Everyone agrees, kids need fathers

Published 11:24 pm Wednesday, February 26, 2014

The best way to ensure a child has a brighter future is to help ensure that child has an active and involved father. That shouldn’t be a revolutionary claim, but in many policy circles, it is — though that’s beginning to change.

For years, the fatherhood argument has been bogged down in the correlation/causality debate. Are young children without fathers more likely to be poor, or are poor children less likely to have a father involved in their lives?

In other words, does being fatherless lead to poverty, or does poverty lead to fatherlessness? The answer, of course, is both. And they’re both cyclical.

Finally, however, we seem to be moving beyond this chicken-and-egg distraction. We’re recognizing that fatherlessness is a truly significant disability.

“More than half of babies of mothers under 30 are born to unmarried parents,” wrote Lois Collins and Marjorie Cortez in The Atlantic recently. “The divorce rate among those who do marry exceeds 40 percent, according to the 2012 State of Our Unions report. These statistics play out most often in the form of absent fathers — or the arrival and departure of serial father figures involved in romantic relationships with a child’s mother. (Moms still usually retain custody in a breakup or divorce.) Twenty-four million American children — one in three — are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.”

Such statistics have been available for years. What’s significant is that even a left-leaning publication like The Atlantic recognizes the problem.

“The time a dad spends with his children is a particularly strong predictor of how empathetic a child will become, according to commission of experts who wrote a proposal asking President Obama to create a White House Council on Boys and Men,” that magazine reported. “The group, which [author Warren] Farrell helped assemble, compiled research showing infants with dads living at home were months ahead in personal and social development. Children who lack contact with fathers are more likely to be treated for emotional or behavioral problems. Girls with absent or indifferent fathers are more prone to hyperactivity. If dad is around, girls are less likely to become pregnant as teens.”

Farrell’s commission also found that “The U.S. has done a better job of integrating women into the workplace than in integrating men into the family — especially into the lives of children in the non-intact family. We have valued men as wallets more than as dads.”

But there are public policy measures that can be taken.

“Simply improving the job market for young adults, especially men, would do wonders to stabilize families — particularly those just starting out,” the magazine reported. “Experts have been surprised by the real drop in divorce among the college-educated, who still can get good jobs … Making sure tax policy doesn’t discourage marriage and providing a modest earned income tax credit for disadvantaged childless young adults would also encourage formation of stable relationships.”

Fathers matter. We’re all starting to recognize this now.