CRIME AND DELINQUENCY:

Ramsey Clark, Crime in America (New York: Pocket Books, 1970), p. 39: "In federal youth centers nearly all prisoners were convicted of crimes that occurred after the offender dropped out of high school. Three-fourths came from broken homes."

Ibid. p. 123: "Seventy-five per cent of all federal juvenile offenders come from broken homes."

Margaret Wynn, Fatherless Families: A Study of Families Deprived of a Father by Death, Divorce, Separation or Desertion Before or After Marriage (New York: London and Maxwell, 1964), p. 147: "The loss of a father increases the risk that a child, and particularly a boy, will become a delinquent by a factor of approximately two."

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), p. 196: "A famous study in Chicago which had seemed to show more mothers of delinquents were working outside the home, turned out to show only that more delinquents come from broken homes."

Education Reporter, December, l986: "A study by Stanford University's Center for the Study of Youth Development in l985 indicated that children in single-parent families headed by a mother have higher arrest rates, more disciplinary problems in school, and a greater tendency to smoke and run away from home than do their peers who live with both natural parents--no matter what their income, race, or ethnicity."

Starke Hathaway and Elio Monachesi, Adolescent Personality and Behavior (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 81: "Broken homes do relate to the frequency of delinquency. Further, if a home is broken, a child living with the mother is more likely to be delinquent than one for whom other arrangements are made. In the case of girls, even living with neither parent is less related to higher delinquency than is living with the mother."

Henry B. Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1971), p. 49: "It is interesting to note that the Gluecks found that both father-absence and mesomorphic physiques were more frequent among delinquents than among nondelinquents [Glueck. S. and Glueck, E., Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency. New York: Commonwealth Fund, l950; Physique and Delinquency, New York: Harper and Row, l956].

Dewey G. Cornell, et al., "Characteristics of Adolescents Charged With Homicide: Review of 72 Cases," Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 5, No. 1 [l987], 11-23; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, March, l988: "In a new study of 72 adolescent murderers and 35 adolescent thieves, researchers from Michigan State University demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of teenage criminals live with only one parent. Fully 75 percent of those charged with homicide had parents who were either divorced or had never been married at all; that number rises to 82 percent of those charged with nonviolent larceny offenses."

Los Angeles Times, l9 September, l988: "In a grim portrait of youthful offenders, a federal study released Sunday indicated that nearly 39% of the l8,226 juveniles in long-term youth correctional institutions were jailed for violent crimes, and that nearly three out of five used drugs regularly....[According to Steven R. Schlesinger, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics] 'Almost 43% of the juveniles had been arrested more than five times.'...Researchers found that many of the young adult offenders had criminal histories that were just as extensive as those of adults in state prisons. For example, more than half of the young adults surveyed--as well as a comparable sample of state prisoners- -were found to be incarcerated for violent offenses....The report also painted a picture of broken homes and poor education: Nearly 72% of the juveniles interviewed said that they had not grown up with both parents, and more than half said that one of their family members had been imprisoned at least once."

Richard M. Smith and James Walters, "Delinquent and Non- Delinquent Males' Perceptions of Their Fathers." Adolescence, 13, 1978, 21-28: "The factors which do distinguish between delinquents and non-delinquents indicate that delinquency is associated with: (a) lack of a warm, loving, supportive relationship with the father; (b) minimal paternal involvement with children; (c) high maternal involvement in the lives of youth; and (d) broken homes. The factors which may serve to insulate youth from delinquency are: (a) a stable, unbroken home, characterized by loving, supportive, parent-child relationships; (b) a father who has a high degree of positive involvement with his son; and (c) a father who provides a stable model for emulation by his male offspring. The evidence reported herein supports that of earlier investigations that fathers appear to be significant contributors to the development of offspring who are capable of adapting and adjusting to society, and that fathers who are involved with their offspring in a warm, friendly, cordial relationship are important in the child's life for the prevention of delinquent behavior."

Los Angeles Times, 3 November, 1985 [Ronald Ward, 15, murderer of two elderly women and a 12 year old child. According to Joseph B. Brown, Jr., Ward's attorney]: "'The hardest thing in this case was that my client's a child and really had no controlling parents. The grandmother who raised him is senile, bless her soul. People oppose abortion and sex education, make no provision to deal with the resulting parentless children, then when these children go ahead and do what can be expected, people want to kill them.'...David Burnett, the circuit judge who presided at the trial, said: 'The tragedy in the Ronald Ward story is he's a victim of a society that allowed him to live in a situation where he had no guidance or control....

"[The senile grandmother's] unmarried daughter, she said, gave her the baby in late 1969, soon after he was born. The daughter 'used to come around once every two years, but then it got to a place where it was only every four or five years.' She hasn't heard from her now in years."

Marilyn Stern, John E. Northman, and Michael R. Van Slyck, "Father Absence and Adolescent 'Problem Behaviors': Alcohol Consumption, Drug Use and Sexual Activity." Adolescence, 19, 1984, 301-312: "The absence of the father from the home affects significantly the behavior of adolescents, and results in greater use of alcohol and marijuana and higher rates of sexual activity. The impact of the father's absence from the home is apparently greater on males than on females. The alcohol and marijuana use and sexual activity rates for father-absent males is greater than for any other group. The data underscore the significance of the father as a key figure in the transmission of values and as a role model in the life of the adolescent. In addition, the father may have a stabilizing influence within the family structure....This suggests that the father's presence may serve as a deterrent to more liberal indulgence in alcohol and marijuana use and sexual activity....Father-absent males reported the highest levels of alcohol and marijuana use the sexual activity. This group of adolescents appears to be particularly at-risk for problems associated with the three areas of alcohol, marijuana and sexual activity."

Rachelle J. Canter, "Family Correlates of Male and Female Delinquency," Criminology, 20, 1982, 149-167: "Consistent with earlier research, youths from broken homes reported significantly more delinquent behavior than youths from intact homes."

Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess and John E. Douglas, Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1988), pp. 20f.: "[I]n seventeen cases [out of 36 sexual murders] the biological father left home before the boy reached twelve years. The absence was due to a variety of reasons, such as death or incarceration, but most often the reason was separation and divorce....Given the departure of the father from the family, it is not surprising that the dominant parent to the offender during childhood and adolescence was the mother (for twenty-one cases). Some of the offenders were able to speculate on the meaning this had in their lives, as in the following case:

The breakup of the family started progressing into something I just didn't understand. I always thought families should always be together. I think that was part of the downfall...I said whether I did anything good or bad. They left that totally up to my mom. We'd go out on boats and cycle riding and stuff like that, but when it came down to the serious aspects of parent-child relationship, never anything there from the male side...My brother was eighteen and moved in with my real dad. I was ten and stayed with my mother.

"Only nine murderers said the father was the dominant parent, and two said both parents had shared the parenting role....The low level of attachment among family members is indicated by the murderers' evaluations of the emotional quality of their family relationships. Perhaps the most interesting result was that most offenders said that they did not have a satisfactory relationship with the father and that the relationship with the mother was highly ambivalent in emotional quality."

Ibid., p. 92: "In attempting to explain why Warren committed the murders, the psychiatrist pointed to his background, making the following observations:

"1. Warren grew up in a home where women were in control and men were denigrated.

"2. Warren's traumatic victimization at age twelve by two older girls served to confirm his picture of the world.

"3. Warren's marriage to a woman with four children demonstrates his tendency to empathize more with children than adults and his feelings about mother figures.

"4. The timing of the murders indicated a rekindling of Warren's own childhood fears as a result of the events of pregnancy and childbirth; thus, he perceived it necessary to destroy these women in order to prevent his own destruction.

"5. The mutilation of his victims was an attempt to remove gender identification from his victims and render them nonfemale."

Douglas A. Smith and G. Roger Jarjoura, "Social Structure and Criminal Victimization," Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 25 [Feb., l988], 27-52; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, June, l988: "Criminologists have long used race and poverty as key variables for explaining crime rates. However, researchers at the University of Maryland find that when differences in family structure are taken into account, crime rates run much the same in rich and poor neighborhoods and among black, white, and Hispanic populations. In their study of over ll,000 urban residents of Florida, upstate New York, and Missouri, Professors Douglas A. Smith and G. Roger Jarjoura found that 'the percentage of single-parent households with children between the ages of 12 and 20 is significantly associated with rates of violent crime and burglary.' The UM team points out that 'many studies that find a significant association between racial composition and crime rates have failed to control for community family structure and may mistakenly attribute to racial composition an effect that is actually due to the association between race and family structure.' Drs. Smith and Jarjoura likewise criticize theories that attribute crime to poverty since when family structure is taken into account, 'the effect of poverty on burglary rates becomes insignificant and slightly negative.'

"This new study should dispel illusions about curing the social effects of casual divorce and rampant illegitimacy through government programs that merely alleviate poverty or reduce racial prejudice."

Dr. Lee Salk, What Every Child Would Like His Parents To Know, cited in Doug Spangler, "The Crucial Years for Father and Child," American Baby, June, l979: "Research conducted on children whose fathers were away in the military service revealed that...boys whose fathers were absent during the first year of life, seemed to have had more behavior difficulties than would normally have been expected. They seem to have had more trouble establishing and keeping good relationships, not only with adults but with other children. Other studies showed a reasonably close relationship between delinquent behavior in boys and the absence of an adequate father (male) figure during childhood."

Henry Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1971), p. 1: "Much of the current interest in the father's role seems to have been intensified by the growing awareness of the prevalence of fatherless families and the social, economic and psychological problems that such families often encounter. The fatherless family is a source of increasing concern in many industrialized countries."

Ibid., p. 39: "Bacon, Child, and Barry [Bacon, M. K., Child, I. L. and Barry, H. III, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Correlates of Crime," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, l963, 66, 291- 300] discovered that societies with relatively low father availability have a higher rate of crime than do societies in which the father is relatively available. Stephens' data [Stephens, W. N. "Judgments by Social Workers on Boys and Mothers in Fatherless Families," Journal of Genetic Psychology, l96l, 99, 59-64] suggest that intense, restrictive mother-child relationships are more likely to occur in societies in which there is relatively low father availability in childhood. Close binding mother-child relationships appear to be negatively related to sexual adjustment in adulthood."

Ibid., p. 66: "Juvenile delinquency can have many different etiologies, but paternal deprivation is a frequent contributing factor. Many researchers have noted that father-absence is more common among delinquent boys than among nondelinquent boys. Studying adolescents, Glueck and Glueck [Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency, l950] reported that more than two-fifths of the delinquent boys were father-absent as compared with less than one- fourth of a matched nondelinquent group. McCord, McCord, and Thurber ["Some Effects of Paternal Absence on Male Children," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, l962, 64, 361-369] found that the lower-class father-absent boys in their study committed more felonies than did the father-present group, although the rates of gang delinquency were not different. Gregory [I. Gregory, "Anterospective Data Following Child Loss of a Parent: I. Delinquency and High School Dropout," Archives of General Psychiatry, l965, l3, 99-l09] referred to a large number of investigations linking father-absence with delinquent behavior and also detected a strong association between these variables in his study of high school students.

