THE COMEBACK:

I'M MORE EDUCATED THAN YOU ARE.

YA RIGHT. YOU THINK

'WILLY NILLY’ MEANS

IMPOTENCE.

THE MESSAGE:

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in three children is without a father in the home in America. Growing up without a father could permanently alter the structure of the brain. The psychological effects of childhood experiences can have a considerable impact on who the child becomes later in life Psychological studies show that children growing up without fathers are more likely to be aggressive and quick to anger. Anger makes you think and act with stupidity, and that's just a bad way to release energy. Additionally, there is a greater chance of passing on the aggression with a low self-esteem to future children.

Children growing up in households where the father is absent account for 71% of all high school dropouts. Other likely results include Incarceration, Suicide, and the Use of Drugs. Girls are are twice as likely to experience obesity and four times more likely to get pregnant as a teenager when their father isn’t in their lives.

TONY TODAY:

The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency in the USA reports that the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community is the proportion of fatherless families.

Princeton sociologist, Sara McLanahan, has found that children from father-absent homes manifest a number of internalising and externalising problem behaviours. These include sadness and depression, delinquency, aggression, sex role difficulties, early initiation of sexual activity and teen pregnancy. These ‘victims’ are also susceptible to developing poor social and adaptive functioning and low self-esteem. Too many children are giving birth, so they lack the requisite knowledge and information to pass on to their children. In some cases, by the time some of these girls reach 15, they already have two children. At this age, they do not know how to raise children because they are children themselves,

Father-deprivation is a more reliable predictor of criminal activity than race, environment or poverty. Father-deprived children are:

72% of all teenage murderers.
60% of rapists.
70% of kids incarcerated.
twice as likely to quit school.
11 times more likely to be violent.
3 of 4 teen suicides.
80% of the adolescents in psychiatric hospitals.
90% of runaways

Harvey Brownstone is a family law judge concerned about the number of lives affected by couples using the courts to try to extract "vengeance," when what they really need is counselling. Children pay a big price when they grow up without fathers, but it's unfair to blame it all on men who walk away, says Brownstone of North York.

Harvey Brownstone says he welcomes recent public discussion about the risks faced by kids who don't have a father in their lives. But Brownstone, who has seen thousands of support, custody and access cases during his 11 years on the bench, says there are many misperceptions about why it's happening. And most often it's because parents can't get along or want nothing to do with each other.

Child Adjustment in Joint-Custody Versus Sole-Custody Arrangements: A Meta-Analytic Review PD by Robert Bauserman, Journal of Family Psychology (2002), Vol. 16, No. 1, 91102 i

This is an important study showing that children who have meaningful contact with both parents are significantly (statistically speaking) better off due to the lack of the damage done to children who lose contact with their father through divorce and the actions and inactions of the courts. Children do need both parents to be active and involved in their lives.

A high correlation exists between the number of incarcerated young offenders, ie: those below the age of thirty and the number of these convicts who come from single parent homes. And "single parent" in the great number of cases means the absence of a father on the home scene.

Michael Moore, has a single mother. He shot and killed 4 people in Toronto.

When this correlation is applied to young Black men the number rises even more sharply. Most incarcerated young Black males come from a home environment with no father figure.

One celebrity who saw this reality and preached against it was .... Bill Cosby. He is now in disgrace for sexual predation and is, himself, in jail for his crimes. This does not detract from the truth that he espoused when he attempted to combat the prevalence of mother-only Black homes. Cosby said, "Anyone can be the cause of a pregnancy, but it takes a man to be a father." Cosby was right. And his fall from grace was a catastrophe for the Black community.

THE MUSIC: