Are Dads Disposable?
By Alan on Jun 16 in Blog tagged Brad Wilcox, dads, disposable, fatherless homes, have a child, married father, much more likely, not true, raising boys, settle, thrive, without fathers, without men | Comments Off
Are Dads Disposable?
As Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, put it:
Dads are disposable. This is the story now being told in certain precincts of our culture, from the Hollywood Hills—”Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child,” in the words of Jennifer Anniston—to the Ivy League—Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler recently wrote a book, Raising Boys Without Men, that celebrated women raising children without fathers.
There is only one problem with this story: it is a myth that does not fit the facts.
Do not get me wrong. I was raised by a single mom, and I think I turned out OK, as do many children raised in fatherless homes. But as a social scientist, I can also tell you that one consistent conclusion from hundreds of studies on child well-being is this: on average, children are much more likely to thrive when they have the good fortune to be raised in a home with their own married father.
Brian S. Brown
For The Family