"Siegman [A. W., "Father-Absence During Childhood and Antisocial Behavior," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, l966, 254, 71-74] analyzed medical students' responses to a questionnaire concerning their childhood experiences. he compared the responses of students who had been without a father for at least one year during their first four years of life, with those of students who had been continuously father-present. The father absent group admitted to a greater degree of antisocial behavior during childhood. Other researchers relying on self-report procedures have also reported that individuals from fatherless families are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior [F. I. Nye, Family Relationships and Delinquent Behavior, New York: Wiley, l958; W. L. Slocum and C. L. Stone, "Family Culture Patterns and Delinquent Type Behavior," Marriage and Family Living, l963, 25, 202-8]. Anderson [L. M., "Personality Characteristics of Parents of Neurotic, Aggressive, and Normal Preadolescent Boys, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, l969, 33, 575-81] found that a history of paternal-absence was much more frequent among boys committed to a training school. He discovered that father-absent nondelinquents had a much higher rate of father-substitution (stepfather, father-surrogate, etc.) between the ages of four to seven than did father-absent delinquents.

"Miller [W. B., "Lower-Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency," Journal of Social Issues,, l958, l4, 5-19] argued that most lower-class boys suffer from paternal deprivation and that their antisocial behavior is often an attempt to prove that they are masculine. Bacon, Child and Barry [Bacon, M. K., Child, I. L. and Barry, H. III, "A Cross-Cultural Study of Correlates of Crime," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, l963, 66, 291-300], in a cross-cultural study, found that father availability was negatively related to the amount of theft and personal crime. Degree of father availability was defined in terms of family structure. Societies with a predominantly monogamous nuclear family structure tended to be rated low in the amount of theft and personal crime, whereas societies with a polygamous mother-child family structure tended to be rated high in both theft and personal crime. Following Miller's hypothesis, Bacon, Child and Barry suggested that such antisocial behavior was a reaction against a female-based household and an attempted assertion of masculinity. A large number of psychiatric referrals with the complaint of aggressive acting-out are made by mothers of preadolescent and adolescent father-absent boys and clinical data suggest that sex-role conflicts are frequent in such boys."

Harvey Kaye, Male Survival (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1974), p. 155: "Facing economic hardship and a much higher problem of a broken home, brittle family relationships, and an absentee father, the mere struggle for existence becomes a major preoccupation, and the niceties of psychological development may become negligible or coarsened in the process. Growing up deprived also often means growing up with little impulse control. Since the capacity to internalize one's impulses is a prerequisite for progress, handicaps mount. Fragmented families frequently germinate rage-filled children; and rage plus poor impulse control equals confrontation with the law. A sorry case, calling for any bright innovations which a boy's nimble brain can devise."

Patricia Cohen and Judith Brook, "Family Factors Related to the Persistence of Psychopathology in Childhood and Adolescence," Psychiatry, Vol. 50, Nov., l987, p. 344: "One-parent families and families with multiple marital disruptions are apparently unable to mount effective means of counteracting pathological reactions that have developed in their children."

Barry Siegel, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov., l985: "Most of the young convicts' stories, full of parents who ran off and unguided lives on the streets, evoke pity. Most of their deeds, full of rapes and beatings and murders, evoke horror."

Ross L. Matsueda and Karen Heimer, "Race, Family Structure, and Delinquency: A Test of Differential Association and Social Control Theories," American Sociological Review, 52 [Dec., l987], 826-40; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, March, l988: "Teenagers from broken homes are much more likely to become delinquents than are teens from intact families, particularly if they are black....Given the family roots of black delinquency, the authors of this new study find it 'not surprising that simplistic policies of rehabilitation and deterrence have failed to stem the tide of rising rates of delinquency.'"

Phyllis Chesler, Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 291: "Who are the women in prison?...More than half are single mothers living on welfare."

Bill Hazlett and David Shaw, Los Angeles Times, 31 December, l972, citing the views of Dr. Chaytor Mason, clinical psychologist at USC: "But many mothers just can't cope with growing boys alone--especially not with growing boys who are already frustrated by the uncertainty of their own masculinity. The boys misbehave, and the mother tells them how bad they are, and the boys, in effect, tell themselves, 'If I'm going to be bad, at least I'm going to be good at it.'"

Tamara Jones, Los Angeles Times, 19 December, 1988: "Favoring shaved heads and crisp, military-style clothing, skinheads are thought to have doubled their ranks over the last nine months alone to claim an estimated 2,000 to 3,500 hard core members nationwide. Some even carry business cards with their particular gang's name, post office box number and racist motto....

"'What you have here is not the last, dying remnants of an old problem' says Lenny Ziskind of the Center for Democratic Renewal. 'What we have here is just the embryo of a future problem.'...

"[Eric Anderson, a Yakima, Wash., anthropologist] described the skinheads as ranging from 14 to 27, from largely middle-class neighborhoods and broken, unstable families.

"'Most are dumber than bricks, but some are real sharp," Anderson said. 'They're openly trying to recruit all the time, and oftentimes it's runaway kids or punks who are looking for some family unit."

Gary Bauer, "Report to the President from the White House Working Group on the Family," quoted in Phyllis Schlafly Report, February, l988: "A study by Stanford University's Center of the Study of Youth Development in l985 indicated that children in single-parent families headed by mothers have higher arrest rates, more disciplinary problems in school, and a greater tendency to smoke and run away from home than do their peers who live with both natural parents--no matter what their income, race, or ethnicity."

Margaret Cambric, Executive Director, Jenesse Center, Los Angeles, quoted in Los Angeles Times, 27 February, 1988: "When you're dealing with gang activity, you're dealing with the family structure. People don't tend to see it that way....All of it is domestic violence....gang violence stems from the home."

Neal R. Peirce, citing William Haskins, National Urban League Director of Human Services, quoted in Los Angeles Times, 30 June, 1982: "[T]here is a strong correlation between the single-parent family and child abuse, truancy, substandard achievement in school and high unemployment and juvenile delinquency. Fatherless boys figure heavily in crimes, according to police officials....Young girls are almost ostracized if they're not ready for sex. Young men won't use [contraceptives]. They say, 'That's a reflection on my manhood.'"

Dr. Carlo Abbruzzese, M. D., FASFP Chairman, Human Rights Commission , M.E.N. International, Box 6185 Santa Ana, CA 92706, unpublished memo: "The Hon. S. L. Vavuris, Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court, stated in open Court that '90 percent of all of the children in trouble are from broken homes' (Loebenstein v. Loebenstein #648527, S. F. Superior Court, July 3, l974. And Judge Arnason of the Contra-Costa Superior Court, speaking more recently to an 'Equal Rights for Fathers' meeting in Berkeley, CA, said '70 percent of male youth offenders committed to correctional institutions are from divorce-torn homes.'"

Anthony L. Pillay, "Psychological Disturbances in Children of Single Parents," Psychological Reports, 61, [October, l987]: 803-6; excerpted in The Family in America: New Research, April, l988: "Children raised in a single-parent household are much more likely to suffer psychological disturbances and break the law than children from intact families....[Of 147 children taken to a psychological clinic] 89 of them--six out of every ten--came from nonintact families....[C]hildren--both male and female--are more likely to turn to drugs when they have only one parent. But problems are most serious among fatherless boys, who 'exhibited less self-control, delay in gratification, and internalized standards of moral judgement than did boys whose families remained intact,' and were 'more antisocial, impulsive and likely to belong to delinquent groups.' Because 'boys reared without their fathers appear to be substantially disadvantaged' by the 'lack [of] a significant model for sex-appropriate behavior, the current trend in awarding custody almost automatically to mothers' should be reexamined."

Henry Biller and Dennis Meredith, Father Power (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975), p. 341: "People with emotional disorders manifested in criminal behavior are likely to have been inadequately fathered. A study of murderers by Boston psychiatrist Shervert H. Frazier revealed that father absence or brutalization was frequent in the killers' backgrounds. Eighteen of the thirty- one murderers he studied had either suffered father absence for significant periods or had been the subject of repeated violence from the father. Many other histories of assassins and mass murderers suggest that they suffer similar backgrounds of father absence or abuse."

Dr. Bernard Laukenmann, Newsletter of Fathers United for Equal Rights of Baltimore, Maryland, February, l973: "A memorandum of a rehabilitation program from the Florida Ocean Sciences Institute (compiled in l970) revealed that 75 percent of the law offenders were from broken homes. Florida's Division of Youth Services acknowledges that this situation is state wide: more than two thirds of the criminal minors that the agency has been handling are from broken homes....Recently a public statement showed that 70 percent of all crimes in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, are committed by juveniles, and of that number 60 percent come from broken homes....Of the 70 percent juvenile criminals out of broken homes [most] live with their divorced, separated or abandoned mother or other female relative. News releases have it that Oswald (J. F. Kennedy's assassin) Sirhan (R. F. Kennedy's assassin), and Bremer (attempted assassin of Gov. Wallace) came from broken homes...."

Urie Bronfenbrenner, "The Psychological Costs of Quality and Equality in Education," Child Development, 38 [1967], 914f.: "A growing body of research evidence points to the debilitating effect on personality development in Negro children, particularly males, resulting from the high frequency of father absence in Negro families....In seeking an explanation for this relationship, several of the major investigators have concluded that the exaggerated toughness, aggressiveness, and cruelty of delinquent gangs reflect the desperate effort of males in lower-class culture to rebel against their early overprotective, feminizing environment and to find a masculine identity. For example, Miller [W. B., "Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency," Journal of Social Issues, 1958, 14, (3), 5-19] analyzes the dynamics of the process in the following terms:

The genesis of the intense concern over "toughness" in lower class culture is probably related to the fact that a predominantly female household, and lack a consistently present male figure with whom to identify and from whom to learn essential components of a "male" role. Since women serve as a primary object of identification during preadolescent years, the almost obsessive lower class concern with "masculinity" probably resembles a type of compulsive reaction-formation....A positive overt evaluation of behavior defined as "effeminate" would be out of the question for a lower class male."

Ibid., p. 914, quoting T. F. Pettigrew, A Profile of the Negro American, 1964, p. 18: "[F]ather-deprived boys are markedly more immature, submissive, dependent, and effeminate than other boys....As they grow older, this passive behavior may continue, but more typically, it is vigorously overcompensated for by exaggerated masculinity. Juvenile gangs, white and Negro, classically act out this pseudo-masculinity with leather jackets, harsh language, and physical 'toughness.'"

William McCord, Joan McCord with Irving Zola, Origins of Crime: A New Evaluation of the Cambridge-Sommerville Youth Study New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 169: "The father's personality had an important bearing on criminality. We established that warm fathers and passive fathers produced very few criminals. Paternal absence, cruelty, or neglect, however, tended to produce criminality in a majority of boys."

