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.
This is not a popular idea. Even some conservatives use the asinine phrase, “ quality time”. No such thing.
“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.”
You can be a good father when you are divorced. It can be done. It is simply much, much harder to do. There is no question about that.
Let me repeat, for emphasis: It is simply much, much, harder to do.
The statistics simply reflect that fact. Any time you make things harder to do, people do less of them.
The sexual revolution was bought and paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. It didn't just "happen." They funded Kinsey and had the marketing plan for Kinsey's book written before funding the program. Their media outlets pushed it heavily. It was a coordinated elitist attack on the American Christian middle class.
Ping to 44.
Thanks for the lecture.
I use it. But, I suppose that my definition is different.
For instance....I take my kids to the playground. I'm right in the middle of everything - pushing swings, flying kites, whatever. However, many, if not most of the other parents at the playground are parked on the benches off to the side. They're yapping on cell phones, or checking their email / facebook status for the 20th time that hour.
While all involved would likely say "I spent some quality time with the kids today.", there's a real difference.
Time is time. Kids just want that,
The phrase (consider the source) came
from “working moms” who started it to
contrast what they did with their children
with what the( lame, backwards) stay-at-home
mothers did.
I never use their language.
He who controls the words, controls the debate.
Well done! I’d like to think the same.
Funny how the Biblical idea of a family always includes a father!
God bless you.
somehow a better Father to my kids simply because they’re divorced.
There is no “simply” in divorce. First the extremely comprehensive and sacred vows taken are abandoned. The family is broken up, living in different places, sometimes quite far away. Then new lovers come into the lives of both parents in many case multiple times. New children are born....and on and on it goes.
I ran into a women, single mom, yesterday.
2A supporter, army brat herself.
She had a son and daughter about 15 or 16.
I put my foot in my mouth when I talked about the military using bases in all states to force same sex marriage upon the states throughout the union.
She didn’t seem to take offense, but told me her children are both gay and she still loves them for who they are.
I’d say one of the least known outcomes of single parents is the dependency of the remaining parent to trust the system to educate and indoctrinate their kids. Single parents may blame a faith on their single condition. Perfect example here.
God help us.
What real man could be driven away from his children by any woman, no matter how bi——?
Modern men tend to be wimps turning over-worked moms into exhausted “do-it-alls”. They have often been abandoning their wives and children in increments for years.
Seriously this guy was a certified NUT JOB to claim Divorce was a factor is beyond a stretch
I agree on one point; a lot of men have been conditioned to wimps when it comes to leading the household but I did see a stat once that stated 75% of divorces filed are done so by women.
1. How often parents either introduce their kids to drugs directly or indirectly by the kid seeing the parent use. But very often using WITH the kid. (irrelevant to this discussion)
2. How much divorce really and truly messes some kids up.
“What real man could be driven away from his children by any woman, no matter how bi——?”
Given how the court system stacks up, many.
And no, I not divorced, I’ve just watched it happen.
One woman I know used to get in her husband’s face, screaming and belittling him — in public, in front of his friends. If she was a man, he could have hit her and the police would have said it was provocation with “fighting words.” Being a woman, he knew he’d go to jail, so he just left.
She used all the strength of the court system to force him to support her lazy ass and even one child that turned out not to be his biologically.
He finally said “f—k it” when he go some inheritance, put money in a trust that pays the set child support amount and disappeared.
Way to paint with that broad brush.
My kids live with me, the bi-—— is out of the house.
My kids are way more happier since and doing much better in life.
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