Father Facts

• Twenty-four million American children live in homes without their biological fathers.
• For the first time in our nation's history, the average child will spend at least a significant portion of his or her childhood living apart from his or her father.
• Father absence directly contributes to our most pressing social ills.
• Compared to children raised in intact, two-parent homes, children who grow up without their fathers have significantly worse outcomes, on average, on almost every measure of child well-being.
• Children who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely to suffer from child abuse, poverty, low academic achievement, drug use, emotional and behavioral problems, and suicide.
• A father's presence and involvement promotes children's well-being.
• Two major demographic trends contributed to the rise in father absence: the increase in divorce and the increase in unwed childbearing.
• The divorce rate more than doubled between 1965 and 1980.
• Divorce rates in the United States remain the highest in the world.
• An estimated 40 to 50 percent of all marriages end in separation or divorce, affecting approximately one million children each year.
• The proportion of births that occurred out of wedlock rose 600 percent from 1960 to 2000.
• 1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.
• Out of wedlock child bearing has overtaken divorce as the primary cause of father absence.
• Fatherlessness is detrimental to the well-being of children in America.
• Promoting responsible fatherhood must remain at the forefront of the public agenda.
• The number of unmarried couple households with children has doubled over the past decade, and quadrupled since 1980, from 431,000 to 1.7 million.
• Research clearly shows cohabitation is distinctly worse for children than marriage.
  1. Cohabiting couples are more likely to split up than married couples, meaning that children with cohabiting parents are more likely to endure parental conflict and the destabilizing effects of family disruption.
  2. Compared to children with married biological parents, children living with the biological parent and the parent's cohabitating partner are significantly more likely to exhibit negative outcomes on many measures of well-being, including academic performance and emotional and behavioral problems.
• The fact is children need their fathers.