“Kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their Dad. And if a father is unwilling or unable to fill that hole, it can leave a wound that is not easily healed.” – Ronald Warren

    

One summer in the village, the people gathered for a picnic. As they shared food and conversation, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown!

Someone rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. Others tried to jump in the water and teach the babies how to swim to solve the problem.

As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, two of the townspeople started to run away along the shore of the river.

“Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers. “We need you here to help us save these babies!”

“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”

The parable of the “River Babies” is a story that explains the social services field as we try to organize our efforts to stop the damage, but the truth is until the source of the problem isn’t addressed there will never be any long-lasting change.

There are a lot of problems in American society and culture including drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy, violence, gangs, poverty, obesity, and other mental and emotional problems. While this seems like a wide-range of issues, they call come from the same source – the absence of a father.

If fatherlessness was a disease, it would be an epidemic in America. More than 24 million children are being raised without the presence of their biological father, while millions more have the physical presence but emotionally absent. This equates to one out of every four children (with some studies suggesting one out of every three) are fatherless.

I was fortunate to grow up with a couple older brothers as well as a couple sisters closer to my age. I go the best of both worlds. With my brothers we would wrestle, rough-house, and play football. Then with my sisters, I got a chance to be creative, artistic, tell stories, and play with dolls.

“What are you playing with dolls for?” shouted a neighborhood kid one day, “Dolls are for girls!”

This was a common occurrence to get teased, picked up, and bullied if I were to do any activity that wasn’t considered “manly.” But looking back, all the kids who ridiculed me had one thing in common – they were fatherless (either physically or emotionally).

Which makes me ponder; perhaps if we let boys know it is ok to play with dolls at a young age, then maybe will have a generation of men that realize it is ok to be a father.

Fatherlessness Statistics:

As the rate of fatherlessness has spiked dramatically in the past few decades, some terrifying statistics have been produced on the results of growing up with a father. Now this is not to say that similar things happen when the mother is absent, nor is it to say that someone cannot grow up without a father and prosper, also it is not looking to create blame or a victim mentality. It is just presenting factual data that has been collected throughout the years:

  • 85-percent of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes (20 times the national average)
  • 85-percent of children with behavior problems come from fatherless homes ( 20 times the national average)
  • 75-percent of all adolescents in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (10 times the national average).
  • 71-percent of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (9 times the national average)
  • 71-percent of teenage pregnancies come from fatherless homes (7 times national average)
  • Daughters without fathers are 711-percent more likely to have children as teenagers, 164-percent more likely to have pre-marital birth, and 92-percent more likely to get divorced
  • 90-percent of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (32 times the national average)
  • 63-percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (five times the national average)
  • 80-percent of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes (14 times the national average)
  • Children in fatherless homes had 8 times the rate of maltreatment, 10 times the rate of abuse, and 6 times the rate of neglect
    • 100 times higher risk of fatal abuse
    • 40 times more likely for a preschooler to be sexually abused
  • 4 times the risk of poverty for children growing up without a father
  • 2 times more likely to suffer from obesity
  • 2 times the rate of infant mortality
  • Higher likelihood of mental health disorders
  • Higher likelihood of future relationship problems

Long-Term Effects of Fatherlessness:

People will often dismiss or deny the affects of an absentee father. The rationalization is that children are adaptable and they make the adjustments. While, yes they do adapt, that doesn’t mean that they are not masking immense pain.

“Why don’t I have a daddy like [insert name]?” is a question that starts to get asked around ages four and five as kids start to see all the other kids in their schools, teams, neighborhood with two parents. This is just the awareness that something is different and then the tough questions start to follow – tough questions that many times go unanswered and a mask is created.

When a man leaves a woman after they conceive a child together, the effects take place instantaneously. Lack of father involvement impacts early births, low birth weight, and infant mortality. The mortality rate for infants in the first 28 days is four times more likely to occur when a father is absent.

In walking away from a baby, you are walking away from a soul. That infant turns into a toddler, turns into a child, then a teenager, and an adult and is facing some frightening statistics outlined above.

“In general, research has indicated that children who experience fathers’ absence from the home at various points during childhood are more likely than other children to display internalizing problems, such as sadness, social withdrawal, and anxiety, as well as externalizing problems, such as aggression, impulsivity, and hyperactivity,” said Erin Pougnet of Concordia University and lead author of a study examining the effects of a father’s influence on behavioral and cognitive development.

