# Fatherless homes **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 27, 2018, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703 "2018-02-27T22:03:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/21 "2018-02-28T04:11:12Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Not a very good one. [This 2011 Pew Report](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/01/13/a-portrait-of-stepfamilies/) says that 33% of American adults aged 18-29, and 23% of ones aged 30-49, have at least one stepparent. From there, I’m seat-of-the-pantsing with the facts that about 1 in 2 first marriages end in divorce, that about a quarter of all children live with a single mother, that mothers are far more likely to be custodial parents than fathers, and that [the average length of a first marriage is 8 years and 60% of divorces involve people aged 25 to 39](http://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/), to guesstimate that around a third of under-50 Americans either never had a resident biodad or stopped having one sometime before they reached adulthood. > > I think that sounds like a reasonable ballpark figure, but I’m not claiming any more for it than that it seems probable. What is definitely factually certain, however, is that not having had a resident biodad for the entire period from birth to adulthood is not in any sense a rare phenomenon. It’s incomparably less rare than becoming a mass murderer. I’d say that at least half of the couples who get divorced, especially after brief (i.e. \<5 years) marriages, have no children, or at least no children together. There’s also a big difference between a child whose parents are not married to each other but the child has a good relationship with both of them regardless of who they live with, and a child who never met their father and the mother doesn’t even know who he is, and may very well have no positive male role models at all, at least within their family structure. And those scenarios are all different from women who are single parents by choice, often because they adopted their child(ren). ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/22 "2018-02-28T04:33:08Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > The other factor is that black children are many times more likely than white or Hispanic children to be fatherless Your post was excellent, and I agreed with all of it except this part, a widely-circulated and accepted myth that’s not borne out by statistics. While it’s true that Black fathers are more likely to live in a different home than their children, by many measures, they are, on average, more actively involved in their children’s lives than Latino or white fathers, according to a 2013 CDC study of over 10,000 American fathers. You can find the study [here](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf) and a nifty chart [here](https://thinkprogress.org/the-myth-of-the-absent-black-father-ecc4e961c2e8/). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/23 "2018-02-28T14:16:30Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > There is certainly valid reason to think that stable loving families overall are better for kids, but these cherry-picked data about the families of specific mass murderers are **extremely** fishy. > > In the first place, as all beginning stats students learn, the statistically meaningful information isn’t what percentage of Extraordinarily Tiny Group A share Very Common Characteristic B. It’s what percentage of people with Characteristic B end up being members of Group A. > > It is very common nowadays for a randomly selected American man not to have been “raised by his biological father since childhood”. In fact, probably less than two-thirds of American adults under 50 lived under the same roof with their biological father for their **entire** childhood. > > But the overwhelmingly vast majority of these people don’t become mass murderers. So right away the claim that not spending one’s entire childhood with biodad present somehow significantly influences mass-murder propensities smells like bullshit. > > There’s also the cherry-picking of the “27 deadliest mass shooters” category. The absolute number of victims isn’t a reliable indicator of how messed up or evil a shooter is, so it’s silly to draw a line under the top 27 and treat them as though they constituted some kind of meaningful category that the next 20 or 30 shooters on the list should be excluded from. > > Finally, AFAICT the claim itself is flat-out false, irrespective of whether or not it’s even meaningful. By my count, based on your source’s linked list, both the Columbine killers, the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, and the Texas Tower shooter Charles Whitman spent their entire childhood in intact families with married birth parents. The San Ysidro shooter James Huberty appears to have been raised by his father to adulthood, though his mother left the family when he was around 10. The Vietnamese immigrant who killed 13 people in Binghamton in 2009 lived with both his parents **in** Vietnam for nearly the first 20 years of his life, and immigrated to the US together with them in the late 1980s. > > I haven’t checked all the rest of the perpetrators, but already it appears that the claim that 26 out of the top 27 shooters in the “most deadly” category weren’t raised to adulthood by a biological father is purely and simply a lie. Wow. You almost convinced me we need a “like button”. 😃 Excellent post, **Kimstu**. I can’t think of anything I would want to add. Thank-you. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/24 "2018-02-28T14:23:21Z")
And just how would you solve this? Only allow children to be raised in a loving, two parent–whoops, mother and father home? Take children away from single and gay parents? Even if it’s true, how would you solve it? ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/25 "2018-02-28T14:30:00Z")
Are we pretending absent fathers are worse than physically present fathers who are non participatory due to drugs, alcohol, workaholicism, wife beaters, child molesters or just flat out emotionally unavailable? It should be self evident that eing physically present isn’t a factor that guarantees quality parenting. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/26 "2018-02-28T14:30:11Z")
