America’s Most Significant Social Problem
According to a 1996 Gallup poll, 79.1 percent of Americans feel "the most significant family or social problem facing America is the physical absence of the father from the home." This number is up from 69.9 percent in 1992.

Source: Gallup Poll, 1996.

Divorce and the Decline of Fatherhood
The experience of the past several decades strongly suggests that as a marriage goes, so goes fatherhood. Where marriage is weak, so generally is fatherhood. Where marriage is strong, so generally is fatherhood.

Source: Fatherhood Facts, Third Edition, p.10.

"America’s divorce rate is over 60% higher than in Sweden, Britain, or Canada; almost three times higher than in Germany or France; and 10 times higher than Italy’s."

Maggie Gallagher, USA TODAY.

In disrupted families, only one child in six, on average, saw his or her father as often as once a week in the past year. Close to half did not see their father at all in the past year. As time goes on, contact becomes even more infrequent. Ten years after a marriage breaks up, more than two-thirds of children report not having seen their father for a year. Source: National Commission on Children.

Children Need Their Natural Fathers
Studies find that remarriage, by a single mother "does not resolve the negative consequences for her child(ren) that are associated with growing up in a single-parent family." Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Report to Congress on "Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing."

In general the evidence suggests that remarriage neither reproduces nor restores the intact family structure, even when it brings more income and a second adult into the household… children living with stepparents appear to be even more disadvantaged than children living in a stable, single-parent family" Source: Dafoe Whitehead, Barbara. "Dan Quayle Was Right." The Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).

Although step-families often have an economic advantage over single-parent families, the children of step-families have as many behavioral problems as the children of single-parent families, and in some instances, more. Source: Bray, James H. "Children’s Development During Early Remarriage."

Father Absence and Child Abuse
Premarital pregnancy, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and absent fathers are among the most common predictors of child abuse. Source: "Social Aspects of the Battered Baby Syndrome," by Smith, Selwyn M., Ruth Hanson, and Sheila Noble.

The rate of child abuse in single parent households is 27.3 children per 1,000 which is nearly twice the rate of child abuse in two parent households (15.5 children per 1,000).

Source: "America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well Being," Washington D.C: GPO, 1997.

An analysis of child abuse cases in a nationally representative sample of 42 counties found that children from single parent families are more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse than children who live with both biological parents. Source: Sedlak, Andrea J. and Diane B. Broadhurst. "The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect: Final Report." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Suicide and Father Absence
Three out of four teenage suicides occur in households where a parent has been absent.

Source: Elshtain, Jean Bethke. "Family Matters: The Plight of America’s Children." The Christian Century (July 1993): 14-21.

Fatherlessness and Welfare
Over 50 percent of all new welfare cases are due to births to unmarried women. Ninety percent of the current Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseload are families with no father present in the home.

Source: U.S. Congress. Committee on Ways and Means.

A longitudinal study of black marriages in 300 southern, non-metropolitan areas indicated that an increase in relative welfare benefits led to a decline in the percentage of married couples in a given community. Source: Cready, Cynthia M., Mark A. Fossett, an K. Jill Kiecolt. "Mate Availability and African American Family Structure in the U.S. Nonmetropolitan South, 1960-1990." Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (February 1997): 192-203.

Fathers: the Curb on a Boy’s Antisocial Behavior
The research is absolutely clear…the one human being most capable of curbing the antisocial aggression of a boy is his biological father."

Source: Forensic Psychologist Shawn Johnston