The United States is one of the primary countries that’s struggling with father absence. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 18.4 million people live without a biological, step, or adoptive father. To put this figure in perspective, it means that 1 in 4 children go through life without having a father figure to guide, protect, and love them.
Fatherlessness has reached epidemic proportions; a national state of emergency should be declared. 40% of Americans are being raised without functioning fathers. The sociological implications are staggering.
Fatherless children are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide.
32 times more likely to run away.
20 times more likely to have behavioral problems.
14 times more likely to commit rape.
9 times more likely to drop out of high school.
20 times more likely to end up in prison.
According to Psychology Today, a father may be physically present but absent in spirit.
The impact of an absent father doesn’t just affect the child but reverberates through the whole family.
“A father may be physically present, but absent in spirit,” says Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. James Hollis. “His absence may be literal through death, divorce or dysfunction, but more often it is a symbolic absence through silence and the inability to transmit what he also may not have acquired.”
According to the National Center for Fathering, “More than 20 million children live in a home without the physical presence of a father. Millions more have dads who are physically present, but emotionally absent. If it were classified as a disease, fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.”
The Family Father Wound Impacts Four Critical Areas of Our Lives: Our physical health – Our emotional health – Our relationship health -Our social and political health.
The effects of growing up without a loving, engaged father ripple through the generations and contribute to many of the most serious problems we face in our society today.
In their book, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, Warren Farrell and John Gray cite the following statistics about the negative impact of absent fathers on their children, particularly on our boys.
Children with father loss have, by the age of nine, a 14% reduction in chromosome telomere length—the most reliable predictor of life expectancy. In addition, the telomere loss is 40% greater for boys than for girls.
Living in a home without a dad has a greater correlation with suicide among teenagers than any other factor.
Every 1% increase in fatherlessness in a neighborhood predicts a 3% increase in adolescent violence.
Among youths in prisons, 85% grew up in a fatherless home. Prisons are centers for dad-deprived young men.
Dad deprivation increases the likelihood of teenage motherhood.
Dad-deprived boys search for structure and respect in gangs.
A study of ISIS fighters concluded that almost all male and female fighters had in common “some type of an ‘absent father’ syndrome.”
Fatherlessness has become so pervasive in society that it has come to be accepted as normal. Yet, it is anything but normal. Fatherlessness perpetuates the cycle of fathers producing children who may be wounded, who themselves grow up to become or to marry, a wounded man.
While devastating, the father’s absence is a problem that persists in America this problem goes well beyond geographical lines.