Ibid., p. 170: "Paternal absence resulted in a relatively high rate of crime, especially in drunkenness."

Robert Zagar, et al., "Developmental and Disruptive Behavior Disorders Among Delinquents," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28 [1989]: 437-440, epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, September, 1989: "Psychotic delinquents rarely come from intact families. Officials documented a familiar pattern in a recent survey of almost 2,000 children and adolescents referred by the Circuit Court of Cook County--Juvenile Division for psychiatric evaluation. This group of troubled children included 84 orphans (4 percent), 1,272 from single-parent homes (65 percent), 269 from stepparent families (14 percent), and just 331 from intact two-parent families (17 percent)."

Francis A. J. Ianni, The Search for Structure: A Report on American Youth Today (New York: The Free Press, 1989), pp. 207f.: "Yet in our observations of family life and in interviews we found that many of the members of disruptive groups and almost all of the street-gang members came from broken or severely disturbed and deprived homes....Many were from single-parent families where the mother had been unable or unwilling to establish adequate behavioral controls over her male children....They soon came to be considered rebellious, unruly, even dangerous troublemakers in the school as well as in the community. Welcome and 'understood' only among others like them, they sought out the structure and the often severe strictures of organized deviant peer groups, where fidelity is to the group or gang rather than to family or school."

Ibid., p. 76: "In Green Valley and other rural areas there were also frequent cases of missing fathers, not as much so as in the urban inner city, but with sufficient frequency among the 'old families' that 'not having a man around to straighten out the kids' was a frequent reason cited by criminal justice and social service professionals in the county seat whenever we asked about delinquency, teen pregnancy, or running away."

Robert J. Sampson and W. Byron Groves, "Community Structures and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory," American Journal of Sociology, 94, January, 1989, 774-802, epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, May, 1989: "The relationship between crime and family life recently came under the scrutiny of criminologists at the University if Illinois at Urbana--Champaign and the University of Wisconsin--Green Bay. After examining data from hundreds of communities in Great Britain, the researchers concluded that family disruption--either through divorce or illegitimacy--leads to mugging, violence against strangers, auto theft, burglary, and other crimes. The new study establishes a direct statistical link between family disruption and every kind of crime examined except vandalism. In large part, this linkage can be traced to the failure of 'informal social controls' in areas with few intact families. 'Two-parent households,' the authors of the new study explain, 'provide increased supervision and guardianship not only for their own children and household property, but also for general activities in the community. From this perspective, the supervision of peer-group and gang activity is not simply dependent on one child's family, but on a network of collective family control.' Particularly in poor communities bound together by few social ties, 'pronounced family disruption' helps to 'foster street-corner teenage groups, which, in turn, leads to increased delinquency and ultimately to a pattern of adult crime.'"

Bryce J. Christensen, "From Home Life to Prison Life: The Roots of American Crime," The Family in America, Vol 3, No. 4 [April, 1989], p.3: "...Professor Sampson established not only that single-parent households are likely targets for crime, but that the neighbors of single-parent households are more likely to be hit by crime than the neighbors of two-parent households. He concludes both that 'single-adult households suffer a victimization risk higher than two-adult households' and that 'living in areas characterized by a high proportion of [single-adult] households significantly increases burglary risk' for all types of households."

Ibid., p. 3: "In a 1987 study at the University of Toronto, sociologists noted particularly high rates of delinquency among female teens in two kinds of households: 1) single-parent households; 2) households in which the mother is employed in a career or management position. Maternal employment can affect the criminality of sons, too. 'It's tougher for mothers who are busy earning a living to control their teenage boys,' according to Professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University. Criminologist Roger Thompson believes that one of the primary reasons that young boys join gangs is that 'their parents work, and if they didn't have the gang, they'd just have an empty home.'

"But family disruption overshadows maternal employment as a cause of juvenile delinquency. In their landmark study of the problem the Gluecks found a strong correlation between delinquency and parental divorce and separation."

Ibid., p. 4: "[S]ociologists at the University of Washington and Vanderbilt University underscored the importance of the family in determining juvenile delinquency. 'That the family plays a critical role in juvenile delinquency is one of the strongest and most frequently replicated findings among studies of deviance,' write Professors Walter Gove and Robert Crutchfield. In their own examination of some 600 families in Chicago, Drs. Gove and Crutchfield again confirmed that 'boys in single-parent households are much more likely to be delinquent than boys from intact families.'...

"A young male lawbreaker will probably grow even more reckless if he fathers an illegitimate child....Since the sons of single- parent households are almost twice as likely as the sons of two- parent households to become an unwed father, this crime-producing pattern could spiral wider from generation to generation.

"Seedbed for gang activity, the broken home produces many of the nation's most violent young criminals. In a study of 72 adolescent murderers, researchers at Michigan State University found that 75 percent of them had parents who were either divorced or had never married."

Martin Kasindorf, "Keeping Manson Behind Bars," Los Angeles Times Magazine, 14 May, 1989: "Charles Manson, born illegitimate in Cincinnati, was placed by an uncaring mother with a series of foster parents. By 1967, he had spent 19 of his 32 years in penal institutions. On parole, Manson gravitated to San Francisco's pulsating Haight-Ashbury district. Through ready administration of LSD and a messianic message, he attracted a virtual harem of adoring women he called his 'young loves,' using offers of sex with them to draw men handy with guns and dune buggies."

Gary L. Cunningham, review of Manson in His Own Words by Nuel Emmons, Los Angeles Times, 5 July, 1987: "The man who would come to symbolize the end of the '60s and what went wrong with them was born 'no name Maddox.' Unwanted, he was reared with abuse and neglect. His unwed mother eventually gave him to the courts, not because he was unmanageable, but because he was a hindrance to her life style.

"It was the spring of 1967, He went to San Francisco.

"There he found a 'convict's dream,' a world of drugs and sex and no rules. In it he sought and found young women who were desperately seeking someone or something to give them acceptance, direction and permission. With the help of drugs, he easily became a kind of fantasy father figure, exchanging unconditional love and binding the women to him. For the first time in his life, Charles Manson had love, acceptance, power and control. And he had a following."

History Book Club Review, September, 1989: "Billy the Kid, age 21, has killed four men personally and he shares the blame for the deaths of five others. He will not see his 22d birthday....Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty, the son of Catherine McCarty, in New York City in 1859....The first certain record of Billy appears in Santa Fe, New Mexico where Henry McCarty and his brother Joe stood witness at the marriage of their mother Catherine to William Henry Harrison Antrim on March 1, 1873."

Robert Graysmith, Zodiac (New York: Berkeley Books, 1987), p. xiii: "After Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there is only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysterious Zodiac. Since 1968 the hooded mass murderer has terrified the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area with a string of brutal killings. Zodiac, in taunting letters sent to the newspapers, has hidden clues to his identity by using cunning ciphers that have defied the greatest codebreaking minds of the CIA, the FBI, and NSA."

P. 321:

"PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF ZODIAC

Paranoid delusions of grandeur.

"Psychotic.

"Sexual sadist: You will find that the Zodiac probably tortured small animals as a child, had a domineering mother, weak or absent father, strong fantasy life, confusion between violence and love, is the type of person who would be a police groupie, carry police equipment in his car, collect weapons and implements of torture."

Los Angeles Times, 8 December, 1989 [describing Marc Lepine, Canadian mass murderer who invaded a University of Montreal classroom, killed 14 women and wounded 13 others before committing suicide]: "Police say his father, whom they believe to be Algerian, left his family when son Marc was 7 years old."

Hans Sebald, Momism: The Silent Disease of America (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1976), pp. 180ff. [concerning the case of Jacques Vasseur, a French collaborator with the Nazis, responsible for the deaths of 230 Frenchmen]: "Jacques's childhood was a classic example of Momistic upbringing: father-absence from the socialization process, an overindulgent mother who catered to every whim of the child, and isolation from other children, neighbors, and potential male models. His mother kept him to herself, gave toys (particularly dolls) for him to play with and provided only one companion for him--herself....After the war ended and French sovereignty was reestablished, he was a hated and hunted criminal....It was not until l962 that he was discovered; his mother had hid him for seventeen years in a garret above her second-story apartment....Approximately 200 witnesses recited the horrors they had suffered under 'Vasseur the Terror,' recounting how he beat them, tortured them, and condemned their relatives and fiances to death. One witness said he had been bull-whipped for ten hours by Vasseur; a woman testified that he had burned her breasts with a cigarettes; and others told of the mercilessness with which he handed over to the executioners their fathers, brothers, and sisters....The attending psychiatrist...explained to the court that Jacques's subservience to the Gestapo was a transferred attachment from his mother to another powerful agent, that he embraced his grisly duties because he needed the approval of the Mom surrogate, and that his power over other humans gave him the opportunity to express his suppressed virility. The psychiatrist reminded the court that Vasseur still referred to his mother as "my Mummy" and that his greatest suffering during his imprisonment was caused by seeing 'Mummy' only once a week."

A two-hour NBC T.V. program on Jack the Ripper, October 28, l988, featured two FBI "crime profile" experts, John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood, who profiled Jack the Ripper as a single white male, with difficulty in interacting with people, especially women, of average intelligence, from a broken home, raised by a dominant female figure.

Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz, Senior Judge of Brooklyn criminal court, with A. E. Hotchner, "Nine Words that Can Stop Juvenile Delinquency," Reader's Digest, March, 1962; condensed from This Week, 15 December, 1957: "What Western country has the lowest juvenile delinquency rate? The answer, based on official reports, is Italy, where only two percent of all sex crimes and one half of one percent of all homicides are committed by children 18 and under. (The comparable figures for the United States are 13 and 9 percent.) But why is Italy's delinquency rate so low? For weeks I toured Italian cities, trying to get the answers. I was given remarkable cooperation. Police commissioners, school superintendents, mayors of cities told me what I wanted to know, took me where I wanted to go.

"An important police official wanted to know if it was really true that teen-agers assaulted police in America. I had to tell him it was.

"'Ah, this is very hard for us to believe,' he said. 'No Italian youth would ever lay hands on an officer.'

"A Naples school superintendent asked me if thrill murders are figments of journalists' imaginations. 'No, I informed him, 'they are all too true.'

"'We have no such crimes,' the superintendent said. 'We have the delinquency of stealing, of misbehaving, but boys in this country commit boy wrongs, within the bounds of the boy's world.'

"'But how do you keep the boy there?' I asked. And then I found what I was seeking: a basic, vital element of living that is disappearing in our country and which, to my mind, is the only effective solution to the malady of delinquency. From all parts of Italy, from every official, I received the same answer: Young people in Italy respect authority.

