Here is yet another study which confirms the importance of fathers in children's lives. In the December 1, 1998 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Maggie Gallagher's articleFatherless Boys Grow Up Into Dangerous Men reports on a study by the University of California's Cynthia Harper and Princeton's Sara McLanahan.
Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth database, the records of more than 6,400 boys were studied over a period of approximately 20 years of their development. According to the Wall Street Journal story, the study
...controlled for family background variables such as mother's educational level, race, family income and number of siblings, as well as neighborhood variables like the proportion of female-headed families in the neighborhood, unemployment rates, median income and even cognitive ability.... Boys raised outside of intact marriages are, on average, more than twice as likely as other boys to end up jailed, even after controlling for other demographic factors. Each year spent without a dad in the home increases the odds of future incarceration by about five percent.
The study also confirmed the findings of other researchers: Boys living with just their single fathers do not exhibit this increased rate of criminal behavior.
The dangerous trend sweeping America of men deserting their responsibilities of active participation in the lives of their children and grandchildren is having a quantifiable negative impact on the youth of our society.
- 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. [U. S. D.H.H.S. Bureau of the Census]
- 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.
- 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. [Center for Disease Control]
- 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. [Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14 p. 403-26]
- 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. [National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools]
- 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions come from fatherless homes [U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept., 1988]
- 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. [Fulton County Georgia Jail Populations and Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992]
- Nearly 2 of every 5 children in America do not live with their fathers. [US News and World Report, February 27, 1995, p.39]
we utilize a number of other public primitive camping sites to help our youth to continue to enhance their skills and live the ADVENTURE!
