Respecting Your Father and On Your Relationship with Your Father, by Our Papa
The Fatherless Family |
The Fatherless Family, by Jim Daly
"It is a wise father that knows his own child."—William Shakespeare
Dear Friends:
It
may not be typical to begin a letter by quoting a famous English
playwright, but I believe the above statement holds some relevance to
the subject at hand. As we begin a new year, I'd like to spend a few
minutes addressing the issue of fatherlessness, which has become an
increasingly difficult problem in our culture. As many of you already
know, Dr. Dobson has written for years about the importance of the
traditional family and especially the critical role that fathers play
in the lives of young children.
But
just how widespread is this problem? Sadly, the answer to this question
is discouraging. In fact, the United States leads the world in
fatherless families,
1 with roughly 24 million children (or 34 percent
of all kids in the United States)
living in homes where the father does
not reside.
2 Nearly 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have
not seen their dad
during the past year,
3 and more than half of all
fatherless children have never been in their dad's home.
4 The number of
children being raised by single mothers has more than tripled
between
1960 and 2000.
As
distressing as these figures are, they only tell part of the story. We
must never forget that each of those 24 million "statistics" represents
an impressionable, fragile child that has been denied the guidance,
discipline and example that only a dad can provide. Perhaps I feel so
passionately about this issue because I am one of those statistics! I'd
like to help put a human face on this issue by taking a moment to
discuss how my own life was impacted as a result of my relationship —
or lack thereof — with my father.
Unfortunately, my dad's
alcoholism took a dramatic toll on our family. I still have vivid
memories of the traumatic experiences that characterized my early
years. I can remember hiding in my bedroom, with adrenaline coursing
through my veins, while my dad, in a drunken rage, chased my mom around
the house with a hammer. He never struck her directly, but the walls of
our home were pock-marked with ugly, gaping hammer holes by the time
the police arrived to intervene. Although rare, violent outbursts such
as that one were almost too much for my young mind to handle.
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