Monday, August 26, 2013
The Importance of Dad
Ron Edmondson asks a very important question:
I realize the church doesn't do much accountability when it comes to sex and family at all anymore - that might mean someone does not come to church. But maybe we ought to?
church dads family
Seriously, what initiatives do you know of where the church is addressing the fatherless issue?He set this by linking to some staggering stats - some examples:
Data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N= 2,111) was used to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers’ relationship changes between birth and age 3 on their children’s well being. Children born to single mothers show higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born to married mothers. Living in a single-mother household is equivalent to experiencing 5.25 partnership transitions.
[...]
Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. Source: Harper, Cynthia C. and Sara S. McLanahan. “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 14 (September 2004): 369-397.
[...]
Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school degree, and forming a marriage where both partners have less than a high school degree. Source: Teachman, Jay D. “The Childhood Living Arrangements of Children and the Characteristics of Their Marriages.” Journal of Family Issues 25 (January 2004): 86-111.Edmondson has a point, what does the church do? We embrace the broken family, but do we work to repair it? Do we provide some sort of father "stop gap?" In divorce cases, do we hod the parties accountable in child rearing?
I realize the church doesn't do much accountability when it comes to sex and family at all anymore - that might mean someone does not come to church. But maybe we ought to?
church dads family