"And here is the significant thing: that respect starts in the home--then carries over into the school, the city streets, the courts. I went into Italian homes to see for myself. I found that even in the poorest family the father is respected by the wife and children as its head. He rules with varying degrees of love and tenderness and firmness. His household has rules to live by, and the child who disobeys them is punished. Thus I found the nine- word principle that I think can do more for us than all the committees, ordinances and multimillion-dollar programs combined: Put Father back at the head of the family."


ASSASSINS:

James F. Kirkham, Sheldon G. Levy and William J. Crotty, Assassination and Political Violence: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), pp. 65f.: "Although we cannot unravel the significance of the similarities between the assassins, we could make this statement: we could predict after President Kennedy's assassination that the next assassin would probably be short and slight of build, foreign born, and from a broken family--most probably with the father either absent or unresponsive to the child."

Patricia Cayo Sexton, The Feminized Male (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 4: "Sirhan and Oswald, both reared under the maternal shadow, grew to be quiet, controlled men and dutiful sons. Estranged from their fellows, fathers, and normal male associations, they joined a rapidly growing breed--the 'feminized male'--whose normal male impulses are suppressed or misshaped by overexposure to feminine norms. Such assassins often pick as their targets the most virile males, symbols of their own manly deprivation. The assassin risks no contest with this virility. His victim is caught defenseless by the sniper's bullet and is unable to strike any blows in self-defense. A cheap victory--no challenger and no risk of defeat. Their desire to get out is simply the natural male impulse to cut maternal ties and become a man. The black revolt is a quest by the black male--whose social impotence has exceeded even that of the white woman--for power, status, and manhood. He does not want to be a 'boy' any longer: I am a man is the slogan of his revolt. These rebellions are alarms, alerting us to the social forces that dangerously diminish manhood and spread alienation and violence."

Ibid., p. 67: "David Rothstein, for example, has analyzed twenty-seven inmates of the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., who had indicated an intention to attack the President. The threatmakers bore similarities to Lee Harvey Oswald. Most came from unhappy homes. They had domineering mothers and weak, ineffectual fathers. Most joined the military service at an early age, yet their experiences proved to be unhappy. Rothstein interprets their actions in threatening the President as the manifestation of a hostility towards their mother redirected against authority symbols--the government and, more specifically, the President."

Dr. Fred B. Chartan, "A Psychiatric History: What Assassins Have in Common," The Birmingham News, 7 July, l968: "The [U.S. presidential] assassins were all men (there has never been a woman political assassin ), all loners, and all lacking fathers through death, divorce, work schedule, or at least through a very poor parental relationship. It is also significant that the assassins were either bachelors or did not get along with women."


RAPISTS AND CHILD MOLESTERS:

Michael Petrovich and Donald I. Templer, "Heterosexual Molestation of Children Who Later Became Rapists," Psychological Reports, l984, 54, 810: "Forty-nine [of 83] (59%) of the rapists had been heterosexually molested. Of these, 12 had been so molested by two or more females for a total of 73 'cases' of heterosexual molestation. In 56 (77%) of these cases, the molesting person did so on more than one occasion. The ages at the time of molestation ranged from 4 to 16 yr.; the ages of the older persons ranged from 16 to 54 yr....Note that in 15 (21%) of the cases the women who molested had a special mission to nurture, counsel or protect."

Los Angeles Times, 16 December, 1986: [According to researchers at North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center] "The pattern of the child molester is characterized by a singular degree of closeness and attachment to the mother."

Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky, "The Developmental Antecedents and Adult Adaptations of Rapist Subtypes," Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol 14 [Dec., l987], 403-26; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, April, l988: "As families have broken down, rape has become an increasingly frequent crime. That is no coincidence, according to information in a new study. In a recent survey of l08 violent rapists--all of them repeat offenders- -researchers found that a sizable majority of 60 percent came from single-parent homes. The authors state that single-parent households account for 60 percent of those rapists described as 'sadistic' and nearly 70 percent of those described as 'exploitative.' Exploitative rapists display 'the most antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood,' while the sadists are marked by 'both more aggressive and more deviant sexual activity.' Among rapists motivated by 'displaced anger,' fully 80 percent come from single-parent homes, and over half were foster children."


SUICIDE:

S. C. Bhatia, et al., "High Risk Suicide Factors Across Cultures," The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 33, [1987], 226-236; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1988: "Weaker family ties are apparently one reason that suicide occurs more frequently in the United States than in India. In a recent analysis, a team of Indian psychiatrists tried to account for the difference between a suicide rate of 12.2 suicides per 100,000 Americans and a rate of only 6.5 suicides per 100,000 per 100,000 Indians. While conceding that the official statistics were unreliable because of underreporting in both countries, the psychiatric team cited 'lack of family and social support' as a primary reason that suicide now ranks eighth among causes of death in America.

The Indian researchers found it particularly striking that while suicide rates run higher among married Indians than among the unmarried, the American pattern is very different, with suicide rates running twice as high among singles as among the married and four to five times as high among the divorced and widowed as among the married."

Evangelos Papathomopoulos et al., "Suicidal Attempts by Ingestion of Various Substances in 2,050 Children and Adolescents in Greece," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 34, 1989, 205-209; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1989: "The divorce of parents often pushes teenagers into suicidal despair. In a paper recently presented to the Canadian Psychiataric Association, medical authorities from Greece reported their investigation of suicidal attempts by ingestion of drugs or other chemicals among Greek children and adolescents. In an analysis of 600 such cases, the Greek researchers found that family conflict was the reason for 353 (59 percent) of the attempted suicides."

Professor Victor R. Fuchs, Stanford University, Los Angeles Times, 24 October, l988: "Compared with those of the previous generation, today's children are more than twice as likely to commit suicide, perform worse at school and use much more alcohol and drugs; they are twice as likely to be obese, and show other signs of increased physical, mental and emotional distress. The poverty rate among children (under age 18) is almost double the rate for adults--a situation without precedent in American history....If Americans do not have enough children (the fertility rate has been below replacement level every year since l973) and if children do not become healthy, well-educated adults, the country's future is bleak, regardless of progress with other issues."

Carmen Noevi Velez and Patricia Cohen, "Suicidal Behavior and Ideation in a Community Sample of Children: Maternal and Youth Reports," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 273 [1988]: 349-356; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, Sept, 1988: "The latest evidence is found in a new study by psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Upon surveying 752 families at random, the researchers divided the children into those who had never attempted suicide and those who had done so at least once. The two groups, they found, differed little in age, family income, race, and religion. But those who attempted suicide were 'more likely to live in nonintact family settings than were the nonattempters. More than half of the attempters lived in households with no more than one biological parent, whereas only about a third of the nonattempters lived in such a setting.'"

John S. Wodarski and Pamela Harris, "Adolescent Suicide: A Review of Influences and the Means for Prevention," Social Work, 32, No. 6 [November/December, 1987] 477-84; epitomized in The Family in America, May, 1988: "'The growing incidence of family dissolutions, and the resulting single-parent households along with the attendant life-style, makes childhood a difficult period.' Increasingly, sociological researchers 'view the phenomenon of adolescent suicide as a reflection of this turmoil in American families....There is a trend toward devaluation of family and children and an atmosphere that lacks intimacy and affection. Experiences in environments that are nonsupportive and overtly hostile contribute to the development of suicidal personality characteristics.' This view is borne out, [Wodarski and Harris] note, by studies comparing youths who attempt suicide with those who do not. Among those who attempted suicide, 'family disruption and disintegration played a significant role' with the suicidal often feeling that their mothers were less interested in them than did the non-suicidal."

Lynda W. Warren and C. Tomlinson-Keasey, "The Context of Suicide," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57, No. 1 [January, 1987], p. 42; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, May, 1987: "In an in-depth analysis of eight women suicides, Lynda W. Warren and C. Tomlinson-Keasey state that one of their 'most striking findings' is 'the strong influence exerted by mothers, coupled with lack of involvement of fathers in the subjects' lives. Absence of paternal involvement was characteristic of all eight cases....When a parent played a critical role in the subjects' lives, it was the mother who did so.' Drs. Warren and Tomlinson- Keasey stress that 'this finding of a high incidence of early father loss is consistent with previous reports of an association between early father loss and adult depression and suicide.'"


SEXUAL CONFUSION:

Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure and Dependency: Reality Transitions to Female Household Headship," Demography 25, Feb., l988, 1-16: "Daughters from female-headed households are much more likely than daughters from two-parent families to themselves become single parents and to rely on welfare for support as adults....[L]iving with a single mother at age l6 increases a daughter's risk of becoming a household head by 72 percent for whites and 100 percent for blacks. The contrast becomes even sharper if the comparison is between daughters continuously living in two-parent families with daughters living with an unmarried mother at any time between ages 12 and 16: 'Exposure to single motherhood at some point during adolescence increases the risk [of a daughter's later becoming a household head] by nearly 1-1/2 times for whites and...by about 100 percent for blacks.' The public costs of this differential emerge in figures showing that a daughter living in a single-parent household at any time during adolescence is far more likely (127 percent more likely among whites, 164 percent among blacks) to receive welfare benefits as an adult, compared to daughters from two-parent households."

Brent C. Miller and C. Raymond Bingham, "Family Configuration in Relation to the Sexual Behavior of Female Adolescents," Journal of Marriage and the Family 51, 1989, 499-506; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1989: "Among young women reared in single-parent households, sexual intercourse outside marriage occurs much more often than among young women reared in intact families."

William Marsiglio, "Adolescent Fathers in the United States: Their Initial Living Arrangements, Marital Experience and Educational Outcomes," Family Planning Perspectives, 19, November/December, 1987, 240-51; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, May, 1988: "Researchers have known for some time that girls raised in a female-headed household are much more likely to become unwed teen mothers than are girls raised in two- parent families. In a major new study, Professor William Marsiglio of Oberlin College has documented a parallel pattern for unmarried teen fathers. In a survey of more than 5,500 young American men, Dr. Marsiglio found that 'males who had not lived with two parents at age 14 were overrepresented in the subsample of teenage fathers. Only 17 percent of all young men surveyed lived in one-parent households at age 14; yet, among boys who had fathered an illegitimate child as a teenager, almost 30 percent came from single-parent households. In other words, teen boys from one- parent households are almost twice as likely to father a child out of wedlock as teen boys from two-parent families."

Suzanne Southworth and J. Conrad Schwarz, "Post-Divorce Contact, Relationship with Father, and Heterosexual Trust in Female College Students," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57, No. 3 [July, 1987], 379-381; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, October, 1987: "In surveying 104 female college students from divorced and intact families, Drs. Suzanne Southworth and J. Conrad Schwarz discover evidence that 'the experience of divorce and its aftermath have long-term effects on young college women's trust in the opposite sex and on their plans for the future.' Particularly, the [University of Connecticut, Stors] team find that 'daughters from divorced homes are more likely to anticipate cohabitation before marriage' than are daughters of intact marriages. Among daughters of intact homes it was found that 'only daughters who had a poor relationship with the father planned to cohabit,' while among daughters of divorced parents 'plans to cohabit were uniformly high and unrelated to the father's acceptance and consistency of love.'"

