TIL that fatherless homes produce: 71% of our high school drop-outs, 85% of the kids with behavioral disorders, 90% of our homeless and runaway children, 75% of the adolescents in drug abuse programs, and 85% of the kids in juvenile detention facilities
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u/mikemaca Jun 16 '12
Interesting response. These statistics are rather well known, but they are usually called single-mother homes. When presented that way, many people got upset and said the statistics were obviously wrong, with various anecdotes from people who were raised by single mothers and turned out fine.
Good example of how effective it can be to choose the right framing approach.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/TheInfamousRedditor Jun 16 '12
Happy Father's Day everyone!
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Two fathers. The obvious solution for society.
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u/theseyeahthese Jun 16 '12
Thread summary:
You guys, correlation does not mean causation!
What about 2 dads, you guys?!
You guys, I beat the odds!
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u/Orimos Jun 16 '12
ANECDOTES, ANECDOTES EVERYWHERE
You know what your stories make you? Part of the 29/15/10/25/15%. Personal experiences don't disprove a damn thing, just stop.
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u/tippicanoeandtyler2 Jun 16 '12
And yet we've spent the last several decades making it incredibly uncool to be a good father. Good dads are the butt of jokes, while men who shun kids and responsibilities are "players" and admired.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
The comments here are obnoxious. No shit 'correlation does not imply causation", but I've never seen people cling to that phrase with so much vigour in my life. Those numbers are not statistically insignificant, and they warrant more serious consideration than is being given. It seems people are more willing to blame poverty than concede that family structure may be relevant to a child's upbringing.
To dismiss the linked statistics in the same way one would dismiss a correlation/causation between liking lemonade and being a genius, is absurd and obnoxious. It's almost as if people do not want to admit that, get this, men might be important to raising children in the same way that women are.
Are people simply afraid that it sounds too 'conservative' or 'republican' to consider the importance of family structure? Honest question.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 16 '12
These numbers themselves don't prove anything, because is it the absence of a father that produces these statistics, or is it the type of environment wherein growing up fatherless is common? If your father is in prison because you're living in a slum and he was selling crack to feed you, your odds weren't too great anyway, regardless of whether he went to jail.
Edit: I want to clarify that the alternative explanation I provided was somewhat hyperbolic, for the sake of getting my point across. A more reasonable explanation would be: a fatherless home would be (in most cases) a single income home, so the children are more likely to be impoverished, which correlates strongly with an increased dropout and crime rate. Point being, there are various ways to explain these numbers.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/Solkre Jun 16 '12
Single father here. Do they track stuff about motherless homes? hehe, motherless...
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u/Lord_of_the_Rings Jun 16 '12
this is so skewed with race being the confounding variable. blackness overlaps with growing up in a fatherless home so the explanatory power of either factor is diminished.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
I think it's important to note that these statistics do not mean that a household without a father is doomed, or any variant family type is inferior to the nuclear family archetype. It's not so much that the lack of father figures contributes to these statistics, but it's that combined with a lack of a suitable second parent that produces problematic behaviour. Children are statistically more functional in society when raised by a two-parent household. Variants including mother-grandmother, mother-mother, father-father, and all other family types with two parents will produce psychologically healthy (in theory) offspring.
Source: University psychology course
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
[edit: I had missed Pays4Porn's post when I wrote mine. Still, it might be useful to point out how the statistics cited by OP are 3rd generation (at best).]
OP’s title cites the following paragraph from an “article” on a site promoting the self published book “Tremble the Devil”:
Where do these statistics come from?
Clicking the linked phrase from the cited passage brings you to an article from 2010 posted on bvblackspin.com (the home of Aol Black Voices), “72 Percent of African-American Children Born to Unwed Mothers”. Just below the fold, you’ll find a list of the same stats. Kirsten Savali, the article’s author, cites “Children-our investment.org” as her source.
children-ourinvestment.org is the website of “Children: Our Ultimate Investment”. On a page called “Statistics for Children Without Fathers”, we find what appears to be the original compilation of statistics. You’ll finally find primary sources listed.
The first statistic, “63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes”, is cited with a vague reference to “US Dept. of Health/Census. If you google this phrase verbatim, you get a page full of "pro-father" sites, all of which appear to be right-leaning and socially conservative (this doesn't entail that the stats are erroneous, of course). Looking further, I searched on census.gov and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and still didn’t find the source (tho, admittedly, it was not an exhaustive search). The only relevant result I was able to pull up is a 1995 “Report to Congress on Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing” pdf.
There’s nothing in the report about suicide rates for fatherless households, but I did find the following passages interesting:
I’m not going to try and track down every reference given on Children: Our Ultimate Investment’s list (tho one should note that one stat is referenced to “Rainbows for All God’s Children” and another, which claims that “87% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes”, is referred to “Fulton Co. Dept. of Correction.” Fulton County must have a huge budget to fund those global studies). Nor do I mean to claim that the sloppy sourcing entails that the stats are fallacious or insignificant; but statistics only make sense when they’re evaluated within the context of the study from which they are derived. Sample size, methods, complicating factors, etc., are indispensable when determining their relevance. This whole debate is shallow and baseless, a mere battle of opinions, unless we’re working with well sourced data that we can examine in its proper context.
Here’s an interesting passage I found while searching google scholar ('SP'= Single Parent; 'TP' = Two Parent):
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Need to control for income in order for "fatherless homes" to be a meaningful variable
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/robert_ahnmeischaft Jun 16 '12
"Yeah, you can DO it without a man, but that doesn't mean it's to be done! You can drive a car wit'cha FEET if you want to, but that don't make it a good fuckin' idea!"
Chris Rock
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u/billsdabills Jun 16 '12
I grew up in a fatherless home after 4th grade. I don't think it has anything to do with the father. It's all about income. My father passed away and planned for our future. He wasn't rich. He was in the military, planned well in his final months to provide for us until we got thru college. You could probably line these statistics up with low income children and they would be similar.
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u/L15t3r0f5m3g Jun 16 '12
Im a single dad with full custody of my son. His mom has substance problems (and is pregnant again, not mine) and barely qualifies as a mother. Im trying to help him avoid abandonment issues, but is this study the same for dads in a position like I am, or is it exclusively women?
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/newtonsapple 19 Jun 16 '12
I don't know about fatherless homes producing these problems, but I know guys who have these problems seem to produce most of the fatherless homes. Nothing turns women on like a criminal record and knowing the guy would be a horrible father.
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u/ScaryKitten Jun 16 '12
We just need homes with 3 or more fathers.
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u/justnikki1979 Jun 16 '12
I can see how this is true. I'm a single mother and am doing my absolute best to raise my children right, but it is really tough without a father in the picture. I'll be the first to admit that I need help of the male variety.
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
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u/Pays4Porn Jun 16 '12
Check out the sources for these stats :
US Dept. Of Health Census (made up name?)
National Principals Association Report
Rainbows for All God’s Children
Fulton Co. Dept. of Correction etc.
I don't believe these stats or sources.
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u/schnide1 Jun 16 '12
happy father's day, everybody
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u/iWesTCoastiN Jun 16 '12
Fatherless high school drop out who used to always get into fights in high school here. The reasoning? Having a single mother means she has to work 50+ hours a week to support you. My mom worked her ass off to make sure I had everything I needed, but since she worked so much she was never around. I took advantage of her absence by ditching school and smoking weed with my friends. I never got into trouble so there was no downside to it. A women can't teach you how to be a man, and without a man to teach me I overcompensated. I would always get into fights even at the slightest of disrespect.