Many children today are born to single mothers out of wedlock. While choosing life is preferable to abortion, the fact is that most of these children; 7 out of 10 Black babies, 5 out of 10 Hispanic babies and 4 out of 10 White Babies born to single mothers, with no fathers in the home are born into poverty. And, while life is not always perfect because there are many dysfunctional families. Studies show that children born in traditional families with a Dad and a Mom involved in child rearing are better off emotionally, educationally and financially throughout their lives.
Clearly, it is hard enough to raise children in an intact two parent family let alone as a single mom. Somewhere along the way, the notion of illegitimate birth, which used to carry with it a negative social stigma disappeared. Perhaps as part of the feminist movement when some women decided they did not need men to have or raise children. And, what a mistake it was. Nothing in all of this denies women the ability to be strong professionals in their own right. And nothing says that men and women should not be equal; matter of fact, they should share in is raising children.
Fathers Matter. Both sons and daughters need a positive father figure role model in order to grow into mentally healthy people. Problem is we have a lot of alcoholism and drug addiction in our country that often gets in the way. If Dad is a drunk or junkie, all bets are off. Kids can rise above dysfunction; but there is usually some baggage that is unavoidable. Those are the times when Mom might conclude that she is better off divorced than living with an abusive man and she could be right. When that occurs, somebody needs to fill in for Dad, a grandfather, an uncle, brother, cousin, or even someone from Big Brothers and Big Sisters to fill the gap.
The perfect family probably does not exist; but both Traditional families and Dads do matter related to raising healthy, well adjusted children.
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