Single mother quoted in SMC (Single Mothers by Choice newsletter), January, 1987: "Most of us were raised by our mothers alone."

Allan C. Carlson, "School Clinics Don't Prevent Pregnancies," Human Events, 31 January, 1987: "Researchers have discovered, for instance, that black girls from father-headed families were twice as likely to be 'non-permissive' compared to those from mother- headed units."

Beverly Beyette, Los Angeles Times, 10 April, 1986: [Girl mothers at Los Angeles's El Nido Services, a child and youth counseling agency]: "They are rather casual about pregnancy--no, they would not choose not to be pregnant. And, no, they do not expect, nor do they want, to marry their babies' fathers. Camilla, a sophomore, said, 'I tell him it isn't his baby so he won't call.'...

"For most girls, counselor Mathews said, 'There's very little awareness of the responsibility--and the consequences. Their mothers become the mothers. And they keep on doing what they're doing.'...

"Almost 70% of the girls lived with their single mothers while pregnant and, both during pregnancy and after the birth of their babies, their parents, welfare and the baby's father were their primary sources of financial support, with welfare the number one source after birth of the baby....

"[Stacy] Banks [project director] said the nature of the problem is somewhat different in South Central, where 'family violence is a big issue' and where the maternal grandmother is commonly the head of household, and often a resentful one. It is not unusual, said Banks, to learn that the grandmother had herself been a teen parent, that she had hoped to go back to school but is now expected to take care of a grandchild while the mother goes to school.

"Sometimes, Davis [Fritzie Davis, project director] said, 'The grandmother is 30 years old. She's asking, 'What's in it for me?' They're angry. They still have needs but don't know how to articulate them.'

"In 1986, social stigma is not the problem. Indeed, Leibowitz [Paul Leibowitz, project director] noted, 'Over 90% have made the decision they're going to keep their babies.'"

Henry B. Biller, Paternal Deprivation: Family, School, Sexuality, and Society (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974), p. 114: "Inappropriate and/or inadequate fathering is a major factor in the development of homosexuality in females as well as in males."

Yuko Matsuhashi et al., "Is Repeat Pregnancy in Adolescents a 'Planned Affair?'" Journal of Adolescent Health Care, 10 [1989], 409-412; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, December, 1989: "The [University of California at San Diego] researchers discovered that most of the teen mothers in their study had neither a father nor a husband in their lives. Among the girls pregnant for the first time, only 14 percent lived with both parents; among the girls in a repeat pregnancy, only 2 percent lived with both parents."

Henry B. Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1971), p. 47: "Imitation of masculine models is very important. The development of a masculine sex-role adoption, especially in the preschool years, is related to imitation of the father. A young boy's masculinity is positively related to the degree to which his father is available and behaves in a masculine manner (decisionmaking, competence, etc.) in his interaction with his family."

Ibid., p. 58: "A later study with kindergarten boys indicated that father-absent boys had less masculine sex-role orientations and sex-role preferences than did father-present boys, even though the two groups were matched in terms of IQ [Biller, H. B., "Father-Absence, Maternal Encouragement, and Sex-Role Development in Kindergarten Age Boys," Child Development, l969, 40, 539-46]. Also, matching for IQ in a study with junior high school students, we found that boys who became father-absent before the age of five had less masculine self-concepts than father-present boys [Biller, H. B. and Bahm, R. M., "Father-Absence, Perceived Maternal Behavior, and Masculinity of Self-Concept Among Junior High School Boys," Developmental Psychology, l97l, 4, l07].

Ibid., p. 71: "The paternally deprived boy's search for a father-figure can often be involved in the development of homosexual relationships. West [West, D. J., "Parental Relationships in Male Homosexuality," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, l959, 5, 85-97] and O'Connor [O'Connor, P. J., "Aetiological Factors in Homosexuality as Seen in R. A. F. Psychiatric Practice," British Journal of Psychiatry, l964, ll0, 381-391] found that homosexual males, more often than neurotic males, had histories of long periods of father-absence during childhood. West [D. J., Homosexuality, Chicago: Aldine, l967] reviewed much evidence which indicates that paternal deprivation is a frequent precursor in the development of homosexuality....Difficulty in forming lasting heterosexual relationships often appears to be linked to paternal deprivation."

Henry B. Biller and Richard S. Solomon, Child Maltreatment and Paternal Deprivation: A Manifesto for Research, Prevention and Treatment (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1986), p. 140: "Difficulty in forming lasting heterosexual relationships often appears to be linked to father-absence during childhood. Andrews and Christensen's (l95l) data suggested that college students whose parents had been divorced were likely to have frequent but unstable courtship relationships....Jacobson and Ryder (l969) did an exploratory interview study with young marrieds who suffered the death of a parent prior to marriage. Death of the husband's father before the son was twelve was associated with a high rate of marital difficulty. Husbands who had been father- absent early in life were described as immature and as lacking interpersonal competence. Participation in 'feminine' domestic endeavors and low sexual activity were commonly reported for this group. In general, their marriages were relatively devoid of closeness and intimacy....Other researchers have reported evidence that individuals who have experienced father-absence because of a broken home in childhood are more likely to have their own marriages end in divorce or separation....Research by Pettigrew (l964) with lower-class blacks is consistent with the supposition that father-absent males frequently have difficulty in their heterosexual relationships. Compared to father-present males, father-absent males were 'more likely to be single or divorced-- another manifestation of their disturbed sexual identification' (p. 420)....A great deal of the heterosexual difficulty that many paternally deprived, lower-class males experience is associated with their compulsive rejection of anything they perceive as related to femininity. Proving that they are not homosexual and/or effeminate is a major preoccupation of many lower-class males. They frequently engage in a Don Juan pattern of behavior, making one conquest after another, and may not form a stable emotional relationship with a female even during marriage. The fear of again being dominated by a female, as they were in childhood, contributes to their continual need to exhibit their masculinity by new conquests. The perception of child rearing as an exclusively feminine endeavor also interferes with their interaction with their children and helps perpetuate the depressing cycle of paternal deprivation in lower-class families....[E]arly father-absence particularly seems to interfere with the development of a secure sex-role orientation."

Ibid., p 147: "There is anthropological evidence suggesting that low father availability in early childhood is associated with later sex-role conflicts for girls as well as for boys....In Jacobson and Ryder's (l969) interview study, many women who had been father-absent as young children complained of difficulties in achieving satisfactory sexual relationships with their husbands....Case studies of father-absent girls are often filled with details of problems concerning interactions with males, particularly in sexual relationships....The father-absent girl often has difficulty in dealing with her aggressive impulses....In a clinical study, Heckel (l963) observed frequent school maladjustment, excessive sexual interest, and social acting-out behavior in five fatherless preadolescent girls. Other investigators have also found a high incidence of delinquent behavior among lower-class father-absent girls....Such acting-out behavior may be a manifestation of frustration associated with the girl's unsuccessful attempts to find a meaningful relationship with an adult male. Father-absence generally increases the probability that a girl will experience difficulties in interpersonal adjustment.

"The devaluation of maleness and masculinity so prevalent in paternally deprived, matrifocal families adversely affects many girls as well as boys."

Ibid., p. 150: "Daughters of divorcees were quite low in self- esteem, but daughters of widows did not differ significantly in their self-image from daughters from father-present homes. nevertheless, both groups of father-absent girls had less feeling of control over their lives and more anxiety than did father- present girls....The daughters of divorcees seemed to have especially troubled heterosexual relationships. They were likely to marry at an earlier age than the other groups and also to be pregnant at the time of marriage. After a brief period of time, some of these women were separated or divorced from their husbands."

Diane Trombetta and Betsy Warren Lebbos, "Co-Parenting: The Best Custody Solution," Los Angeles Daily Journal, June 22, l979, p. 20: "Delinquent girls, and those pregnant out of wedlock, are also more likely to come from broken homes, in most cases meaning father-absent homes. Girls from father-absent homes have been found to engage in more and earlier sexual relationships than father-present girls.

"Insecurity in relating to males has been reported among girls who became father-absent before the age of five....

"Among males, father-absence and resulting maternal dominance has been associated with secondary impotence, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drug abuse."

Neil Kalter, "Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Developmental Vulnerability Model," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57 (4), October, l987: "The weight of evidence suggests that boys who do not have an ongoing and close relationship with their fathers are more vulnerable to encountering difficulties related to the development of a stable and valued internal sense of masculinity. Problems bearing this stamp have been associated with boys growing up in post-divorce households. They include inhibition of assertiveness, deficient impulse control, and lowered academic performance. Research and clinical evidence indicate that a boy's identification with father is the primary vehicle for the internalization of an appropriate sense of masculine identity. Further, it has been suggested that the absence of an appropriate male model for such identification leaves a boy open to developing pronounced feminine identifications which, in most instances, must be defended against vigorously in adolescence. In sum, the position of a father in his son's development appears crucial, and disruptions in the father-son relationship have been linked to a multitude of developmental interferences."

Los Angeles Times, l7 October, l986: "Planned Parenthood has identified teens at highest risk for becoming pregnant: those with mothers or sisters who became pregnant while teen-agers, those reared in single-parent homes, those who do not do well in school and seek self-esteem elsewhere."

Eleanor J. Bader, The Guardian, l April, l987: "'Glamor was a great reason to have a baby. It works at first. People say "Oh, that's great." You're famous. Then you're nine months pregnant, waddling around, and after the baby's born they put their eyes down. You're on your own. After the baby's born the only one who sticks around is welfare.'

"The woman speaking is l6, Black and angry. She had to drop out of school, she says, to care for her son, and has to subsist on less than $400 a month, a sum that is mostly gobbled up by diapers, formula, baby clothes and rent.

"But these dire conditions are not the only reasons for her anger. 'When you're a young mother people look at you like you're bad.'"

Los Angeles Times, 10 April, l986: "Almost 70% of the girls [teen-aged mothers] lived with their single mothers...."

Susan Newcomer and J. Richard Udry, "Parental Marital Status Effects on Adolescent Sexual Behavior," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, No. 2 [May, l987], pp. 235-40; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, August, l987: "Daughters in one-parent homes are much more likely to engage in premarital sex than are daughters in two-parent homes....Adolescent girls reared without fathers are much more likely to be sexually active than girls raised by two parents. Girls raised in single-parent homes are also much more likely to be involved in 'other age-graded delinquencies' than are girls in two-parent homes....The research team also found that the sexual activity of sons increases markedly when a two-parent home breaks up through divorce or separation."

Los Angeles Times, l6 May,, l988: "Ed Griffin, planning officer at the [Los Angeles] Housing Authority, said that at the poorest projects, 'a young woman's idea of upward mobility is having a baby and getting her first welfare check from Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Then she leaves her mom's and gets a place of her own--in the project, of course.'"

