Posted on 12/17/2013 6:50:50 AM PST by neverdem
Another shooting, another son of divorce. From Adam Lanza, who killed 26 children and adults a year ago at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., to Karl Pierson, who shot a teenage girl and killed himself this past Friday at Arapahoe High in Centennial, Colo., one common and largely unremarked thread tying together most of the school shooters that have struck the nation in the last year is that they came from homes marked by divorce or an absent father. From shootings at MIT (i.e., the Tsarnaev brothers) to the University of Central Florida to the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Ga., nearly every shooting over the last year in Wikipedia’s “list of U.S. school attacks” involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.
This is not to minimize the importance of debates about gun control or mental health when it comes to understanding these shootings. But as the nation seeks to make sense of these senseless shootings, we must also face the uncomfortable truth that turmoil at home all too often accounts for the turmoil we end up seeing spill onto our streets and schools.
The social scientific evidence about the connection between violence and broken homes could not be clearer. My own research suggests that boys living in single mother homes are almost twice as likely to end up delinquent compared to boys who enjoy good relationships with their father. Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has written that “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.” His views are echoed by the eminent criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who have written that “such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates.”
Why is fatherlessness such a big deal for our boys (almost all of these incidents involve boys)? Putting the argument positively, sociologist David Popenoe notes that “fathers are important to their sons as role models. They are important for maintaining authority and discipline. And they are important in helping their sons to develop both self-control and feelings of empathy toward others, character traits that are found to be lacking in violent youth.” Boys, then, who did not grow up with an engaged, attentive, and firm father are more vulnerable to getting swept up in the Sturm und Drang of adolescence and young adulthood, and in the worst possible way.
Of course, most boys who grow up in a home without their father turn out okay. They pick up the right cues from a conscientious high-school soccer coach, flourish under the watchful eye of a devoted grandfather, or benefit from the consistent discipline of a strong single mother. But every year enough fatherless boys fall prey to the ministrations of a gang or the rage induced by a high-school bully or the emotional fallout of painful divorce to end up causing real harm to themselves or the members of their communities. So, if the nation is serious about ending the scourge of school shootings, it must also get serious about strengthening the families that are our first line of defense in preventing our boys from falling into a downward spiral of rage, hopelessness, or nihilism that can end in the kind of senseless violence that Karl Pierson, a son of divorce, visited upon Arapahoe High this past Friday.
— W. Bradford Wilcox, who was raised by a single mother, is a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Follow him on Twitter @WilcoxNMP.
“With a 50% divorce rate”
A statistical lie. Yes, 50% of marriages result in divorce, but it is the once-divorced that marry and re-marry multiple times.
Something like 2/3 of one-time married people stay married until death.
With a 50% divorce rate, I know many co-workers and have many friends that are divorced. It would be pretty well arrogant of me to assume that I’m somehow a better Father to my kids simply because they’re divorced.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All things being equal - a man is ALWAYS a better father if he is at home with his wife and mother of his children than if he is divorced and living elsewhere.
ALWAYS.
Nothing arrogant about that, is there?
I didn't get that sense from the article. Just that broken homes are bad for children. Marriage failure isn't a gender-specific problem. Sometimes it's the woman, sometimes the man, sometimes both, and usually it's one or the other set of in-laws, right?
Or, perhaps what they have in common is an irresponsible, “can’t be bothered with kids”, low values, father, who abandoned all of his sons and daughters, did not pay child support, and left their mother to do the work of both parents, in addition to struggling to keep them fed and a roof over their heads.
It could go either way, IMHO.
Sorry, but in fact, better fathers are less likely to divorce. Marriage is extremely difficult: the men who endure miserable marriages in order to remain in the home and act as a fulltime father have a very large influence that those who are not physically with the children do not.
There are several problems with this analysis. First, school shooters are a fairly recent development whereas absent fathers have been around a long time. Second, if absent fathers were the problem, I would think the majority of shooters would be black since they have very high rates of fatherlessness. School shooters who are black are very rare. IMO the rise of school shooters reflects the rise in the number of kids who do not believe in God. Belief in God means that you will be punished for what you do in life and that moderates behavior. Those that dont believe do not fear the consequences of their deeds after death. They know they can avoid consequences simply by killing themselves, which they almost always do. Couple this with the desensitization to killing people they get from video games, movies and a high level of anger in general and have a school shooter.
