Issues of Absentee Fathers

¶ … Absentee Fathers

Unfortunately, the scenario in which there are absentee fathers in a family has occurred far too frequently in contemporary society. This issue is more prevalent among certain social groups than among others. For instance, in communities in which there is poverty, substance abuse, high incidences of crime, and accordantly high rates of teenage pregnancy, there is a systematic destruction of the nuclear family. As such, the occurrence of absentee fathers is prevalent in these conditions, which do not infrequently affect African-Americans and other historic minority groups. There are several issues that absentee fathers create. Some of these include the fact that women have to take on the role that was traditionally assigned to men -- acting as the provider -- and become saddled with the responsibility of behaving as both the mother and a father. Additionally, children grow up with a lack of stable male presences in their life, which may cause a dearth of discipline and the need for these children to fulfill their desires for a father in unhealthy ways.

One of the most prevalent issues which has routinely been attributed to absentee fathers is the impact of gang membership in certain communities -- especially African-American and Latino ones. This fact is related to children, both male and female, growing up without their father in the house. As such, they might not necessarily get the sort of discipline that other children, who do have their fathers regularly in their lives, frequently encounter. When children do not have a male father influence in their lives, they typically seek such an influence from people other than their fathers. For many young men and women who grow up without their fathers and who come from broken homes, gangs appeal to them because of the sense of family that they provide Could. Gang leaders, therefore, take on the role of the father or of the leader of the family. For a child who cannot get that sort of strong male influence from his or her own family, getting it from a gang is oftentimes the next best thing to having a father.

The influence of absentee fathers is oftentimes detrimental to both the mother and the children in these sorts of broken families. In such instances, the women are left to take on the provider role. Despite the fact that women have been 'liberated' for several years and hold positions of power and authority within virtually all industries, there are still noxious ramifications of women in single parent households having to account for both monetarily and domestically providing for their children. Women from lower socio-economic statuses, for example, might need to take on multiple jobs to attempt to account for the former responsibility. No one can fault a woman for taking such action; indeed, it is oftentimes in her best interest to make as much money as she can to get her family the necessities that money affords. However, it is difficult to work the requisite number of hours (particularly at low wage professions) and perform all of the necessary domestic functions that are integral to the sustenance and well being of the family. In certain instances there may be a lack of discipline which the children become accustomed to since, due to the fact that their only parent is working all the time, they may have copious amounts of autonomy both during the day and at night. In such a situation, it is not uncommon for students' grades to decline, their nutrition and health to decline (due to exhausted mothers bringing home fast food or simply being too tired to cook), and for them to become involved in gangs or even the criminal justice system due to a pattern of delinquency (Hailey 39).

Additionally, absentee fathers can negatively impact broken homes in other ways by lowering the overall morale of the remaining familial constituents. Even in families in which single mothers are able to simultaneously provide for both monetary and domestic responsibilities (or get significant assistance on either front via other family members) it may be substantially hard to make ends meet. Living with impoverished conditions (which routinely afflict many families with absentee fathers) can damper the morale of anyone. In such situations, it may be possible for family members to have everything that they physically need to thrive yet still not do so because of emotional and even cognitive issues related to the lack of a central father figure. The mother, for instance, may feel a definite emotional neglect and the lack of attention from a loving father. She may attempt to replace this void in her life by dating other men, which may actually exacerbate the situation because doing so provides a point of confusion for children. Additionally, when such men come and go these issues can also become compounded even more. Children may suffer from a sense of abandonment or neglect as well. They may see their friends or even other family members with a doting father around and become remorseful, jealous, or experience a number of difficulties that makes simply living together with the remaining family members a lot more difficult than doing so with their father.

Finally, it is worth noting that the issue of absentee fathers is also extremely difficult for the father himself. Within the aforementioned high risk communities for absentee fathers (in which people are indigent and have few socio-economic resources to survive), the conditions which create this syndrome are nefarious. Crime and violence have decimated the population of African-American fathers, for example. Black males are much more likely to be murdered (typically by another black male) than they are to attend college. And the rate at which African-American men are institutionalized within correctional facilities, and the length of sentencing they are subjected to is extremely disproportionate to their prevalence in the country (Kamalu et al. 1) and in not a few cases, contributes to familial situations in which there are absentee fathers.