Family Fact: Church-Going Fathers

Family Quote: Fathers 4 Justice

Family Research Abstract: Worse than Lutefisk

"If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly.  Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all.  If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars.  Thirty-eight percent will be lost.

If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly.  Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church."

(Source:  Robbie Low, "The Truth About Men & Church, Touchstone, June 2003; referencing Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner, "The demographic characteristics of linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland," in Werner Haug, et al, Population Studies No. 31, (vol. 2): The Demographic Characteristics of National Minorities in Certain European States, Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, 2000.)

"The role of the father is increasingly perceived by researchers as being just as crucial as the mother's to the development of a child.  A 16-year study of 44 families by the Society for Research in Child Development in Munich found that the quality of a father's play ranks with the strength of the mother-infant bond in creating a child's ability to form enduring relationships in adulthood."

(Source:  Amanda Craig, "Fathers Fight Back," The Sunday Times [London], June 15, 2003.) 

It is well known that raising children as a single parent is not optimal for either parent or child(ren).  But just how bad is it?  Researchers in Sweden, relying on data gleaned from nine years of mortality, severe morbidity, and hospital inpatient records of nearly a million Swedish children included in the Swedish national registers, set out to determine just how being raised by a single parent effects the health and welfare of children.  It is worth noting at the outset, as the authors do, that "In 1999, a quarter of all Swedish 17-year-olds had experienced their parents' separation."

The researchers investigated 65,085 children living with the same single parent in both 1985 and 1990, and compared their findings with 921,257 children living with two parents in both years.  The authors found that children of single parents had increased risks of psychiatric disease, suicide or suicide attempt, injury, and addiction.

Even after adjusting for a number of factors, including the parent's mental health, addiction, or socioeconomic status, children of single parents still faced much tougher odds than children raised in two-parent homes: "...girls with single parents were more than twice as likely to commit suicide and more than three times as likely to die from an addiction to drugs or alcohol than were girls with two parents. Boys of single parents were more than five times more likely to die from an addiction to drugs or alcohol, more than three times as likely to die from a fall or poisoning, and four times more likely to die from external violence...."

Even using the most stringent statistical model, girls were twice as likely, and boys were two-and-a-half times as likely, to develop psychiatric disease (relative risk for girls 2.1 [95% CI 1.9-2.3] and boys 2.5 [2.3-2.8]).  Both boys and girls were more likely to attempt suicide (girls 2.0 [1.9-2.2], boys 2.3 [2.1-2.6]) and to develop alcohol-related disease (girls 2.4 [2.2-2.7], boys 2.2 [2.0-2.4]).  Boys raised by a single parent were four times as likely to develop narcotics-related disease, and girls were more than three times as likely (girls 3.2 [2.7-3.7], boys 4.0 [3.5-4.5]). Moreover, boys raised in a single-parent home experienced a much higher likelihood of "all-cause mortality," that is, of dying from any cause: "After adjustment for age, the risk of dying was more than 50% greater in boys in single-parent families than in those boys living with both parents"

The researchers conclude, after four iterations of adjusting the results, that, in the end, the effects of having just one parent cannot be explained by socioeconomics, parental status or health, or even addiction: "...even when a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic circumstances are included in multivariate models, children of single parents still have increased risks of mortality, severe morbidity, and injury," and, "...for all outcomes, significant increases in risk remained unaccounted for even in the fully adjusted model."

No amount of massaging the figures, or of adjusting for confounding variables, will ever be able to explain away the reality that children need both parents at home.  With due respect to our Swedish friends, any attempt to deny this truth simply leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.