Fatherhood expert: importance of marriage

Dr Wade Horn of the National Fatherhood Initiative and an adviser to President Bush on children and family issues, spoke to a large and appreciative audience on 13 April at the Australian Family Association in North Melbourne.

The father of two daughters and international expert on fatherhood said that fatherless ness is one of the great social tragedies of the modern age. In I960 in the USA there were 10 million children growing up without fathers. Today (hat number is 24 million. Similar stories can be found throughout (the western world, he said.

In Australia around a quarter of all children grow up in families that arc fatherless. Similar figures hold (true for Norway, Canada and the UK).

And even when fathers are physically at home, often they are psychologically absent. Parents spend 40% less time with (their children than a generation ago. Dr Horn gave another alarming figure: 20% of' Year 6 to Year 12 students have not had one good 10- minute talk with a parent in the past month.

The downside of absent dads or inattentive dads is that children are more likely to become involved in risky, anti-social behaviors. There is a greatly increased risk of negative outcomes for fatherless kids, including drug use, criminal involvement, poor educational performance and suicide. Other problems abound. For example, 64% of children without dads live in poverty in Australia.

Dads therefore are not optional extras. Indeed Dr Horn gave a number of major reasons why dads matter. These include:

1). Men and women are different and each parent brings different strengths to raising children. Kids need both mums and dads for optimal development.

• Boys need to learn how lo curb their aggression, and this is best learned at home with father around.
• Fathers leach boys how to treat women with respect and dignity. They do this in the way they treat their own wives.

Dr Horn also provided solutions to the problem of fatherless ness. These included telling men how important their role as a father is. Mediating structures such as schools and churches can provide training for fathers. Most important, we need to stress the centrality of marriage. Marriage makes for better fathers. And marriage helps keep fathers in their marriage.

But many people feel there are only two options in a troubled marriage: divorce, or stay in the marriage and stay miserable. Dr Horn stressed a third option: to repair the marriage. It is worth the effort to work at a troubled marriage. And marriages can and do get better. That is the message we need lo be promoting.

He also added (that if you have an intact family, your children will do better than those in non-intact families. But if you throw in a strong, active religious faith, the odds go up even further of children avoiding high risk behaviors. So dads and religion are the real keys to successful parenting