A fatherless western culture faces the edge of a moral cliff
By: Yonatan Rubio
The “Culture of Now” has swollen the idea of compromise, growing in young and adults a lack of patience in all aspects of life. The urgency for free and immediate entertaining, pleasure and recognition has buried effort and relationships as they were known.
Data about marriage and child support shows the change in standard western couples during the last decades. More children are growing up in fatherless homes, more percentage of marriages are ending up in divorce (specially in the first 5 years of marriage). Less people are getting married and in fact and ultimately, less people find fulfilling monogamous and closed relationships. I personally find these trends quite disturbing. table relationships and marriage aim to be a main pillar of adulthood, and its destruction should be considered as an alarm of important damage in our society.
Understanding the importance of marriage (and divorce), requires us to confront by far the major issue; the growing number of single parent homes. Studies have shown it affects children the most. The Census Bureau counted in 2019 18.4 million homes with no father, which is about 1 in every 4 in the United States.
Several research studies show the effects of the lack of a father figure in children and youngsters. Fatherless teenagers are 7 times more likely to drop out of school. Other circumstances they face include substance abuse (75% young patients in centers came from fatherless homes), detentions (70% of youngsters in state-operated institutions) and, among other clarifying data, suicide (63% of youth suicide comes from fatherless teenagers).
Taking a deeper look in the data provides interesting correlations between income and race. Adults who grew up fatherless are expected to have less rent than ones who had one, and income has a negative correlation with single-parent homes (the poorer, the more likely the home is to be single-parent). This completes a vicious circle, hard to escape without a strong society and institutions help.
About races, black homes are the most affected by this scenario. About 65% of African American children are growing up with no father. The results are not so much better for Native American and Hispanic homes, all over 40%.The relation between these variables is not a matter of racism or oppression, it has way deeper moral implications. However, it is an issue not talked about enough compared to other minor problems that count with mass media’s speakers ¿Is the “Culture of Now” creating poverty and pushing teenagers to drugs, crime and suicide? ¿Are we as a society responsible for not creating a strong sense of responsibility anymore? ¿How and when did we start this change in the way we build up our families? Answers require more than a yes or no. We have to look back at ourselves in order to understand the issue we have now.
Build real and strong relationships to make our children grow better, in the name of the father.
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