While I do say the Our Father prayer, this piece is not about a prayer or the benefits thereof. It is about recent data that confirms what a lot of us have thought all along, namely that having a father is good for a child.
The ‘growing minority’ of ‘floundering’ young men is in large part due to a rising number of fatherless or non-intact families, according to recent findings that the Institute for Family Studies published on June 13, 2024.
Citing data from two nationally representative studies, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, researchers found that young men raised by their two married biological parents are nearly 20 percentage points more likely to attend college rather than to end up in jail compared with respondents from non-intact families.
“Strikingly,” the researchers note, “this is the only group where graduating college is more likely than prison/jail.”
The researchers also accounted for factors such as race and age when collecting data. However, they found that “family structure is more strongly associated with incarceration and college graduation than race for young men across both datasets.”
Beyond graduation or incarceration, the researchers note that family structure contributes to a number of other life outcomes, such as personality differences or even income.
“In a world where young men are increasingly failing to thrive,” the researchers emphasized the importance of family structures, concluding that “any effort to revive the failing fortunes of young men should put family at the forefront.”
What I found to be especially interesting is that the above referenced study specifically did not find any correlation to race. For as long as I can remember, I have rejected race as a predictor of success, and rather have preached that the quality of the elementary/high schools attended is a much better predictor of a child’s ultimate success as an adult.
In the studies referenced here two extremes are compared … incarceration vs. graduating college. Certainly one can be successful in life without going to college, and similarly adults can have a basically unfulfilling life without going to jail.
In my opinion, children raised by two married biological parents are more likely to themselves enter into a traditional marriage, and so their children are thus more likely to go to and graduate from college.
For those multitudes of children not raised by two married biological parents, it seems that their only hope is to attend good el/high schools. So why are “those that know best” not working on achieving that goal?
7/2/24
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