The Children We Left Behind: A reckoning with America’s growing fatherlessness

Are our societal issues just a culmination of random adverse incidents, or are they the predictable results of disgruntled adults who were formerly mistreated, abandoned children?

The children we’ve left behind will be seen one way or another: society will always suffer for those it neglects.

I was one of those children who suffered. I was abandoned by my father who, even up to his death, never bothered to establish a relationship with me.  

Unfortunately, I’m far from the only child who has experienced the pain and trauma of fatherlessness. The problem of child abandonment persists across American culture and is at the root of all our social ills today. The same attitude of parental neglect that my father showed toward his children is more common than we would like to admit.

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Simultaneously, there are obvious social issues, like homelessness and drug abuse, that are difficult to remedy because they originate from childhoods filled with rejection, abuse and emotional torment.

You can’t fix something if you’re unwilling to be honest about the source of the issue. That’s why as a society and a country, we need to first recognize our culture’s culpability in perpetuating the cycle of fatherless children.

According to the Pew Research Center, 23% of American children under 18 live with one parent and no other adult, more than three times the share of children worldwide who do.

The majority of these single-parent homes are led by mothers, which presents a wide variety of vulnerabilities and disadvantages for the mothers and their children. Furthermore, there is a strong connection between single-parent homes and homelessness. The National Center on Family Homelessness reports that single mothers head more than 85% of homeless families. 

These statistics might just look like meaningless numbers, but they reflect the reality of childhood experiences. My family, led by my mother, experienced homelessness twice after my father left us. 

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There is also a clear link between criminal behavior and broken, dysfunctional homes. Criminals aren’t magically manifested overnight; they are created through years of neglect and abuse as children.

Even the Office of Justice Programs, an agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, has declared that father absence is a consistent and potent predictor of levels of violence and a significant risk factor of illegal behavior and substance use in adolescence. An estimated 71% of all children who abuse substances come from fatherless homes, according to the National Center for Fathering. 

Children today have far more access to prescription and illicit drugs than they had generations ago, and they’re using these substances to cope with their crumbling households and deteriorating mental health.

According to a study conducted by the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), father absence during early childhood is associated with greater levels of depression in adolescence and early adulthood. 

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Again, in my case, these seemingly lifeless statistics are painfully revealing of my own lived experience. I have been struggling with my mental health and self-image going back as far as I can remember. 

The event that most severely altered my future was being locked away in a mental hospital for months when I was 8 years old after expressing my desire to no longer live. I didn’t know how to handle my unpredictable life, and I did not have a father there to help me, which was why suicidal ideation became a prevalent part of my life.

Thankfully, I survived, but far too many children who were like me never found an alternative way to live without experiencing consistent mental torture. Studies have shown that children who come from single-parent homes are twice as likely to commit suicide and that 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.

I wrote my forthcoming book "The Children We Left Behind" to put a face to the statistics. Often, children like me believe that we’re alone in our suffering. But as I entered adulthood, I saw that my story is one of too many.

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My experience isn’t unique; it’s just that I’ve decided to share it and made it here to tell it today. 

Further, my story of overcoming abandonment by my father should not be weaponized. It should allow an opportunity to examine our culture and demand better of our parents and families. If we genuinely want to improve our society, we must be unafraid to examine it critically and call out bad behavior.

As parents and as a culture, we need to question whether we are putting children first or if this is just something we say to make ourselves feel good.

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Why didn’t my father love me? Why did my father abandon me?

While these questions will remain unanswered for me, I am proud to say that my son will never need to ask these questions about me.