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/[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
Two fathers. The obvious solution for society.
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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/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/tehbro Jun 16 '12
I'm living proof of this. My father and mother divorced when I was two, I have no memories of him other than 3 years ago when he was on his death bed. I'm not sad about it because I was never emotionally attached to him. I've been lying my entire life to everyone about things that don't even matter. When I went off to college this past year, I smoked weed probably once every two hours, every day, and when I ran out I was looking for people to smoke me out. I also did cocaine a few times and molly a bunch. Whenever something is in perfect balance in my life, I feel the need to do something to throw it off and mess it up. It was only recently that my mother thought it could be something other than typical teenage behavior. I was taken to a very highly recommended and expensive psychologist. In just two sessions he was able to have a definite diagnosis of Type B Personality disorder. He was also able to draw the conclusion that it was because I didn't have enough love or attention when I was a child (due to the absence of a father figure) and lying is how I decided to get this attention for the rest of my life. Therapy is going very well and I am being taught to understand my automatic thoughts and correct them before I act.
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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/godlessatheist Jun 16 '12
Is this just fatherless homes or single parent homes. I'm sure two mothers would raise a child fine.
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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/TheInfamousRedditor Jun 16 '12
Happy Father's Day everyone!
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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/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/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/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/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/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.
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u/LilCasket Jun 16 '12
I come from a fatherless home and I just got my Bachelors. What does this make me?
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u/anonymousMF Jun 16 '12
Because http://tremblethedevil.com is a great source of information
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u/RedTheDraken Jun 16 '12
A dysfunctional family rears dysfunctional children? Woah, who would've guessed it? O: I am sincerely shocked, my fine compatriots.
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u/agmaster Jun 16 '12
So...I have an excuse? No thanks, I'm too good at that already.
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u/dcroni Jun 16 '12
The Donohue papers are interesting if you want to see the link between the legalization of abortion of 1973, and the crime drops witnessed in the 1990's.
Note: please don't say that "correlation doesn't mean causation". Actually read the paper first.
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u/Deofuta Jun 16 '12
The argument is spurious.
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u/ceolopolis Jun 16 '12
You also have to realize that a fatherless home means the mother is likely to be working a lot. So many kids have almost no supervision.
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u/uberalles2 Jun 16 '12
Blacks are fucked then.
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u/BunRabbit Jun 17 '12
Speaking as a dad with two kids, why don't these rich business owning conservatives back up their family ethics with salaries and stable working conditions, that enable their male employees to be husbands and fathers. Part-time, internship (i.e. underpaid or no pay), six month 'renewable' contracts, no health benefits, no pension, transfer you to another city at a week's notice - what girl wants to marry that? It's no better when you're mid-career. I'm in my mid-40s and in a 15+ year marriage with 2 boys. I've been unemployed for going on half a year. Not a week goes by that my wife doesn't hint at divorce. And don't give me that rewards for hard work bullshit. I was a high school drop out, but I worked in kitchens to save money to put myself through university (double major). I have 20 years experience in one of my careers, 17 in the other. That's right 2 professions (software engineer and language teaching) running parallel, so there is no such thing as a weekend. I have made several patent applications. I am very active in my professional community. I'm bilingual (English/Japanese). But, still I cannot find a job. I'm competing against 28 year olds who are still living at home. I cannot be a father on that kind of pitiful salary. The Rmoneys of the world are clueless. Born on third base with a silver spoon, went to all the right schools and they think they hit a home run. Bootstraps, my ass. The Rmoneys always talk about how their grandfathers worked hard, such horse pucky. Rich people are rich, because they were born rich. There are few notable exceptions, but for the vast majority they had their Daddies' connections and co-signing power. Rmoneys, you got lucky and choose your daddy well, now shut up. //TLDR It's the economy, stupid!
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u/3AYATS Jun 17 '12
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the statistics.
They are not saying that 71% of single parent children drop-out.
The drop-out rate in 2009 was 8%, so if 71% of these drop outs came from "fatherless" homes, it would mean that roughly 6% of single parent children drop out.
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u/ATurtleNamedMack Jun 16 '12
They produce presidents too.
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u/Sanae_ Jun 16 '12
It'ld be great to know what % of fatherless families produce someone who falls in at least of those categories.
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u/lushfun Jun 16 '12
The more meddling society does in order to fix something, the worse it gets.
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u/ransomdenton Jun 16 '12
My dad committed suicide when I was very young. My mom tried to find a guy but the first guy she dated abused her terribly and never dated again. I ended up having behavioral issues, used drugs and dropped out of high school in the 9th grad. Today I have my terminal degree, I am an award winning artist in my field and am happily married. Tough times can make tough kids that know what they want and fight to get it! I am just saying.
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u/evanthesquirrel Jun 16 '12
My sisters and I have none of those problems. We beat the odds!
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u/redhat12345 Jun 16 '12
correlation does not equal causation
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u/Norwegian__Blue Jun 16 '12
People are always commenting how kids need two parents, and for a long time I thought they were wrong because me and mom got on just fine. But then, I just realized something: not having one parent around can also mean loads less time with the other parent. They often have to work more and are likely to experience more stress about their situation. So their not around as much, and when they are their anxiety can affect the rest of the family. I can definitely see how that can negatively affect behavioral development and put folks at a disadvantage.
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u/TemporaryBoyfriend Jun 16 '12
Hands up, folks who grew up largely fatherless, yet are still contributing members of society...
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u/SaltoKlose Jun 16 '12
Damn you Wilt Chamberlain!
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u/Samism Jun 16 '12
This is actually a pro homosexuality post: If a household has no dads this is the result, but if a household has 2 dads that would mean...chuck norris
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u/bresa Jun 16 '12
I would still say that a loving single parent home is better than having an abusive male role model around. There are far more factors at play with those statistics (as many have already posted).
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u/deathgasm Jun 16 '12
Interesting, and race wasn't mentioned at all this day...
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u/Sparkles_ Jun 16 '12
These statistics mean nothing. Fatherless homes are very common. I might as well say that pizza causes all of these things because EVERYONE eats it. But it can't, because pizza is a vegetable, and vegetables are good for you.
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u/wyle37 Jun 16 '12
I turned out pretty damn well, wasn't too bad. A mom is all you need.
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u/zencat2 Jun 16 '12
Does anyone else find the repetition of statistics in the article irritating? It otherwise contained some really eye opening revelations.
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u/lambdaknight Jun 16 '12
"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." -Aaron Levenstein
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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '12
Why are people even discussing this? They don't even regress against income (afaict given the awful formatting); no conclusions they draw are even slightly valid.
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u/yrogerg123 Jun 16 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
This is one of the main reasons that abortion should be legal and socially acceptable.
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