The Rise of Father Absence and Its Attendant Social Ills

[Kamaji]

The Rise of Father Absence and Its Attendant Social Ills

Fatherless children are at higher risk of delinquency that undermines their own prospects and disrupts the communities in which they reside.

David C. Geary
7 Mar 2023

Men’s investment in their children is one of the most remarkable features of the human family. Such investment might not seem unusual to readers with engaged fathers, and it might seem wanting in comparison to mothers’ investment, but it is an evolutionary riddle, nonetheless. This is because male parenting is uncommon in mammals, and doesn’t occur at all in our two closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Although the evolutionary history of men’s parenting lies beyond the scope of this essay, one aspect is relevant: men’s parenting is facultatively expressed. This means that men’s engagement with children is more sensitive than women’s engagement to the dynamics of the marital relationship and to broader social and economic conditions. The result is that social mores and broader conditions impact men’s engagement with children more than they impact women’s engagement, for better or worse.

The focus here is on secular declines in two-parent families in the United States and how children, adolescents, and society more broadly are impacted by the corresponding declines in men’s parenting. The issue is important because children who grow up without fathers are at higher risk of engaging in myriad delinquent and criminal behaviors that undermine their own long-term prospects in life, and disrupt the wellbeing of the communities in which they reside.

The figure below shows secular changes in family composition in the United States since 1960. Over the past several generations, the US has moved from about one in 10 children being raised outside of two-parent families to almost one in three. The two-parent families reported by the US Census Bureau belie changes in the composition of these families due to divorce and cohabitation without marriage. Eickmeyer has estimated that about 60 percent of US children were living with married biological parents, the best situation for most children.

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Keeping children alive

In traditional contexts (e.g., hunter-gatherer, horticulturalist) and throughout much of human history, about one in two children died before reaching their 15th birthday. Men’s investment does not always reduce these risks, as others can compensate (e.g., maternal grandmother), but it does in many contexts.

A United Nations analysis of children’s wellbeing in developing nations found that “mortality of children is raised if the woman is not currently married, if she has married more than once or if she is in a polygamous union. … Overall, it appears that there is a strong, direct association between stable family relationships and low levels of child mortality.” For instance, Indonesian children of divorced parents have a 12 percent higher mortality rate than the children of monogamously married couples. The same relation was found in 11 of the 14 other developing nations surveyed.

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The secular increase in father-absent households and the emerging celebration of their benefits has the potential to throw the daddy out with the bathwater. Although fathers’ contributions may no longer be the difference between which children live and die, there are other contributions that have the potential to be underappreciated or discounted in the push to celebrate single-parenthood, especially mother-headed households.

Keeping children and adolescents on track

Fathers who are engaged and competent have children who are more socially skilled, academically successful, and more likely to be socially mobile in adulthood than their father-absent peers. The interpretation of these correlations is not straightforward, however, because competent men tend to marry competent women. These competent mothers, along with genetics, play a role, but they are not the whole story. Among other things, fathers help to keep children from going off the rails, especially during adolescence. Engaged fathers have adolescents who are more likely to stay in school and stay out of trouble (e.g., criminal behavior, teenage pregnancy) than are father-absent adolescents, after taking other factors into account.

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Bottom line and moving forward

All the effects described above are modest, once potential alternative explanations (e.g., genetic influences, family income) are considered, and so nothing can be said about any individual child or adolescent. So, some adolescents who grow up in father-absent homes do just fine and some who grow up with engaged fathers still go off the rails. Nevertheless, having a present and engaged father can be the difference between a downward or upward life trajectory for many other adolescents.

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Source:  https://quillette.com/2023/03/07/the-rise-of-father-absence/