Bettye Avery, off our backs, April, l986: "Girls who refuse to have sex are accused of being virgins or dykes."

Henry Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1971), p. 129: "[P]aternally deprived individuals are overrepresented among individuals with psychological problems."

George A. Rekers, "Inadequate Sex Role Differentiation in Childhood: The Family and Gender Identity Disorders," The Journal of Family and Culture, 2, No. 3 [Autumn, 1986], 8-31; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, March, 1987: "...George A. Rekers, professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, reports on the findings of the Gender Research Project he has directed for the National Institute of Mental Health. As part of his research, Dr. Rekers and his colleagues performed comprehensive psychological evaluations of 70 boys suffering from 'gender disturbance,' manifest in 'cross dressing [transvestism]' play with cosmetic articles; "feminine" appearing gestures; avoidance of masculine sex-typed activities; avoidance of male peers; predominant ratio of play with female peers...and taking predominantly female roles in play.'

"Upon examination, 'all 70 of the gender-disturbed boys were found to be normal physically...with the single exception of one boy with one undescended testicle.' However, in assessing the family backgrounds of the 70 boys, Dr. Rekers and his colleagues found 'a consistent picture' of father absence or father neglect:

In the boys who were classified as the most profoundly disturbed, father absence was observed for all cases. In the remaining less disturbed cases father absence was found in 54% of the cases.

Helen Colton, Sex After the Sexual Revolution (New York: Association Press, 1972), p. 140: "Next to punishment and guilt, a common reason for premarital pregnancy is the need of the male to prove his masculinity. Reuben Pannor, a social worker at Vista Del Mar Child Care Center in West Los Angeles, author of notable studies on the young unwed father, has found that many of them came from homes that were female-dominated due to death or divorce or because the father had abdicated his responsibility, leaving the son with 'weak or distorted masculine identity.' Such boys often become involved in sexual relationships 'to prove their manhood.'"

Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 67: "Indeed, the further back one goes in time the more bisexual, or gyndndrous, is the Great Mother. As Charlotte Woolf says in Love Between Women, perhaps the present-day Lesbian woman is the closest in character to ancient women--with their fierce insistence on strength, independence, and integrity of consciousness.

"The first love-object for both women and men is the mother; but in patriarchy, the son has to reject the mother to be able to dominate the wife as 'a real man'--and the daughter must betray her for the sake of "submitting to a man." In matriarchal society this double burden of biological and spiritual betrayal does not occur. For both women and men there is a close identification with the collective group of mothers, with Mother Earth, and with the Cosmic Mother. And, as psychoanalysts keep repeating, this identification is conducive to bisexuality in both sexes. But homosexuality in tribal or pagan men was not based on rejection of the Mother, or the female, as is often true in patriarchal culture; rather, it was based on brother-love, brother-affinity, as sons of the mother. And lesbianism among women was not based on a fear and rejection of men, but on the daughter's desire to reestablish union with the Mother, and with her own femaleness."

Itabari Njeri, Los Angeles Times, 25 July, 1989: "Perhaps the crucial message in her book [Bebe Moore Campbell's Sweet Summer]-- one still not fully understood by society, Campbell says--is the importance of a father or a father-figure in a young girl's life.

"'Studies show that girls without that nurturing from a father or surrogate father are likely to grow up with damaged self-esteem and are more likely to have problems with their own adult relationships with men,' Campbell says."

Peter M. Weyrich, The Human Costs of Divorce: Who Is Paying? (Washington, D. C.: Free Congress Foundation, 1988), pp.33f., citing George Rekers, "The Formation of a Homosexual Orientation," presented at the Free Congress Foundation "Hope and Homosexuality" Conference, 1987: "Research suggests that in order for boys to develop their masculine identity properly, they need a strong male role model, such as a father (biological or substitute) or an older brother. In 1983, Rekers, Mead, Rosen, and Brigham studied a group of gender-disturbed boys, and found a high incidence of absent fathers. The average age of the boys when they were separated from their fathers was approximately 3.5 years old. Eighty percent were 5 years old or younger when the separation took place, and the reason for the fathers' absence was separation or divorce in 82% of the cases. The male gender disturbances varied from moderate to severe in the study, but those who showed deep gender disturbances had neither a biological father nor a father substitute living at home. Of the fathers who did live at home, 60% were described as psychologically remote or apart from the other members of the family."

Kathleen Fury, "The Troubling Truth About Teen-Agers and Sex," Reader's Digest, June, 1980 [Condensed from Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1980], pp. 153f.: "Demographers at Johns Hopkins University have found that young, white, teen-age girls living in fatherless families were 60 percent more likely to have had intercourse than those living in two-parent homes."


EDUCATIONAL UNDERACHIEVEMENT

Newsweek, l3 May, l985: "It is easy enough to spot them, the so-called children of divorce. Often, teachers say, the boys become extremely sloppy in their dress and study habits, even for boys--and former class clowns are given to spontaneous crying. Junior-high-school girls, on the other hand, sometimes begin wearing heavy makeup and jewelry, affecting a hard-bitten look, as if to advertise the current lack of parental attention. First graders suddenly forget that they're been toilet trained for years. And on any given day every single one of them, from kindergarten to high school, seems to have left home, wherever home may be at the moment, without lunch money.

"Nor is there anything mysterious about this behavior. As Chuckie Marshall, a fourth grader from Denver, recently told his divorced mother, 'I think about you and Daddy a lot at school'--and such thoughts lead inevitably to insecurity and anger, depression and, perhaps most often, guilt....[T]he Los Angeles County Board of Education now runs seminars to help teachers deal with the problems of children from 'reconstituted homes': their predictable academic declines and sudden behavior swings....[S]ome kids who appear to be coping eventually display 'time-bomb symptoms' such as drug use and precocious sexual activity years after a family has broken up and resettled."

B. Sutton-Smith, B. G. Rosenberg and Frank Landy, "Father- Absence Effects in Families of Different Sibling Compositions," Child Development, 39 (1968), p. 1213: "In general, father absence has a depressive effect throughout, with the greatest effects during the early and middle years; boys without brothers are more affected than those with brothers, girls with a younger brother more affected than other girls, and only girls more affected than only boys."

Rex Forehand, et al., "Family Characteristics of Adolescents Who Display Overt and Covert Behavior Problems," Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 18, [December, 1987]: 325-328; epitomized in The Family in America, April, 1988: "The kid who causes the most trouble in school most likely comes from a divorced family. In a new study of 23 white adolescents, their mothers, and their teachers, researchers set out to examine two types of antisocial behavior in children--'overt' (fighting, temper tantrums) and 'covert' (stealing, lying, truancy, falling in with bad companions). Their findings: the worst troublemaker, the child who engaged in both kinds of behavior (both fighting and stealing, for instance) was far more likely to come from a broken home than was the child who engaged in only one type or was well-behaved. Out of seven of the worst troublemakers in this survey, six came from divorced families."

Paul G. Shane, "Changing Patterns Among Homeless and Runaway Youth," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59, April, 1989, 208- 214: "In general, homeless youth are more likely to come from female-headed, single-parent, or reconstituted families with many children, particularly step-siblings."

R. F. Doyle, The Rape of the Male (St. Paul, Minn: Poor Richard's Press, 1976), p. 145, citing Starke Hathaway and Elio Monachesi, Adolescent Personality and Behavior, p. 8l: "More than one in three children of broken families drop out of school."

Yochanan Peres and Rachel Pasternack, "The Importance of Marriage for Socialization: A Comparison of Achievements and Social Adjustment Between Offspring of One- and Two-Parent Families in Israel," in Contemporary Marriage: Comparative Perspectus of a Changing Institution, ed. Kingsley Davis in association with Amyra Grossbard-Schechtman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1985), pp. 162ff.: "Table 6.2 shows that in all three subject matters [Arithmetic, English, Hebrew] children of matrifocal families have significantly lower scholastic achievement than children raised in two-parent families....

To make sure that these differences in achievement are not due to background factors, we applied a multivariate regression analysis to the data. Table 6.3 indicates that when many relevant background factors are controlled, children of intact families performed significantly better in arithmetic than children from matrifocal families....Similar regressions run on English and Hebrew scores also showed a highly significant new effect of parental marital status on achievement. In addition, regressions run on a sample from which children of hostile families and their controls were excluded (thus allowing us to assess the effect of 'pure' matrifocality) demonstrate that matrifocality has highly significant (negative) influence on all three measures of children's scholastic achievements. A similar overall detriment from father absence has been reported by several investigators over the last two decades.

Dale J. Hu et al., "Healthcare Needs for Children of the Recently Homeless," Journal of Community Health, 14, 1989, 1-7; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1989: "Homeless children are usually fatherless children as well. In a recent survey of thirty parents with children in a homeless shelter in San Diego, researchers talked with only two fathers and with relatively few married mothers. Nine of the homeless parents interviewed had never married, while ten were separated, divorced or widowed, making a total of 63 percent of the homeless parents interviewed who were living without a spouse."

James Coleman, "Educational Achievement: What We Can Learn from the Catholic Schools," Associates Memo, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, No. 15, November 4, l988: "It is important to remember that schools as we know them have never been very successful with weak families. These days many more families have become weak, either because they are single-parent families or because both parents are working and the family cannot devote sufficient time and attention to children."

Henry B. Biller and Richard S. Solomon, Child Maltreatment and Paternal Deprivation: A Manifesto for Research, Prevention and Treatment (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1986), p. 136: "[C]omparison of children who have from an early age been consistently deprived of paternal influence with those who have had actively and positively involved fathers clearly reveals that the former are generally less adequate in their functioning and development."

Ibid., p 151: "The first investigator to present data suggesting an intellectual disadvantage among father-absent children was Sutherland (l930). In an ambitious study involving Scottish children, he discovered that those who were father-absent scored significantly lower than did those who were father- present....A number of more recent and better controlled studies are also generally consistent with the supposition that father- absent children, at least from lower-class backgrounds, are less likely to function well on intelligence and aptitude tests than are father-present children....

"Maxwell (l96l) reported some evidence indicating that father- absence after the age of five negatively influences children's functioning on certain cognitive tasks. He analyzed the Wechsler Intelligence Test scores of a large group of eight-to-thirteen- year-old children who had been referred to a British psychiatric clinic. He found that children whose fathers had been absent since the children were five performed below the norms for their age on a number of subtests. Children who had become father-absent after the age of five had lower scores on tasks tapping social knowledge, perception of details, and verbal skills. Father-absence since the age of five was the only family background variable which was consistently related to subtest scores....Compared to father- present students, those who were father-absent performed at a lower level in terms of verbal, language, and total aptitude test scores.

"In a related investigation, Landy, Rosenberg, and Sutton- Smith (l969) found that father-absence had a particularly disruptive effect on the quantitative aptitudes of college females. Total father-absence before the age of ten was highly associated with a deficit in quantitative aptitude. Their findings also suggested that father-absence during the age period from three to seven may have an especially negative effect on academic aptitude....

