Tag Archives: Father

News

New study links father absence to increased bullying

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From Science Daily. (H/T Wes from Reason to Stand)

Excerpt:

“Our behavior is driven by our perception of our world, so if children feel they are not getting enough time and attention from parents then those feelings have to go somewhere and it appears in interaction with their peers,” said Christie-Mizell, an associate professor of sociology and licensed psychologist specializing in family therapy and the treatment of children with mood and behavior disorders.

His study, published in the journal Youth & Society, looked at two questions — “What is the relationship between the number of hours parents work and adolescent bullying behavior?” and “What is the relationship between bullying behavior and youth’s perceptions of the amount of time their parents spend with them?”

What Christie-Mizell found is that it was children’s perception of how much time they spent with their fathers that had the most impact on bullying behavior.

Christie-Mizell began the research thinking that mothers’ work hours — since mothers overwhelmingly are the ones to care for and monitor children — would be more likely to have an impact on whether children exhibited bullying behavior such as being cruel to others, being disobedient at school, hanging around kids who get in trouble, having a very strong temper and not being sorry for misbehaving. However, it was when fathers worked full time or overtime and children perceived that they did not spend enough time with their fathers that bullying behavior increased.

Mothers’ work hours showed modest to no effect on bullying behavior. Christie-Mizell believes this is because children perceive mothers as being more accessible because they still handle most of the responsibilities at home as caregivers and family managers.

“The findings about fathers and mothers are important because it turns what most of us think is conventional wisdom — that mothers have the most influence on children — on its ear. What this research shows is that while it’s equally important for kids to spend time with both parents, fathers need to make an extra effort,” he said.

It’s amazing that the very people who complain the most about “bullying” are causing the bullying by undermining the traditional family. If everyone is so concerned about “safe” schools, then maybe they should promote fatherhood and marriage instead of redefining marriage so that fathers are redefined right out of the marriage.

My previous post on the effects of fatherlessness on children is here. Fathers matter. Marriage matters. Biological fathers are the least likely to abuse their children. Individual stepfathers and live-in boyfriends tend to not be as good for children as biological fathers.

Research from the Heritage Foundation on the importance of fathers

Commentary

How important are biological fathers for healthy child development?

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Some statistics on the importance of biological fathers from Fathers.com.

Excerpt:

Some fathering advocates would say that almost every social ill faced by America’s children is related to fatherlessness. Six are noted here. As supported by the data below, children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.

For a summary, I’ll just list one fact from each of the six categories they listed.

1. Poverty

Fact:

– Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor. In 2002, 7.8% of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 38.4% of children in female-householder families.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002, P20-547, Table C8. Washington, D.C.: GPO 2003.

2. Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Fact:

– The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. Survey on Child Health. Washington, DC, 1993.

3. Physical and Emotional Health

Fact:

– Unmarried mothers are less likely to obtain prenatal care and more likely to have a low birthweight baby. Researchers find that these negative effects persist even when they take into account factors, such as parental education, that often distinguish single-parent from two-parent families.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Service. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics. Report to Congress on Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing. Hyattsville, MD (Sept. 1995): 12.

– Children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems.Source: Stanton, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics.”National Health Interview Survey.” Hyattsville, MD, 1988.

4. Educational Achievement

Fact:

– After taking into account race, socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ability, high school students from single-parent households were 1.7 times more likely to drop out than were their corresponding counterparts living with both biological parents.Source: McNeal, Ralph B. Jr.”Extracurricular Activities and High School Dropouts.” Sociology of Education 68(1995): 62-81.

5. Crime

Fact:

– Children in single parent families are more likely to be in trouble with the law than their peers who grow up with two parents.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. National Health Interview Survey. Hyattsville, MD, 1988.

6. Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy

Fact:

– A white teenage girl from an advantaged background is five times more likely to become a teen mother if she grows up in a single-mother household than if she grows up in a household with both biological parents.Source: Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe. “Facing the Challenges of Fragmented Families.” The Philanthropy Roundtable 9.1 (1995): 21.

Fathers matter, so women need to choose men who will be good fathers. And that means having an idea of what fathers do, and knowing how to evaluate a man to see if he can do what fathers do. There’s more to fathers than handsomeness and fun!

Research from the Heritage Foundation

Commentary

What is the real issue in the push for legalized abortion?

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I think the main cause of the desire for legalized abortion, is that women and men do not want to take responsibility for their actions.

The sexual act always has a chance of making a baby. If people who are having sex are not ready to take care of a baby, without the government’s help, then they should not have sex. We should not take chances with other people’s lives just so we can do risky things that make us feel good. The needs of grown-ups to feel good does not trump the right to life of another (unborn) human being. We have to sometimes give up things that make us feel good in order to avoid harming others.

I think the reason why people push abortion is because they want to believe that pre-marital recreational sex is normal. The people who push these policies are often those who had sex themselves before they were married, perhaps because it was fun (men) or perhaps because they wanted attention from the opposite sex (women). They wanted the recreational sex to feel good, but didn’t want to be saddled with the consequences of their desire for happiness.

I think the solution is to replace recreational pre-marital sex with chastity, courting and marriage. Men need to learn to control their desires, and make good decisions to prepare for being a husband and father, and get married, before they have sex. Women need to learn to do without male attention, to prepare themselves for having a husband and children, and to have sex only after they are married. Pre-marital sex isn’t an appropriate way for a woman to get attention from a man. There are other ways. And we should be training men to respond to those other ways. We should also be encouraging fathers to stay married and model love for their children by loving their wives.

We should not have any laws or policies that discourage men from preparing for their role of protector/provider/moral-and-spiritual-leader in a marriage. Sex education should not be subsidized or promoted by government because it makes children learn about sex outside of the context of marriage. And we should likewise not have any laws or policies that discourage women from preparing for marriage, by making husbands seem unnecessary to having and raising children. For example, we should end welfare payments for single mothers to make it clear that men are needed to provide for children, and that men should be selected by women for that role.

Children need a stable relationship with their married biological mother and father. So government has to promote marriage. Government may have to give up promoting third-wave feminism so that we can strengthen marriage, since third-wave feminism is opposed to marriage. We may need to to roll-back to first-wave (equal opportunity) feminism and give up the misguided quest to equate men with women in every area of life.

And we shouldn’t be pushing sex education as a way of removing the moral prohibitions on pre-marital sex. Those prohibitions were there for a reason and people who have pre-marital sex SHOULD feel bad. The solution is NOT to tell everyone that there is nothing wrong with it just because the people who do it want to feel better about themselves by making everyone agree with them. I think the left uses the public schools to beat down moral standards so that they will feel better about their own immorality. But immorality is harmful – and it’s better for young people to abide by traditional moral rules and avoid harming themselves and others than for grown-ups to avoid feeling bad for breaking those rules. Sorry grown-ups, but maybe it feels bad because it is bad – and stop trying to tell everyone that what you did was fine. It wasn’t fine. It was wrong.

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