For some time, working on the issue of fatherhood as part of The Good Men Project I have been struck by the outpouring of passion amongst men to be good fathers and yet the staggering data that shows millions of children growing up without fathers. Certainly for some this is a result of divorce rates and divorce laws. Perhaps for others it is the result of poverty and even incarceration (2.3 million men are behind bars today, over half are parents). But the disconnect between men’s desire to be good father’s and the importance of their having access to their kids has never been made more clear.
The Pew Research Center today released important data in understanding fatherhood in America. They found that fathers are both more active and more absent, a seeming contradiction until you look at the numbers.
As the graph below shows, more children than ever are living apart from their father.
The data further breaks down the level of contact that those fathers who live separately from their kids have:
And it shows the kinds of activities dads participate in depending on their living situation:
Summing up the findings, the self reported perception of being a good dad is a direct result of living situation.
A father’s presence or absence in the home is closely related to how he evaluates the job he is doing as a parent. Among fathers who live with their children at least part of the time, nearly nine-in-ten say they are doing a very good (44%) or good (44%) job as fathers to those children. An additional 11% classify themselves as okay fathers, and less than 1% say they are doing a bad or not very good job as a father.
Fathers who do not live with their children rate themselves much more negatively. Only 19% say they are doing a very good job as fathers to the children they live apart from, and 30% say they are doing a good job. One-in-four say they are doing an okay job, while nearly as many describe their parenting as not very good (13%) or bad (9%).
Blaming women, jobs or the courts for a father’s absence is absurd. I do not deny that there are times when court judgement are unfair but much more rare. I may be a woman but have a lot of personal experience on this topic. Most father’s are absent because they choose to be. My father gained 100% custody of me in the 70’s and raised me solo. My ex-husband left me when our daughter was 7 months old and is now “Disneyland Dad”, seeing her every other weekend. My current boyfriend is divorced with 2 children and has 50% custody.… Read more »
Have to agree on the absurdity of those excuses.
One big factor is that the nature of work has been changing. Men are working longer hours for not much more pay, or working more hours than their fathers did just to be able to afford the same standard of living. Meanwhile, the cost of raising a child keeps going up. Some of the absence is because these dads are working to bring in the money to pay for what their kids need. Also, I wonder how the “time with your children” has been calculated over those decades. My dad was home a lot but also spent very little time… Read more »
There is no mention of the number 1 reasons for fatherlessness though – women making unilateral society and court supported decisions to become single mothers with unknown or unsuitable men and excluding or limiting perfectly good fathers. interactions with their children.
Citation needed.