We could try to lower our incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world. [93.2%](https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp) of those incarcerated are men. There’s a lot of missing fathers, right there. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/27 "2018-02-28T14:30:25Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > There are plenty of Father’s who are also MOTHERS. 🕶 Shut yo mouth! ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/28 "2018-02-28T14:41:49Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > And just how would you solve this? Only allow children to be raised in a loving, two parent–whoops, mother and father home? Take children away from single and gay parents? Even if it’s true, how would you solve it? That’s not at all what he’s saying: he’s on about how much better it would be if kids had _fathers_. He obviously wants to take children away from singled and/or married _mothers_ and place them in homes with two married fathers. If one father is better than none, then _two_ fathers is obviously better than either option. Polyamorous gay male relationships would obviously be the optimum per the OP’s logic. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/29 "2018-02-28T15:50:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Wow. You almost convinced me we need a “like button”. 😃 Excellent post, **Kimstu**. I can’t think of anything I would want to add. Thank-you. [_curtsies, blushes_] ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/30 "2018-02-28T15:59:34Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Your post was excellent, and I agreed with all of it except this part, a widely-circulated and accepted myth that’s not borne out by statistics. While it’s true that Black fathers are more likely to live in a different home than their children, by many measures, they are, on average, more actively involved in their children’s lives than Latino or white fathers, according to a 2013 CDC study of over 10,000 American fathers. You can find the study [here](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf) and a nifty chart [here](https://thinkprogress.org/the-myth-of-the-absent-black-father-ecc4e961c2e8/). The nifty chart is misleading in a way that seems deliberate. In the study it found that one most categories of interaction black fathers reported having slightly more interaction with their kids for both the co resident and non co resident category of father. It may be that the self reports are not accurate but leaving that aside. The study also found that there was a massive difference in the engagement of co resident and non co resident fathers, the difference was 4 to 5 times the interaction on most categories. However, because of Simpsons paradox the despite the reported levels of interaction being higher for black fathers in both categories of father the huge difference in co residing rates means that overall black fathers are much less likely to be interacting with their children. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/31 "2018-02-28T16:06:57Z")
What if there is no father, but two mothers? Do the stats and/or studies in the OP assume that a missing father automatically means “one parent”, or are there separate stats for two same-sex parents? ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/32 "2018-02-28T16:07:23Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The nifty chart is misleading in a way that seems deliberate. In the study it found that one most categories of interaction black fathers reported having slightly more interaction with their kids for both the co resident and non co resident category of father. It may be that the self reports are not accurate but leaving that aside. The study also found that there was a massive difference in the engagement of co resident and non co resident fathers, the difference was 4 to 5 times the interaction on most categories. > However, because of Simpsons paradox the despite the reported levels of interaction being higher for black fathers in both categories of father the huge difference in co residing rates means that overall black fathers are much less likely to be interacting with their children. It’s actually a non-relevant point anyway. My contention was that the ‘negative’ outcomes associated with fatherlessness are at least partially racial in nature. This holds true regardless of the amount of contact that a father has because the statistics regarding fatherlessness do not actually mention fatherly contact at all. They refer to the father being in the home. Black fathers are much less likely to be in the home than white or Hispanic fathers and so black fatherless children are overrepresented in the statistics. ‘Negative’ outcomes for black children are the result of many, many systemic things and not just fatherlessness (though I am not claiming that fatherlessness has no impact, merely that it cannot be isolated from the numbers we have,) so my contention that the original statistics are misleading holds. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/33 "2018-02-28T16:13:58Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What if there is no father, but two mothers? Do the stats and/or studies in the OP assume that a missing father automatically means “one parent”, or are there separate stats for two same-sex parents? I would wager that two fathers actually results in better outcomes. Gay men are more affluent and better educated than the population as a whole, especially white gay men. Lesbian women on the other hand are less affluent and less educated - especially as same-sex female unions have taken off across the poor south, so I would expect the outcomes for them to be worse. Of course, that doesn’t take into account where the child came from. Adopted children have more negative outcomes than biological ones, so two fathers adopting might balance out the affluence angle. It might be an interesting study if you could find a way to normalize the data. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/34 "2018-02-28T22:32:54Z")
It depends upon the father. All children are better off having a good father in their lives. All children are better are off having a bad father removed from their lives. Same with Mothers, Uncles, Aunts, and Grandparents. Good luck finding three people to agree on what qualifies as “bad” or “good.” ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/35 "2018-02-28T22:54:57Z")
