Dads aren’t optional — and America’s kids are paying the brutal price
There is a lie that has been spreading throughout this country for the last several decades like poison: "You don’t need a father." This lie shows up in our music, our politics, our policies and sometimes even in our churches. The lie pretends to be compassionate, inclusive and modern by passing no judgment. But if you walk the streets that I walk, if you sit with the children that I sit with, you will see the wreckage that this lie leaves behind.
When we lose fathers, we lose the core family structure. When we lose fathers, we lose the protection that the family and the neighborhood need. When we lose fathers, we lose morals, direction and discipline. When we lose fathers, we leave gaping holes in children that they will struggle to fill. When we lose fathers, we lose a generation.
Most people think that when we talk about fatherlessness, we’re talking about Black America. Yes, our community carries a heavy burden here, and tragically so. In 2023, 49% of Black children lived with one parent and 47.5% lived without a father in the home. In the poorer demographics, the numbers are worse. But if we stop here, we ignore the bigger picture.
Today, nearly 1 in 4 children in this country lives without a father in the home. This figure astonishes me. How is this not a national crisis?
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Around 20% of White children live with one parent, and roughly a third of Hispanic children live in single-parent homes. The share of White youth in two-parent families has fallen from more than 82% in 1980 to about 76% today, and for Hispanic youth, from about 75% to 67%. The trend is going in the wrong direction for everybody.
The lie is undermining us all.
The impact of fatherlessness is real. The vast majority of the criminals in our prisons grew up without a father. Research using national surveys, such as analysis from the Institute for Family Studies, shows that kids in married two-parent homes are far less likely to be victims of violence or to witness violence in their neighborhoods. For every 1,000 children living with both married parents, about 36 encounter neighborhood violence; among children living with never-married mothers, that number jumps to 102. That’s almost three times the exposure to violence.
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In cities and neighborhoods where single parenthood is the norm, crime does not just inch up. It explodes. One recent national analysis from the Institute for Family Studies found that cities with high levels of single parenthood have 48% higher total crime rates, 118% higher violent crime rates and 255% higher homicide rates than cities where two-parent families are the norm. In Chicago, census tracts with lots of single-parent households see 226% higher violent crime and more than 400% higher homicide than tracts where most families are two-parent households.
You cannot look at numbers like that and say fathers don’t matter. This lie has a price, and that price is often lives.
One cure to all of this that I have consistently advocated for is marriage. I want to officiate at more marriages than funerals. Marriage is the answer to fatherlessness, and this truth couldn’t be plainer.
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Children born into married households are far less likely to be poor. In 2021, the federal government reported that 6.8% of children in married households lived in poverty. In female-headed households with no male spouse, that number was 37.1%.
Marriage still matters even when it comes to different levels of education. A single mother with a high school degree faces a poverty rate of nearly 39%, while a married couple with the same education level faces a poverty rate under 9%.
Perhaps the most damning statistic is that if we returned to 1980-level rates of married parenthood, child poverty would be about 17% lower and family median income about 10% higher. Stronger marriages don’t just help individuals; they lift entire communities.
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Meanwhile, we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off, screaming about how White supremacy is the biggest driver of inequities in our nation. Getting married and staying married would do far more than most, if not all, policies to lower disparities.
But here’s the key thing for me that I know from personal experience: Marriage stabilizes men. It gives them a higher value than self-worship or the glamor of gang life.
I’ve seen marriage move men away from crime. When a man stands at that altar before God and commits to a wife and children, he’s swearing to a higher way of life that’s greater than any miserable gang can provide.
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Despite all of these facts and plain common sense, there are professors, activists and pundits who insist on the lie that fathers don’t matter. They say "love is love" and that as long as someone cares, the structure of the family does not matter. They warn us about masculinity as if it were the devil that needs to be slayed.
I’ve even heard some of them say that advocating for fatherhood is blaming single mothers instead of recognizing their sacrifices. I cannot tell you how many single mothers I know who would gladly welcome a good man into their lives.
The lie that fathers do not matter has been one of the most destructive forces in our society, and we must push back on it.
Fathers matter. Fathers are not disposable.
To be a father is one of the highest callings a man can have on this earth. To be a father means you are responsible for the lives you bring into this world. You created life, and it is your duty to mold that life into a mind capable of character, courage and real freedom.
The shame is that we have allowed ideological forces to weaken this sacred bond and call it progress.
The first step back is simple: Tell the truth. Fathers matter, and our children cannot flourish without them.