Psychology of Fatherlessness:

“Fathers provide children with male role models and can influence children’s preferences, values and attitudes, while giving them a sense of security and boosting their self-esteem. They also increase the degree of adult supervision at home, which may lead to a direct reduction of delinquent behavior,” said Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, Director of the Melbourne Institute.

Boys tend to show their pain by acting out in violence, sex, rape, alcohol/drugs, or gang activity. Whereas, girls tend to mask their pain leading to mental health disorders such as depression, abusing alcohol, dropping out of school, and increased promiscuity.

Without a father, children have a diminished self-concept, insecurity, feel abandoned and self-loathing. They have difficulty adjusting to social situations, problems with friendships/relationships, and start to mask their emotions with drugs/alcohol or sex.

“When Dad is not there – ‘there,’ as in living there in the home – something deep in a child’s psyche perceives a critical deficit, a desperate and frightening imbalance that preys on the child’s particular vulnerabilities, causing him [or her] to careen off into unhealthy extremes,” stated a family physician in a 2013 Touchstone Magazine article.


Comment: Children who have an active father figure have fewer psychological and behavioral problems

When girls are deprived of a father’s love, they start looking for love from men in all the wrong places. They are desperately seeking approval from men – the approval that they should have received as a child. The promiscuity leads to the influx of teenage pregnancy and the next generation of fatherless kids and the cycle of pain continues.

Now ain’t nobody tell us it was fair

No love from my daddy cause the coward wasn’t there

He passed away and I didn’t cry, cause my anger

Wouldn’t let me feel for a stranger

They say I’m wrong and I’m heartless, but all along

I was looking for a father he was gone

I hung around with the Thugs, and even though they sold drugs

They showed a young brother love

– Tupac Shakur

The Soul Builder

These statistics are painfully difficult to swallow as we see that the more fatherless kids that are being raised leads to more problems and another generation of absentee fathers. But, it also reminds me of a story of a friend of mine (who only allowed me to tell this story if he remains anonymous).

My friend – which we will refer to as Larry – has been raising a fatherless child as his own for the past few years. A friend of his had an infant with an absentee father and he stepped into the role. Now, this is not the typical stepfather role as Larry has never had a romantic relationship or interest in the mother. In fact, they both have been dating other people this entire time.

“‘Are you babysitting again!?’ my friends would ask,” Larry said, “I hate the term ‘babysit.’ It makes it seem like a chore or a task. I have never babysat a day in my life. But rather, I am spending time with a child and learning about unconditional love, purity, being present, and living life to the fullest. I learn more from her than she does from me. People will ask, ‘what do you get out of all of this?’ but what I get is beyond what words could ever describe. It’s not just a child, there is a soul inside and we are growing together.”

In showing these statistics to Larry, he starts to tear up thinking that this child could have been one of the statistics.

“My biggest fear in this world right now is not being in this child’s life,” Larry said as he wiped tears from his eyes, “I don’t want to just be a phase of her life, but a consistent father figure and do everything possible to keep her from adding to these numbers.”

Larry states the greatest part of his day is when he comes home from work or when he picks her up at day care and she drops what she is doing yells out “Larry!” and then sprints to him with open arms looking for a giant fatherly hug.

“I’ve been fortunate to experience a lot in this life,” Larry stated, “I’ve traveled the world and had some material success. But nothing, and I mean nothing – not even close – will ever compare to these greetings I receive from this soul that desires to connect with mine. We have a soul contract that was destined to be filled.”

His story reminds me of the classic story Catcher in the Rye in which the main character Holden Caulfield explains how he wants to keep the children from developing into phonies – however, in this case it is like keeping the fatherless children from falling astray.

“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

It’s not “Crazy.” What is crazy is that we have come to accept the fatherless epidemic in our society. What is “crazy” is that we just expect children to adapt to the chaos of adults. It is crazy that we socialize men that their self-worth is only measured by their net worth and as long as they provide financially then they are worthwhile parents and are allowed to be emotionally absent. It is crazy that one gender is taught to repress how they feel, only allowed to act out in violence/rage, and how we teach men to objectify women.

It is crazy that a man that chooses to be a loving father-figure and display acts of altruism while building the soul of a child is the one who is considered to be crazy.