To claim ownership of our communities and our collective destiny, we must take responsibility for our children. The statistics on fatherless households are mind-blowing. Too many of our children are without a positive male influence in their lives, and too many of us remain inactive in the face of that reality. This episode of “From The Bottom Up” profiles one man with the will and the desire to change our reality.

• 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census.
• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.
• 60% of repeat rapists grew up without fathers. Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky, “The Developmental Antecednts of Adult Adaptations of Rapist Sub-Types,” Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol 14, Dec., 1987, p 403-426.
• 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father. US Dept. of Health & Human Services press release, Friday, March 26, 1999.
• 85% of children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. Center for Disease Control.
• 90% of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother. Wray Herbert, “Dousing the Kindlers,” Psychology Today, January, 1985, p.28. 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.
• 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse canters come from fatherless homes. Rainbows for all God`s Children.
• 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions have no father. US Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept. 1988.
• 85% of youths in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992.
• 75% of prisoners grew up without a father. Daniel Amneus, The Garbage Generation, Alhambra, CA: Primrose Press, 1990.
• Fatherless boys and girls are: twice as likely to drop out of high school; twice as likely to end up in jail; four times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems. US D.H.H.S. news release, March 26, 1999.
• 43% of US children live without their father. US Department of Census.
• Two years after divorce, 51% of children in sole mother custody homes only see their father once or twice a year, or never. Guidubaldi, 1989; Guidubaldi, 1988; Guidubaldi, Perry, & Nastasi, 1987.
• 42% of fathers fail to see their children at all after divorce. Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. and Christine Winguist Nord, “Parenting Apart,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol 47, no. 4, November, 1985.
• 90% of father disengagement is caused by obstruction of access by a custodial parent anxious to break the father-child ties. Kruk, 1992, cited by Prof. John Guidubaldi in his Minority Report and Policy Recommendations of the US Commission on Child & Family Welfare, US Code Citation: 42 USC 12301, 1996. Same cause identified by Braver, Wolchik, & Sandler, 1985, without incidence values.

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