Children need more than ever the presence and guidance of fathers in family life. According to a recent collection of essays, a significant body of scientific research clearly documents the vital role a father plays in the formative years of a child’s life.
The book is titled “Why Fathers Count: The Importance of Fathers and Their Involvement with Children” (Men’s Studies Press). Sean E. Brotherson and Joseph M. White, the editors and authors of the first chapter, set the tone for the book with an overview of arguments regarding the importance of fathers for children. The presence of a father has a positive impact in many ways, they note, as children with fathers have fewer behavioral problems, obtain better academic results, and are economically better off.
Brotherson and White also clarified that they do not in any way wish to minimize the contribution made by mothers to family life. In fact, they stated, both parents count: fathers and mothers. Nevertheless, as statistics amply confirm, there has been a marked increase in fatherless families in recent decades, hence the book’s concentration on fathers.
If you ever want to see the tragedy of children who grow up without fathers or have brutal, emotionally distant fathers do some jail ministry. 99.9% of the inmates I’ve worked with in jail or prison have had no positive role model from a father or father-figure.
I can confirm what Revamundo says. I have only met one inmate in my 12 years of prison ministry that lived with his biological father while growing up and was not abused by that father.
So, how do we stop the growing problem of children brought up without fathers? In many cases, the “breadwinner” role of the father has been supplanted by government assistance and too many people are speaking of fathers as being unnecessary. We hear that it is discriminatory to say that single parenthood or homosexual parentingis less ideal that a husband/wife parenting family. Why does there seem to be a concerted effort to do away with the traditional two-parent family through promoting divorce or out of wedlock pregnancy?
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Similarly, many inmates I have met have fathered multiple kids out of wedlock from multiple mothers. They view occasionally stopping by as an acceptable fulfillment of fatherly obligations. Ye reap what ye sow, and the apple usually does not fall far from the tree.
The logical implication of the GLB revision is that a young woman can decide to do a SSM with another woman (who may feel more safe to this perhaps scared young woman than a male of her age) and later have a kid and there is no problem with this set-up. I.e., an extra non-biological mom is freely interchangeable with a father.
Such a viewpoint shows a major lack of wisdom.
this epiphany would be funny if it weren’t so painful. We have had to do endless research to discover what the rest of us have always known, that a child needs a mother and father who invest themselves in raising it the best they can. We have been told over and over that fathers are not really necessary and single mothers can do a perfectly fine job thank you very much. Just the way we were told that latchkeykids get into no more trouble than kids who have a parent at home when they go home. And then we discovered that wasn’t true. Are we surprised?
It would be difficult to count up the number of left wing agendas that have done substantial damage to society. Homosexual marriage is merely the latest. LM
On a positive note, a Swiss study showed a much stronger influence on children’s sustained spiritual development. TEC would seem to confirm the study’s findings, as the increasing feminization and decreasing male participation have been accompanied by even further retention of TEC’s children. Thus both TEC and the Swiss study seem to support the idea that fathers assistance in spiritual formation creates a much greater likelihood of “sticking”.
Oops, add “drops in” before “retention”.
No matter how good a job a father may do being a father, if the mother, as in many cases, makes derogatory remarks about the father [ as occurs in thousands of divorce situations ], especially concerning a son, that son never quite bonds properly with the father and suffers because of it – even if and when the father has been a perfect example of a father.