All things being equal - a man is ALWAYS a better father if he is at home with his wife and mother of his children than if he is divorced and living elsewhere.
ALWAYS.
If family courts would stop shafting fathers on custody, divorce wouldn’t take such a toll. I have joint shared custody of my 2 kids as a result of a very recent divorce. I’m lucky. I would have taken full custody if I could have. I’m more involved in my kids lives than I ever was, and I was a very active dad when married.
Fathers matter.
In a study described in the book, kids with ADHD were paired with male therapists due to a noted absence of fathers in this child/adolecent population. The kids were given behavioral treatment with the therapists and special attention was paid to developing a positive attachment to the male figure. At the end of the treatment, only 11% of the boys and 2% of the girls had to remain on medication. The authors of this sudy suggested that social forces may be major contributors to ADHD. Among these social forces are: “the absence of positive father role models; the presence of a revolving door for negative male role models brought into the home; poor parenting; the need for order in the classroom when teachers are severely curtailed in meting out discipline; and a declining appreciation in our culture of what constitutes normal boy behavior.”
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2005/11/does-absence-of-fathers-cause-adhd.html
As all these nuts were lefties it may be more a case of LEFTLUENZA.
Men tend to compartmentalize things in their thinking. So to viewing "being a father" as separate from being in the same home, married to their mother, is the comparison you are making, and it's invalid. Even if parents don't get along perfectly, there is enormous value in just being together as a family and not complicating the union from which the kids came and who belongs in one's extended family with second and third spouses and their kids.
Kids go through great emotional turmoil from age 6 or 7 until they are, say, 30 or 40 years old or so. Divorce cannot help but heap more, much more, especially if the parents "date" or have other relationships during or after a split-up.
As I’ve seen, there is a VERY high correlation to both liberalism and to a missing parent. It’s not 100%, but there’s clearly something there. That is not complete though, as there is also a persistent thread of anti-religion in many of the shooters. This is not to say that there is not a strong mental health issue, and several other issues....but missing fathers have been shown to generally greatly increase a child’s tendency towards being unable to delay gratification, and moreso, towards acts that require incarceration.
You speak truth.
Statistics apply to groups, not to individuals.
I agree with you that it’s a no good situation, but with school shooters, in particular, it’s frequently the bullied kid who has been demasculinzed.
The no-good father scenario results in lay-abouts, rapists, and no-good fathers, part II.
Neither is good, but they are different beasties.
Amen to your post. I used to marvel at one of my male relatives who was married to a grouchy, irritable, self-involved and sexually cold woman who never had a kind word. But his kids adored him and drew strength from him. He sacrificed because he lost his own father when he was young, and knew the value. All his children, regardless of the trials in their lives, made a living and never came begging for handouts, married decent spouses and raised good children of their own.
Yep, I remember how Dan Quayle was lambasted by the liberals and the media when he discussed this.
Talking about absent fathers or the problems of broken homes, etc. is one of those “taboo” subjects we’re not supposed to talk about.
Sort of how it’s racist to talk about certain things such as gang violence and knockout games, bigoted against gays if one questions gay adoption, gay marriage, etc.
Some subjects have been defined by the liberals as verboten to even talk about. And the importance of fathers in kids lives is one of those subjects.
Wouldn't that have been shafting the mother on custody?
The very best thing you can do is get a lot of counseling and reconcile with their mother. Marriage is not a competition over who can be the best or most involved parent. It should be a cooperation and a learning and a forbearance to the other's shortcomings, and a long-term exercise in patience, self-control, spiritual seeking and sacrifice. The rewards are also long-term.
If reconciliation is not at all possible, Godspeed. But remember the children will always need to have a positive regard in some way for their mother, no matter what she is like. You loved something about her. They need to love her, too, in order to love themselves who came from her.
This is not a popular idea. Even some conservatives use the asinine phrase, “ quality time”. No such thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.