FATHERLESSNESS KEY TO
SOCIAL ILLS
By
There
is no disagreement that there is a crisis in
Fatherlessness is the most important predictor of crime
-- a greater predictor than either race orr income. More than 70 percent of
juveniles in long-term correctional facilities grew up without their fathers.
More than 78 percent of the hardened criminals are from fatherless households.
More than 70 percent of men in prison come from fatherless households.
Living
in a mother-only family decreases a child’s chances of completing high school
by more than 40 percent for whites and 70 percent for blacks.
Eighty-eight
percent of women who did not graduate from high school and had a child out of
wedlock live in poverty.
These facts, while certainly alarming,
still fail to reveal the heart of the matter.
What
we face is not simply a physical loss affecting some households; we face a
cultural loss affecting every home. In some communities of
Thirty-eight
years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th
century Eastern Seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one
unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows a large number
of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring
any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational
expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos.”
Many
in the hip-hop generation believe that being uneducated is “keeping it real,”
that a man’s responsibility to his child is the sperm he donated to the mother,
and that prison is a right of passage.
No
school system, no political will and no amount of money can handle that charge.
The schools are just a part of the inner city chaos.
In
2004, the Charles P. Foster Foundation will assist disenfranchised fathers by
providing them with a renewed position in society, improved economic
opportunities and strengthened family ties.
Vernon Foster
is founder and CEO of the Charles P. Foster Foundation.
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Posted
on Jay B. Gaskill’s Think Site with the permission of
Vernon Foster
The Charles P. Foster Foundation assists disenfranchised fathers by
providing them with a renewed position in society, improved economic
opportunities, and strengthened family ties……………
The
Charles P. Foster Foundation, a 5 01c[3] non-profit organization:
510
.346.2 733