"For both boys and girls, father-absence was associated with relatively low ability in perceptual-motor and manipulative-spatial tasks (block design and object assembly). Father-absent boys also scored lower than did father-present boys on the arithmetic subtest....In a study with black elementary-school boys, Cortes and Fleming (l968) also reported an association between father-absence and poor mathematical functioning."

Ibid., p 154: "The high father-present group was very superior to the other three groups. With respect to both grades and achievement test scores, the early father-absent boys were generally underachievers, the late father-absent boys and low father-present boys usually functioned somewhat below grade level, and the high father-present group performed above grade level.

"The early father-absent boys were consistently handicapped in their academic performance. They scored significantly lower on every achievement test index as well as in their grades....

"Santrock (l972) presented additional evidence indicating that early father-absence can have a significant debilitating effect on cognitive functioning. Among lower-class junior high and high school children, those who became father-absent before the age of five, and particularly before the age of two, generally scored significantly lower on measures of IQ (Otis Quick Test) and achievement (Stanford Achievement Test) that had been administered when they were in the third and sixth grades than did those from intact homes. The most detrimental effects occurred when father- absence was due to divorce, desertion, or separation, rather than to death....

"Hetherington, Cox and Cox...also reported data indicating that early father-absence can impede cognitive development. They found differences between the cognitive functioning of young boys (five- and six-year-olds) who had been father-absent for two years because of divorce and that of boys from intact families Boys from intact families scored significantly higher on the block design, mazes, and arithmetic subtests of the WIPSI as well as achieving higher Performance Scale Intelligence scores and marginally higher Full-Scale Intelligence scores. Other data from this study clearly suggest that the decreasing availability of the divorced fathers for their sons during the two years following the divorce was a major factor in these boys' lower level of performance compared with boys from intact families."

Ibid., p. 155: "There is evidence that early paternal deprivation has a cumulative impact as the child grows older. In her excellent review, Radin (l98l) noted several studies that indicated few if any cognitive differences associated with father- absence for black children entering first grade, but evidence of clear-cut superiority of father-present children by the later elementary-school years. Differences in academic performance as a function of variations in the quality of early father involvement seem to become more apparent as children grow older...."

Henry B. Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1971), p. 57: "Investigators have found that among lower-class black children, those who are father-absent score lower on intelligence and achievement tests than do those who are father-present."

Ibid., p. 59: "Boys from high father-present families are more likely to actualize their intellectual potential than are boys from families in which the father is absent or relatively unavailable."

Ibid., p. 60: "Barclay and Cusumano's data [Barclay, A. G. and Cusumano, D., "Father-Absence, Cross-Sex Identity, and Field- Dependent Behavior in Male Adolescents." Child Development, l967, 38, 243-50] point to difficulties in analytical functioning being associated with father-absence. Using Witkin's rod and frame procedure, these investigators found that, among adolescent males, those who were father-absent were more field-dependent than those who were father-present. Field dependence relates to an inability to ignore irrelevant environmental cues in the analysis of certain types of problems."

Ibid., p. 63: "For example, among children in the lower class, father-absence usually intensifies lack of exposure to experiences linking intellectual activities with masculine interests. Many boys, in their intense efforts to view themselves as totally masculine, perceive intellectual tasks and school in general as feminine. When the school presents women as authority figures and makes strong demands for obedience and conformity, it is particularly antithetical to such boys' desperate attempts to feel masculine."

John Guidubaldi and Joseph D. Perry, "Divorce, Socioeconomic Status, and Children's Cognitive-Social Competence at School Entry," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 54 (3). July, l984, 459-68: "The direction of the relationships indicates that children from single-parent homes tended to have significantly lower academic and personal-social competencies than did children from two-parent families....This study provides evidence that children from divorced family homes enter school with significantly less social and academic competence than those from intact families....[S]ingle-parent status resulting from divorce predicts poor academic and social school entry competence in addition to and independent of SES [socio-economic status]."

Rex Forehand, et al., "Adolescent Functioning as a Consequence of Recent Parental Divorce and the Parent-Adolescent Relationship," Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 8, [l987], 305-15; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, June, l988: "University of Georgia researchers found that those from broken homes had greater difficulties both with their classes and with their relations with their peers. 'Adolescents from intact homes had higher grades and were perceived as more socially competent by teachers,' the authors report. Their explanation: 'When parents divorce, their use of effective monitoring and disciplinary procedures, as well as their positive relationship with their children, may diminish. As a consequence, the social competence and cognitive performance of the child...may deteriorate.'"

Patricia Moran and Allan Barclay, "Effects of Fathers' Absence on Delinquent Boys: Dependency and Hyper-masculinity," Psychological Reports 62 [l988], ll5-121; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, June, l988: "[W]hen the father is absent from the home, young black males experience 'less internalization of society's norms.' Drs. Moran and Barclay suggest that it is precisely this 'lack of internalized norms' which may be responsible for 'behavior of an antisocial and delinquent nature.'

"Intriguingly, the new study found that black delinquents whose fathers were absent were 'more overtly masculine in their expressed interests and behavior' than were black adolescents whose fathers were present.' The authors speculate that 'delinquency represents defensive coping' among black youth who develop attitudes of 'hypermasculinity' to compensate for the absence of their fathers."

David H. Demo and Alan C. Acock, "The Impact of Divorce on Children," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 50 [August, 1988], 619-48; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1988: "Young children, particularly boys, are hard hit by divorce. Children of various ages are disadvantaged in school performance. Children 'in disrupted families experience problems in peer relations, while adolescents in such families tend to be more active in dating and sexual relations.' And 'research on antisocial behavior consistently illustrates that adolescents in mother-only households and in conflict-ridden families are more prone to commit delinquent acts.'"

Gary Bauer, "Report to the President from the White House Working Group on the Family," quoted in Phyllis Schlafly Report, February, 1988: "A two-year study funded by Kent State, the William T. Grant Foundation and the National Association of School Psychologists, found that there were substantial differences between children of intact families and those of divorced families. "Children of divorce also are absent from school more frequently and are more likely to repeat a grade, to be placed in remedial reading classes and to be referred to a school psychologist,' says the study of 699 randomly chosen first, third and fifth graders in 38 states. In addition, John Guidubaldi, Professor of Early Childhood Education and director of the study, noted 'far more detrimental effects of divorce on boys than on girls. Disruptions in boys' classroom behavior and academic performance increased 'noticeably' throughout elementary school. Boys, he speculated, are much more affected by their parents' divorce because children fare better with single parents of the same sex, and 90 percent of all custody rights go to mothers."

Gilbert C. Hentschke [dean of the school of education, USC] and Lydia Lopez, co-chairpersons of the Education Working Group of the 2000 Partnership, Los Angeles Times, 30 August, 1989: "After several years of education reforms, it is more evident than ever that our Los Angeles public schools are failing....About 60% of the district's children come from impoverished families. While some poor children do succeed, poverty is closely correlated with failure, especially for children from single-parent families, according to a recent national study. The study also notes that poor students are three times more likely than others to become dropouts.

"These children who are failing swell the ranks of functionally illiterate adults (now estimated to be 20% of the population in Los Angeles County). They enter the economy at the bottom where they are likely to stay."

Henry Biller and Dennis Meredith, Father Power (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1975), p. 236: "The high father-present boys consistently received superior grades and performed above grade level on achievement tests. The late father-absent and low father- present boys scored a little below grade level on achievement tests. The lowest scores were achieved by the early father-absent group."

Maxine Thompson, Karl L. Alexander, and Doris R. Entwisle, "Household Composition, Parental Expectations, and School Achievement," Social Forces, 67, Dec., 1988, 424-451; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, April, 1989: "Married black couples expect better school performance from their children than do single black parents--and their children respond accordingly. In a recent study conducted at the Johns Hopkins University and North Carolina State University, researchers found that black first-grade students from married-couple households outperform their peers from single-parent households....The researchers stress that these gaps cannot be explained by economic differences nor by any discernible differences in initial ability levels."

Frank J. Sciara, "Effects of Father Absence on the Educational Achievement of Urban Black Children," Child Study Journal, 5, No. 1, 1975, p. 45: "The analysis of variance revealed significant differences favoring the academic achievement of both boys and girls from father present homes in the two test areas. Father absence had a much greater effect on the achievement scores of boys and girls in this study whose IQ was above 100."

Ibid., p. 52: "From the analysis of the results, it would appear that for the 1,073 fourth grade Black children represented in this study, those from father present homes attained a significantly higher educational achievement level than those children from the same group coming from father absent homes.. This finding was consistent in both the reading and the arithmetic tests, affecting both boys and girls. When the group was analyzed by the three levels of IQ, the father absent children achieved lower reading and arithmetic scores than those from father present homes."

Betty Arras, California Monitor of Education [now National Monitor of Education], February, 1985: "As a kindergarten teacher in the late fifties in a ghetto school in Oakland, California, I can personally testify to the negative impact of the broken home upon school achievement and emotional stability. My observation shared by virtually all my colleagues in that school was that broken homes hurt children in every way--emotionally, academically, and socially. Obviously, there are children from single parent homes who grow up with few emotional scars but generally speaking, the elements for personality disintegration are more common in the broken home. Because of increasing numbers of families in which both parents work spending less time at home, children in both these and single-parent homes tend to experience a lack of nurturing. All children need psychological nourishment whether it be in the form of supporting them in their feelings, soothing their anxieties, helping them with homework, or just sharing conversation. What is frequently missing in the broken home is a lack of parental supervision which can result in feelings of isolation, excessive freedom or responsibility which the child cannot handle, and/or lack of attention and affection. In broken homes of the welfare variety there is the problem of no father figure with whom the sons can identity.

"On February 5, ABC-TV national news aired the first in a series about violent crime in the cities. A New York City policeman who was interviewed pointed out that nearly all juveniles who commit violent crimes come from broken homes."


PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Neil Kalter, "Long-term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Developmental Vulnerability Model," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57 (4), October, l987: "A large national survey revealed that more than twice as many children of divorce, compared to youngsters from intact families, had seen a mental health professional. In a representative national sample, men and women who were l6 years of age or younger when their parents divorced reported significantly higher divorce rates, more work-related problems, and higher levels of emotional distress than did their counterparts who grew up in intact families. In addition to these rigorous cross-sectional studies, recent findings from two conceptually and methodologically diverse longitudinal research projects also indicate that divorce-related difficulties persist over time for many children....Clinical and research investigations have indicated that children of divorce constitute a population at risk for developing particular emotional, social, and behavioral problems that either persist or first appear years after the marital rupture. Prominent among these are aggressive and antisocial (externalizing) problems, sadness, depression, and self- esteem (internalizing) problems; and difficulty establishing and maintaining mutually enhancing heterosexual relationships."

