Negative Effects of Fatherless Homes on Child Development

Introduction

Popular consensus in research holds that the disruption of the family unit can have distinctly negative effects on the children produced by those families. In particular, the common absence of a father figure from the family unit — whether at the initiating stages of the family or during childhood development — is illustrated in countless research examples to render the child considerably more vulnerable than peers with intact families. Such children are more likely to experience behavioral problems, educational deficiencies, economic disadvantages, and a proclivity toward criminal behavior. These dangers justify the investigation undertaken here, which probes several sources of literature on the topic in order to confirm the suspected connection between the fatherless family and the child prone to negative conditions such as those noted above. This investigation uses literature to support and elaborate this claim, with the eventual interest in determining which areas of consequence for fatherless children will justify the greatest focus.

Literature Review: Father Absence and Child Outcomes

The general consensus produced by research in the developmental psychology, criminology, and sociology disciplines is that the stability of the family unit is a crucial determinant in one's life outcomes. Concerning the absence of the father in this unit, there is a common demonstration of worry about the adverse effects imposed upon the child. This is contended in the article by Anderson (2008), which reports that "Karl Zinsmeister of the American Enterprise Institute has said, 'There is a mountain of scientific evidence showing that when families disintegrate, children often end up with intellectual, physical and emotional scars that persist for life.' He continues, 'We talk about the drug crisis, the education crisis, and the problem of teen pregnancy and juvenile crime. But all these ills trace back predominantly to one source: broken families.'" (Anderson, 1). This suggests that in contexts where a father figure is absent, a family is more likely to produce children who suffer from social, educational, and legal deficiencies that can manifest in some rather devastating ways.

Anderson contends that the problem of illegitimacy is a significant indicator of the challenges certain children will face. Those born to single mothers not only lack access to many of the psychological needs fulfilled by an effectively compassionate male figure, but will also miss the practical needs addressed by the presence of a two-parent home.

As the article by Boaz (1994) demonstrates, one of the core practical deficiencies is in the area of economic stability. The financial security of a two-worker household is replaced instead by a context in which the mother must both work and rear children. The duality of this role without the support of a partner can be emotionally taxing and can severely limit the mother's ability to instill positive lifestyle tendencies, exercise necessary discipline, and provide oversight and assistance in the child's education. Boaz identifies the apparent correlation between single motherhood and economic disadvantage while simultaneously pointing to the deficiencies this invokes in the area of parenting. Boaz contends that "children need two parents, for financial and emotional reasons. Children in fatherless homes are five times as likely to be poor as those in two-parent families. Single mothers also find it difficult to control teenage boys, and such boys have made our inner cities a crime-ridden nightmare." (Boaz, 1).

Economic Disadvantage and Single-Parenthood

Boaz continues by indicating that an issue often unacknowledged by social critics is that of divorce. He argues that divorce has provoked many of the negative conditions affiliated with the fatherless household, contending that individuals who live in homes broken in this way are twice as likely to drop out of school or require some form of psychiatric help. Indeed, the Boaz article is compelling in making the argument that conservative watchdog groups, family values organizations, and religious moral hygiene coalitions have given this problem short shrift in terms of acknowledgment, instead focusing much of their attention on other family-related debates. This is a wrongheaded focus, Boaz contends, which allows the deconstruction of the family unit to continue without proper public intervention. To Boaz, there is something particularly hypocritical about allowing this pressing problem to go unacknowledged while simultaneously pursuing the social disenfranchisement of other groups — a social folly compounded by a malevolent misconstruction of blame.

This is especially shortsighted given the consistency with which research has come to support the notion that the absence of a father in the family unit can have fundamentally destructive ends. In addition to the finding that this absence is positively correlated with economic problems, educational shortcomings, and a susceptibility to criminal behavior, it also becomes clear that the reverse holds true: among individuals suffering from certain adverse emotional conditions, there is a greater likelihood that further probing will reveal the absence of a father. In particular, there is a strong connection between adverse emotional effects and the father's legal status.