 per cent of runaway children have an absent father)

-exploitation and abuse (fatherless children are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, and sexual
abuse, being five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment, with a
one hundred times higher risk of fatal abuse; a recent study reported that preschoolers not living with both
of their biological parents are 40 times more likely to be sexually abused)

-physical health problems (fatherless children report significantly more psychosomatic health symptoms and
illness such as acute and chronic pain, asthma, headaches, and stomach aches)

-mental health disorders (father absent children are consistently overrepresented on a wide range of mental
health problems, particularly anxiety, depression and suicide)

-life chances (as adults, fatherless children are more likely to experience unemployment, have low incomes,
remain on social assistance, and experience homelessness)

-future relationships (father absent children tend to enter partnerships earlier, are more likely to divorce or
dissolve their cohabiting unions, and are more likely to have children outside marriage or outside any
partnership)

-mortality (fatherless children are more likely to die as children, and live an average of four years less over
the life span)

Given the fact that these and other social problems correlate more strongly with fatherlessness than with
any other factor, surpassing race, social class and poverty, father absence may well be the most critical social
issue of our time. In Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn calls the crisis of fatherless children the most
destructive trend of our generation. A recent British report from the University of Birmingham, Dad and Me,
confirms Blankenhorns claims, concluding that the need for a father is on an epidemic scale, and father
deficit should be treated as a public health issue.

We ignore the problem of father absence to our peril. Of perhaps greatest concern is the lack of response
from our lawmakers and policymakers, who pay lip service to the paramount importance of the best
interests of the child, yet turn a blind eye to father absence, ignoring the vast body of research on the dire
consequences to childrens well-being.

What is the solution to father absence? Many fathers advocates have stressed the need for fast, low-cost,
effective ways for non-residential parents to have their court-ordered parenting time enforced. While access
enforcement is important, legislating for shared parenting would be a more effective measure to ensure the
ongoing active involvement of both parents in childrens lives. A legal presumption of shared parenting
would affirm the primary role of both parents, and make clear that even in the absence of a spousal
relationship, both mothers and fathers parental responsibilities to their childrens needs are sacred, and
therefore deserving of full legal protection and recognition.
Children who grew up fatherless are:

Eight times more likely to go to prison.
Five times more likely to commit suicide.
20 times more likely to have behavioural problems.
20 times more likely to become rapists.
32 times more likely to become runaways.
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances.
Nine times more likely to drop out of high school.
One-tenth as likely to get A's in school.
The Institute for the Study of Civil Society ( Civitas ) U.K.
Introduction

Increases in divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing have dramatically altered the family life of American
children. Whereas in the early 1960s, nearly 90 percent of all children lived with both of their biological
parents until they reached adulthood, today less than half of children grow up with both natural parents.
Nearly a third are born to unmarried parents, the majority of whom never live together, and another third
are born to married parents who divorce before their child reaches adulthood. To further complicate
matters, a substantial number of children are exposed to multiple marital disruptions and multiple father
figures.
These changes have created tremendous uncertainty in children's lives and have led to considerable
speculation among policy makers and the public more generally about the consequences of father absence.
Some analysts argue that growing up with a single mother is the primary cause of many of the country's most
serious social problems, including poverty, high school dropout, teen pregnancy, and delinquency (Popenoe,
1988, 1996; Whitehead, 1993; Blankenhorn, 1995). Others argue that poverty and economic insecurity are
the real culprits, causing both father absence and adolescent behavioral problems (Skolnick, 1991; Stacy,
1993). Still others claim that the problems associated with family disruption are rooted in marital discord
that begins long before the parents separate or divorce.
To bring empirical evidence to bear on this debate, my colleagues and I have been analyzing several large,
nationally representative surveys that contain information on children's family structure growing up as well
as their educational attainment and social adjustment in young adulthood. In this chapter, I summarize the
major findings from this work as it pertains to the following questions:
Are children raised apart from their biological fathers worse off than children raised by both parents? How
large are the differences and which groups of children are most affected?
What factors account for the lower achievement of children in one-parent families? What factors are
associated with resilience? And finally,
Do differences in children's wellbeing predate family disruption or are they are a consequence of father
absence?
Our investigation has been going on for over 10 years now and covers more than 10 data sets. The most
important of these are the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
(NLSY), the High School and Beyond Study (HSB), and the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH).
All of these surveys are large enough to allow us to distinguish among different types of single parent
families, including families headed by never-married mothers as well as families headed by divorced or
separated mothers and remarried mothers. These surveys also allow us to compare differences between
boys and girls raised in one- and two-parent families as well as differences between children of different
racial and ethnic backgrounds and different social classes.1
To summarize briefly, we find that children who grow up apart from their biological fathers do less well, on
average, than children who grow up with both natural parents. They are less likely to finish high school and
attend college, less likely to find and keep a steady job, and more likely to become teen mothers. The
differences are not huge. Indeed, most children who grow up with a single parent do quite well. Nor are they
large enough to support the claim that father absence is the major cause of our country's most serious social
problems. However, the differences between children in one- and two-parent families are not so small as to
be inconsequential, and there is fairly good evidence that father absence per se is responsible for at least
some of them.2
Why would this be so? Why would the loss of a biological father reduce a childs chances of success? We
argue that when fathers live apart from their child, they are less likely to share their incomes with the child,
and, consequently, mothers and children usually experience a substantial decline in their standard of living
when the father moves out. We estimate that as much as half of the disadvantage associated with father
absence is due to the economic insecurity and instability. Another quarter is due to the loss of parental time
and supervision, and the rest is probably due to a loss of social capital attributable in large measure to the
higher incidence of residential mobility among single mothers and remarried mothers. Stated differently, if
parents who decide to live apart were able to cushion their child from the economic instability and
disruptions in neighborhood ties that often accompany the breakup of a family, and if single mothers were
able to establish and maintain regular routines and effective systems of supervision, their children would
likely do just as well as children raised in two-parent families. The problem is, these objectives are very
difficult to achieve.
In the rest of the chapter, I flesh out these conclusions. I begin by describing some of the evidence on
differences in educational attainment, labor market attachment, and family formation that my colleagues
and I have uncovered in our analyses. Next, I discuss the major arguments for why father absence matters
and present evidence relative to each of these claims. I end by discussing some of the implications of this
research for parents, community leaders, and policy makers.