The Following is directly off of the 2008 report from the NH Commission For The Status of Men posted on the State's website.
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THE STATUS OF FATHERS
In a speech before the World Congress of Families, former director of the U.S. America America
The problem of fatherlessness is getting worse, not better. By some estimates, 60 percent of American children born in the 1990s will live a significant portion of their childhood in a home without their natural father present. Indeed, for the first time in America
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The following is from the link above off of the website of World Congress of Families III. It is part of an article from Wade Horn Ph.d. I have highlighted some areas of interest.
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The Growing Epidemic of Fatherlessness
Today, 1 out of every 3 children in America is living in a home without his or her natural father. Think of that. One out of every 3 children in America will go to bed tonight without a father to read them a story, bring them a glass of water, kiss them good night, or comfort them if they have a bad dream.
And the problem of fatherlessness is getting worse, not better. By some estimates 60 percent of American children born in the 1990s will live a significant portion of their childhoods in a home without their natural father present. Indeed, for the first time in America’s history, the average expected experience of childhood now includes a significant amount of time living absent one’s natural father.
There are two major pathways to fatherlessness. The first is divorce. In America today, 40 percent of first marriages end in divorce, compared to just 16 percent in 1960. And, since 3 out of 5 divorces involve children, each year approximately one million children enter a fatherless home due to divorce.
The second major pathway to fatherlessness is men fathering children out of wedlock. Today in America, one third of all children – over one million each year -- are fathered by men out of wedlock. That's up from 5 percent in 1960 – a more than 600 percent increase over the past 40 years.
There are, of course, those who say these trends do not mean much of anything – that it doesn't really matter whether there is a father in the home or not. Some even go so far as to say that children in the modern world don't really need fathers at all.
Research, however, suggests otherwise. Studies have shown that children in America living in homes without fathers are 5 times more likely to live in poverty than children who live with both their mother and their father. Fatherless children are also 2 to 3 times more likely to develop an emotional or behavioral problem requiring psychiatric treatment. Studies have shown that children who grow up without fathers also are more likely to commit crime, and do poorer in school. Perhaps most tragically of all, children who grow up fatherless also are more likely to commit suicide than those who grow up in a home with both their mother and father.
What seems clear is that children growing up without their father in the home face an increased risk of developing significant problems. This does not mean that all children who grow up in fatherless homes will encounter problems. Indeed, many of them will do just fine. But research indicates that fatherless children face more obstacles than those who grow up with both a mom and a dad, and are at greater risk for a host of developmental problems.
Unfortunately, fatherlessness is not just an American problem. Increasingly, fatherlessness is becoming an international problem as well. For example, half of all children born in Sweden today are fathered by men out of wedlock, as are almost half of Danish children and more than a third of Canadian children. Roughly 20 percent of all families with children in Britain, Canada, Australia and Norway are growing up in father-absent homes.
The increase in the number of father absent households is not restricted to industrialized nations. Seventy-five percent of marriages in Cuba are now expected to end in divorce. And single-parent families account for nearly one-third of households in Trinidad and Tobago and almost one-fifth of households in Cameroon, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Studies show that the consequences of fatherlessness encountered in the United States are the same as those encountered in other countries. One study of Dutch adolescents found that children growing up in single parent households had higher levels of psychological problems and higher rates of suicide attempts than those who grew up with both a mom and a dad. A Swedish study found that children who did not live with their married mother and father did poorer academically compared to those who did. A study in Finland found that children fathered out of wedlock are more than twice as likely to engage in criminal conduct compared to those born into a married family, even after taking into account social and economic factors. And in Australia, a study found that 64 percent of father-absent families live in poverty.
If fatherlessness is the problem, what, then, is the solution? The solution to today’s problem of fatherlessness is the same as it has always been: marriage. Unfortunately, marriage is in trouble as well. Just last year, the American Census Bureau released figures that charted the precipitous decline of marriage in the United States. In 1950, the percent of all households in the U.S. that were headed by married couples was 80%. Today, that percentage stands at just barely above 50%. One of the reasons why marriage in America is less common today is because of an increasing acceptance of cohabitation as a substitute for marriage. For example, over the past twenty-five years, the number of high school girls who say that cohabitation is acceptable before marriage has doubled. As a result, cohabitation has increased in the U.S. from just under 500,000 cohabiting couples in 1960 to nearly 5 million cohabiting couples today.
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I find it disturbing that reports like this exist within State of NH agencies and the Family Court System continues to separate fathers and children with no regard for these studies.
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