Sometimes, A and B are correlated not because A causes B or B causes A but because C causes A and B. What could be the Cs here? The OP mentions that a host of negative outcomes are associated with being fatherless. Is the increase in negative outcomes more strongly pronounced among sons than daughters? To what extent are daughters in fatherless homes affected? I ask because I suspect that a strong reason for this correlation is genetic. I’m not thinking about race. Rather, there may be a host of psychological vulnerabilities to anxiety, depression, alcoholism, schizophrenia, low impulse control etc which are passed down\*. If they reside in the Y chromosome, then the son may be delinquent not because of his fatherless education but because he got bad genes from his father. The father skipping out is just one irresponsible thing the father did in his chaotic, impulsive and irresponsible life which was partly caused by his genes. Then we may add that the average mother in a fatherless home is likely worse than average in her own decision-making and socioeconomic status. And the milieu (outside the home) in which the fatherless child will grow up will also likely be below average. \*No, I’m not saying that those troubles are passed down in a deterministic way but rather that vulnerability to/increased potential for them has a genetic component. I’m also talking in terms of population trends, evidently being in a fatherless home doesn’t doom one to a wretched life, cf. Obama. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/36 "2018-02-28T23:28:21Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > So is all of this just men’s-rights misogynistic nonsense? Are they just spinning statistics to serve a narrative? Or is there really something to this claim that a missing father is really awful for kids? What’s the Straight Dope? What are the statistics on motherless homes? Is the problem a missing father or just missing a parent? What are the stats on kids raised by two women or two men as opposed to mixed-sex couples? The fact that kids from “broken” homes or dysfunctional families are at greater risk of a variety of problems is pretty well established. Most of the kids do OK, but more of them have problems than kids from “intact” homes. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/37 "2018-03-01T01:19:28Z")
Is there anything in the gallery of links that is posted in this thread that indicates that a statistically significant number children raised in a home with two mothers suffered from the same problems as the other children from “fatherless” homes. And was there a statisticially significant “control group” of children raised by their fathers only that did not have these problems? Is there any reason you are referring to “fatherless homes” rather than single parent homes? If there isn’t, you’re blowing on an anti-gay marriage dogwhistle with your turn of phrase. I don’t know if that was deliberate on your part of if you were just repeating something you heard on right-wing media. As to single parent homes, there are a lot of possible reasons other than the lack of a father in the home. The children may have witnessed a lot of strife in the home at a young age. The are probably more likely than the children from intact 2 parent families to witness their parents get physically violent with each other. I would also surmise that families where one parent has mental problems are less likely to remain intact. And some mental issues have inheritable components. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/38 "2018-03-01T01:58:00Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > What are the statistics on motherless homes? Is the problem a missing father or just missing a parent? What are the stats on kids raised by two women or two men as opposed to mixed-sex couples? > > The fact that kids from “broken” homes or dysfunctional families are at greater risk of a variety of problems is pretty well established. Most of the kids do OK, but more of them have problems than kids from “intact” homes. I don’t know if there are good statistics on “motherless homes”. It’s one of the things I’ve been mulling over the last couple of days: is there something significant about a father in particular, or is just having a second set of hands, regardless of their gender, to share the duties of child-rearing what really matters? I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find good stats on single-parent homes with just a father. Not sure if that’s because most single parents (with children in the home) are female and thus it’s hard to gather good stats on the rarer case of single homes with a father, or something else. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/39 "2018-03-01T03:42:08Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > It depends upon the father. All children are better off having a good father in their lives. All children are better are off having a bad father removed from their lives. Same with Mothers, Uncles, Aunts, and Grandparents. > > Good luck finding three people to agree on what qualifies as “bad” or “good.” I don’t know if I agree with you, or I find this mealy mouthed rationalizing. When I was growing up, the ‘best’ fathers were the most absent, because they were working at least two jobs\*. They were solid providers, but very erratic in discipline and setting an example. These would have been better as ‘weekend’ parents, because they would not have disrupted the rhythm of the household. The weekend Dad always had more time and patience than the dad that came home to the family chaos every night, dirt tired, between shifts. Of course, these were families in which it was a point of pride that the mother did not work outside. So, Dad carried the total financial burden, and Mom the total screaming children burden. That worked out so well. \*Or had one 'off-site job, like a pipe-line or oil rig - slightly different dynamic. ---
**Author:** ![ElderSign](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eldersign/32/8263_2.png) [@ElderSign](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElderSign)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703/40 "2018-03-01T15:47:01Z")
FWIW, my parents divorced when I was 3 and I had no real contact with my dad besides birthday/holiday wishes (mostly due to my mom and grandparents who all raised me, and never wanted him to visit). Turns out my dad actually was a good guy and was just immature when he had me. I suffered from severe depression when I was 18-19, and had an inner rage. Having a dad around as a teen would have shown me more fear/respect for authority figures, and I would have a had a game plan on how to speak to women and fix stuff around the house and vehicles. At the very least, I could have been exposed to a different role model and learned from him. I have no doubt I would have had different attitudes, beliefs, skills, and perspectives as a vulnerable teen if I had both parents. There are an infinite number of factors that “cause” and event or lead up to an action, but I have no doubt that a single parent teen is more of a risk than one than one with two parents in terms of mass shootings/bombings/threats, etc. You can try to befuddle this by adding same-sex parents to the mix or citing bad dads but even HuffPost has this article: [The Important Role of Dad | HuffPost Life](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gail-gross/the-important-role-of-dad_b_5489093.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fatherless-homes/809703.md?page=3)