I've been reading a book called "The Boy Crisis" by Warren Farrell and John Gray. The entire book is how modern culture is failing boys and fathers, thus creating a cycle where children are overwhelming left behind. Girls are also adversely affected, but it is usually not as severe.

In one section they list 15 different areas in which fatherly involvement radically improved either boy outcomes or child outcomes. I'll list them below (paraphrased). The book has all the citations.

  1. School achievement: By third grade, boys with involved fathers scored higher on every achievement test.
  2. The 3 R's: The more involved dad is, the greater verbal intelligence as well as math and quantitative abilities.
  3. School dropouts: 71% of high school drop outs have minimal or no father involvement. Dad-deprived children are also more likely to skip school or be expelled.
  4. Employment: Boys who are dad deprived are less likely to be employed than their sisters, and are less likely to advance or succeed in their careers.
  5. Suicide: Living in a home without a dad is more highly correlated with suicide among children and teenagers than any other factor.
  6. Drugs: Father involvement is at least five times more important in preventing drug use than closeness to parent and parental rules, and is a stronger determining factor than the child's gender, ethnicity, or social class.
  7. Homelessness: Around 90% of runaway and homeless youths are from fatherless homes.
  8. Bullying: The APA found in a review of 153 studies that father absence predicts the profile of both bullies and being bullied: poor self-esteem, poor grades, and poor social skills.
  9. Victimization: Children between 10-17 living without their biological dad were more likely to be victims of child abuse, major violence, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
  10. Violent crime: Every 1% increase in fatherlessness in a neighborhood predicts a 3% increase in adolescent violence.
  11. Rape: Among rapists specifically assessed as raping out of anger and rage, 80% came from father-absent homes.
  12. Poverty and mobility: Children who were born poor and raised by married parents had an 80% chance of moving to middle class or above; conversely children who were born into the middle class and raised without a married dad were almost 4x as likely as their peers to end up considerably poorer.
  13. Health: Among blacks boys, hypertension (high blood pressure) is reduced by 46% when dads are significantly involved.
  14. Trust: The more involved the dad's are, the more easily children make friends.
  15. Empathy: The amount of time a father spends with a child is one of the strongest predictors of the child's ability to empathize in adulthood.

Stepfathers are not the answer, for they do not provide the same level of benefits. Money into social safety nets is most likely not the answer, as it's specifically the father's involvement, not the father's wallet.

Q4ALL: Knowing all of this about the importance of fathers, do you think the spike of divorces after 1970 has created a breeding ground for less healthy men? If so, do you think our current social problems are a direct product?

Q4ALL: What do you think should be done to improve the fates of these boys? Should we take marriage more seriously? Should we reduce out of wedlock babies? Should we make divorce harder to obtain?