Are Fathers Really Important?

8 Pages 1956 Words

Are Fathers Really Important?

According to Wade F. Horn, clinical child psychologist, faculty member at Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, nearly four out of ten children in America are being raised in homes without fathers and soon it may be six out of ten. The absence of a two parent intact family deprives children of fully developing emotionally, behaviorally and intellectually. Society in the twentieth century views the man as the bread winner, and not the care taker. The role of the father has been said to be an interchangeable role that almost anyone could fill-aunts, uncles, neighbors, care takers of any sort. This is simply not true. By the 1990¡¦s social scientists revealed evidence that was directly linked to the incomplete emotional development of fatherless ness on females.
Researchers agree that girls who lack a father figure are more prone to experience diminished sense of protection, and a greater risk of adolescent childbearing, sexual activity, and early marriage and divorce. (Horn 2) Girls who loose their fathers to death are more likely to be shy. They will avoid contact with males, have the most positive concept of their father, and feel saddest about his loss. (Bankston 591) Meanwhile, daughters of divorce or abandonment are more likely to be overly responsive to men. They seek more attention from men and have had more physical contact with men then other girls of their age due to the fact that they are constantly trying to seek refuge for their missing father; as a result there is a constant need to be accepted by men from whom they aggressively seek attention. (Bogan, Krohn 3) In tern, eighty one percent of teenage births are born out of wed lock, and most of these children will grow up in fatherless homes. (Bankston 591) Thus, there is a vicious cycle of fatherless ness in families. Many lesbian relationships result from a ...