FATHERLESS: BROKEN TO WHOLE

(Pages 17-18; Portion of 19 and 20)

Fatherlessness Defined

To be fatherless is defined as: 1) not having a living father: a fatherless child. 2) not having a known or legally responsible father. This definition could also include those who grew up in a home with a father, but the conditions were unbearable, chaotic and out of order, such as physical, verbal or sexual abuse. A feeling of fatherlessness can also come about if the father is gone from home often, or is aloof and rarely interacts with the child. More often than not, the father has completely walked away from the family, his children. The one, who is to be the provider and protector, is no longer around.

The definition of a syndrome is: a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease; a group of related or coincident things, events, actions; the pattern of symptoms that characterize or indicate a particular social condition; a predictable, characteristic pattern of behavior, action, etc., that tends to occur under certain circumstances.

The increasing number of fatherless children is a severe blight on our nation! God’s plan was to have children brought up in a home where they are loved and cared for by their mom and dad. Far too often, this is not the case.

Fatherlessness leads to many obvious problems. Fundamental to the problems is that we have fatherless children of all ages dealing with a sense of loss and abandonment; they have low self-esteem, are lonely, hurting and angry.

Proverbs 23:7a NKJV says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Some people, and often the fatherless, will project onto others what they think about themselves. Therefore, what they criticize someone else for is really a part of his or her own personality.

“You think you are all that!” Their demeanor reflects pride.

“She can’t be trusted.” They often cannot be trusted.

These are mechanisms to help them feel better about themselves. There is an innate desire to feel better about who they are. Their behavior often results in doing the opposite.

Many times people with the fatherless syndrome see themselves as weak, ugly, unwanted, and are unhappy. They think they want companionship of others, but their demeanor and negative attitude repel others instead. They constantly read more into what others are saying than what is there. They are unhappy, often deceitful, hiding behind a façade, and they feel stuck in life. It is time to go find them!

Alarming Statistics

The following eye-opening statistics point out the ‘predictable pattern’ in the United States that is a result of being in a home without a good father.

Incarceration Rates: Even after considering income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 inmates revealed that 39% of jail inmates lived in mother-only households. Approximately forty-six percent of jail inmates in 2002 had a previously incarcerated family member. One-fifth experienced a father in prison or jail.

Suicide: 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.

Behavioral Disorder: 85% of children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.

High School Dropouts: 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.

Educational Attainment: Kids living in single-parent homes or with stepfamilies, report lower educational expectations on the part of their parents, less parental monitoring of school work, and less overall social supervision than children from intact families. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school.

Juvenile Detention Rates: 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.

Confused Identities: Boys who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely than those in father-present homes to have trouble establishing appropriate sex roles and gender identity. Aggression: In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed "greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households.”

Achievement: Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes.

Delinquency: Only 13 % of juvenile delinquents come from families in which the biological mother and father are married to each other. By contrast, 33% have parents who are either divorced or separated, and 44% have parents who were never married.

Criminal Activity: The likelihood that a young male will engage in criminal activity doubles if he is raised without a father, and triples if he lives in a neighborhood with a high concentration of single-parent families.

What Can We Do?

There are many things that can be done to address this issue, and some of them will be discussed later in this book. I believe a key component of the overall action plan is prayer. As we take up the cause for the fatherless in prayer, I believe we will see changes that will ultimately influence the culture of our society.