What’s Missing When Dad’s Missing?: Statistics on the importance of having a biological dad in the home

SRSLovesGawker · 2013-09-25T13:18:01+00:00

Wow, this line item is a big one (they all are, but this one really leapt out at me):

Item. Daughters who live with only their mothers are 92% more likely to divorce than daughters of two-parent families.^¹⁴⁸

^¹⁴⁸ Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Half the Nation’s Children: Born Without a Fair Chance.” New York Times, September 25, 1988, p. E25. And these figures are just for whites. It’s even worse among blacks. See also Edward Teyber and Charles D. Hoffman, “Missing Fathers.” Psychology Today, April, 1987, pp. 36–38.

That's a good statistic to be aware of when evaluating the long-term prospects of a relationship... and that was a study from the late 80s, before the onset of the "starter marriage" phenomenon and dramatic uptick in single parentage.

2013-09-25T14:50:08+00:00

Some more

JasonWaterfall · 2013-09-25T20:14:33+00:00

There is one problem with all this research: It does not establish causality.

Fathers and mothers who break up often do so because of certain problematic personality traits that may be (genetically) passed on to children. This could explain the results even if fathers have no effect themselves.

I am not saying that it's just fathers that don't matter. The fact is, there is a vast amount of literature (often using twin and adoption studies to filter out the influence of genes) that says parenting in general matters far less than one might think. For more information on that subject, read "The Blank Slate".

fractal_shark · 2013-09-25T12:25:38+00:00

What’s Missing When Dad’s Missing?: Statistics on the importance of having a biological dad in the home

Is the implication that men are useless unless they are biologically related to the child?

Title	What’s Missing When Dad’s Missing?: Statistics on the importance of having a biological dad in the home
Author	roharareddit
Upvotes	9
Comments	22
Date	September 25, 2013 7:20 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1n38db/whats_missing_when_dads_missing_statistics_on_the/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/whats-missing-when-dads-missing-statistics-on-the.1162963 https://theredarchive.com/post/1162963

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