STL Today’s Colleen Carroll Campbell explores the power of the father – along with some stats to check out. What Campbell found in her research was great news for fathers – that YES, we matter, and that for good or for bad, we’re effecting our childrens’ lives in innumerable ways.

“Today’s active dads are even more active than they were a decade ago,” notes Campbell, “and the number of hours live-in fathers devote to their children keeps rising.” This is great news, even despite the fact that in comparison to moms, dads are still spending a little less time with the kids. But as Campbell notes, between 1965 and 2000, the number of hours per week a father spent with a child grew three-fold. I’d be interested to see how that’s changed from 2000 to 2011, since according to the National Fatherhood Initiative via Campbell, “significantly more fathers walked their children to school and attended class events and parent-teacher conferences in 2009 than in 1999.”

Unfortunately, fathers have been prevalent in the good and the bad. In 1960, Campbell reports, a little more than 1-in-10 kids lived apart from their father. Now, more like 1-in-4 do.

And we know what happens when a father’s not present in the home. Oh, you don’t? Well shucks.

Not having a father in the home has a lot of effects – a predisposition for the child to do worse in school, read less, do drugs, engage in teenage sex, have children during teen years, and end up in jail. Just having a father in the household counteracts this stuff (admittedly, to an extent).

Read more of the good and bad news at the STL Today site-sauce…

Sauce: STL Today

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