Adelaide M. Johnson and S. A. Szurels, "The Genesis of Antisocial Acting Out in Children and Adults," Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1952, 21: 323-343; quoted in Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), p. 297: "Regularly the more important parent--usually the mother, although the father is always in some way involved--has been seen unconsciously to encourage the amoral or antisocial behavior of the child. The neurotic needs of the parent...are vicariously gratified by the behavior of the child. Such neurotic needs of the parent exist either because of some current inability to satisfy them in the world of adults, or because of the stunting experiences in the parent's own childhood--or more commonly, because of a combination of both of these factors."

Carol Z. Garrison, "Epidemiology of Depressive Symptoms in Young Adolescents," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 1989, 343-351; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1989: "Teens living in single- parent or step-family households are more likely to suffer from depression than teens living in intact families.... Persistent symptoms of depression showed up significantly less often among young teens living with both natural parents than among peers living with only one parent or with one parent and a stepparent."

John Beer, "Relation of Divorce to Self-Concepts and Grade Point Averages of Fifth Grade School Children," Psychological Reports, 65 [1989], 104-106; quoted in The Family in America: New Research, December, 1989: "Children from divorced homes score lower on self-concept than do children from nondivorced homes."

Berthold Berg and Lawrence A. Kurdek, "Children's Beliefs About Parental Divorce Scale: Psychometric Characteristics and Concurrent Validity," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55, [October, 1987], 712-18; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, January, 1988: "In a recent study of 170 children (ranging in age from six to 17) with divorced parents, psychologists at the University of Dayton and Wright State University uncovered a disturbing pattern. The research team found that many of the children surveyed expressed one or more 'problematic beliefs' about their parents' divorce. Over one-fourth of the children blamed themselves for their parents' divorce and suffered 'low self-concepts.' Over one-fourth of children also harbored illusory hopes that 'once my parents realize how much I want them to, they'll live together again.' Approximately one- third express 'fear of abandonment' by their parents, a fear which actually appears higher among children whose divorced mothers have remarried than among children whose divorced mothers have not remarried."

Tony Campolo, "Too Old, Too Soon: The New Junior Higher," Youthworker, 4, [Spring, 1987], 20-25; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, August, 1987: "...Dr. Compolo observes that young Americans now 'do things in their early teens that a generation ago were reserved for older high schoolers.' The primary reason for this 'transformation of junior highers,' he believes, is the 'diminishing presence of parents' in the lives of young adolescents. Because many of them live in single-parent homes or in two-income homes where both parents are 'out of their homes much of the time,' young teenagers are 'left with the freedom to do what they want to do.'...Dr. Campolo reports that many young teenagers become 'emotionally disturbed and psychologically disoriented' when given personal autonomy prematurely."

Carolyn Webster-Stratton, "The Relationship of Marital Support, Conflict and Divorce to Parent Perceptions, Behaviors, and Childhood Conduct Problems," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51 [1989], 417-30, quoted in The Family in America: New Research, October, 1989: "Compared with the maritally distressed [households in which couples reported relatively unsatisfactory marriages] and supported [households in which mothers reported satisfactory marriages] mother groups, single mothers reported more parenting stress and perceived their children as having significantly more behavior problems."

Robert Zagar, et. al., "Developmental and Disruptive Behavior Disorders among Delinquents," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28 (1989), 437-440; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, September, 1989: "Psychotic delinquents rarely come from intact families. Officials documented a familiar pattern in a recent survey of almost 2,000 children and adolescents referred by the Circuit Court of Cook County--Juvenile Division for psychiatric evaluation. This group of troubled children included 84 orphans (4 percent), 1,272 from single-parent homes (65 percent), 269 from stepparent families (14 percent) and just 331 from two-parent families (17 percent).

"As the court officials noted in reporting their findings, there was nothing new about the linkage between delinquency and broken homes."

Statement of William P. Wilson, M. D., Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N. C. to the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, 10 November, 1983; printed in Paternal Absence and Fathers' Roles, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1984, pp. 12ff.: "As you know, it is estimated that 40 percent of children born in America today will grow up in a broken home. In 1974 only 14 percent of children could anticipate this fate. At that time 18 million children experienced a disruption of parental relationship. Since 85 percent of the parents remarried, and of these 40 percent divorced a second time, a huge percentage of children could expect to experience the trauma of a broken home more than twice.

"These children are at risk psychiatrically. The risks are as follows: First, the child may become psychiatrically disturbed; second, that they may turn away from marriage as a satisfactory mode of human relationships; and third, the children of divorce can develop psychiatric disorders in later adult life that have as their origin the broken home which is at the least a contributing factor.

"Now, after children of divorce marry many problems arise in role modeling. Young men often have problems because the mother projects a variety of role models. Sometimes she has turned her son into a substitute husband. Other times she takes out all of her hostility and anger on him and attributes to him the same problems that his father had, the same personality patterns. If he tries to live up to her expectations he finds that it is beyond his capacity. Children of divorce also have poor impulse control.

"Many mothers feel incapable of administering firm discipline. If you have a 6 foot 2 son and the mother is 5 foot 4, it is difficult for her to discipline that child and deal with him in a way that is effective.

"Since the behavior of parents before, during, and after divorce most often reflects a disparate value system, the child also grown up with poorly defined values.

"In the past our interest has been in comparing the homelife of normal people with people with mental problems. We came to the conclusion that normal people come from homes where there is a stable, harmonious marriage of the parents, where there is love and order in the home, where there is administration of consistent and just discipline, where roles are well defined, and where the presentation of a traditional value system is presented, and where there is a philosophy to live by, this gives some structure to their thinking and to their lives.

"The studies of people like Grinker, Valliant and ourselves have clearly demonstrated the influence of these particular basic principles of home life.

"In contrast, the observations of Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of people who have been delinquent--have clearly demonstrated that you can grow up in the ghetto, and if you have a well-structured home life, your chances of being a normal person and being out of that ghetto in a few years--is extremely high. Whereas if you grow up in a broken home with an harassed mother where value systems are poorly presented and where discipline is often harsh and unjust and inconsistent, you will grow up to be delinquent. At the end of 20 years' followup, you will still be delinquent and still living in the ghetto.

"The same thing can be said to be true about heroin addicts and alcoholics. In our study of over 450 alcoholics and 80 heroin addicts--we found that the absent father is a very common phenomenon. As a matter of fact, it is the rule rather than the exception.

"We find also that there is enormous distortion in the structure of the homes of manic depressive patients and schizophrenic patients. There father operates in roles which are grossly distorted. Many times they are emotionally absent.

"In a different version, Frances Welsing had emphasized that the biggest problem facing blacks in America today is the absence of the father from the home and the role reversals found in the black family. Her observations now are beginning to apply equally to all families, whether they are black or white or other racial origins.

"Finally I would add that we also have looked at the family structure of abused children who have grown up. Most of these children are now what we call borderline personality disorders. They too often have a father who is in and out of the home or is not available on a consistent basis.

"Now, just to summarize what I had to say, and I did not prepare any long statements because I think the data and the literature speaks for itself. The absence of the father from the home has the following effects on a growing child:

"After the second year of life it profoundly distorts the development of normal role assumption. A person really does not come to know who he is within his own sex. Second, it is a primary cause of low self-esteem....[Coopersmith's] work and the work of Rosenberg has shown that the father's presence in the home is an absolute necessity for the development of good self-esteem in males. Our own studies have demonstrated quite clearly that it is also necessary for the mother to be in the home for a female to develop good self-esteem.

"Third, it created a model of separation and/or divorce for the management of marital conflict in their own lives as they become adults.

"Fourth, it also distorts values development so that the child has a tendency to adopt peer values rather than the conventional values of the parent with whom they continue to live. We find this very frequently among heroin addicts and alcoholics."

Ibid., p. 97: "[A]bout half of the kids who come from broken homes end up with a broken home fairly promptly after they contract their first marriage."

Ibid., pp. 79ff.: Statement of Henry B. Biller, Ph.D, Professor of Psychology, University of Rhode Island to House Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, 10 November, 1984: "There is much evidence that paternally deprived children are more at risk for cognitive and behavioral adjustment difficulties and are more vulnerable to negative developmental influences than are adequately fathered children.

"Father-absent males seem particularly likely to develop insecurity in their self-concept and sexuality. There is some evidence that males are more affected by father absence than are females, but there is a growing body of research which supports the conclusion that by adolescence, females are at least as much influenced in their interpersonal and heterosexual development by father absence as are males.

"Research points to a particularly high frequency of early and continuing father absence among emotionally disturbed children and adults. Of course, in some cases constitutionally atypical children contribute to the development of marital stress, conflict and parental separation.

"Some data indicate that individuals who suffered early father loss because of their father's death are more likely to show symptoms of inhibition, lack of assertiveness, anxiety and depression, but are less likely to have the cognitive, academic and impulse control problems often found in children of divorced parents.

"Much of the interest in paternal deprivation has been an outcome of growing concern with the psychological, social and economic disadvantages often suffered by fatherless children. There is much evidence that paternally-deprived children are more at-risk for cognitive and behavioral adjustment difficulties, and are more vulnerable to negative developmental influences than are adequately fathered children.

"Father absence before the age of four or five appears to have a more disruptive effect on the individual's personality development than does father absence beginning at a later period. For example, children who become father absent before the age of four or five are likely to have more difficulties in their sex role and sexual adjustment than either father-present children or children who become father-absent at a later time. Father-absent males seem particularly likely to develop insecurity in their self- concept and sexuality even though they may strive to be highly masculine in more manifest aspects of their behavior.

"Other data have indicated that early father absence is often associated with difficulties in intellectual and academic functioning (particularly analytical and quantitative abilities), a low level of independence and assertiveness in peer relations, feelings of inferiority and mistrust of others, antisocial and delinquent behavior, and difficulties in later occupational performance.

"Both boys and girls need to learn how to relate with adult males. Many children who are paternally deprived become enmeshed in a cycle of difficulty in establishing intimate relationships that continues into adulthood and interferes with the development of a stable family life. The experience of divorce is likely to be a family heirloom that extends into the next generation. Growing up with divorced parents does relate to increased risks in development, although certainly some children who have been subjected to divorce, and broken homes, strive and succeed as adults to have very stable, positive marital and family relationships.

"But in a general way there may be a kind of generation-to- generation effect relating to the divorce experience not only in disadvantaged families, but also among the affluent."

Ibid., pp. 86ff., Statement of Michael E. Lamb, Professor, Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Pediatrics, University of Utah to House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, 10 November, 1984: "As Dr. Biller reported, it appears in general that boys whose fathers are absent, usually due to divorce, tend to manifest problems in the areas of achievement, motivation, school performance, psychological adjustment, and heterosexual relationships. They also tend to manifest less stereotypically masculine sex roles and may have difficulties in the areas of self- control and aggression.

"The effects seem to be most marked when the father's absence begins early, and at least some effects can be ameliorated by having substitute relationships with males such as stepfathers, grandfathers, and so on. At least in the areas of sex role and achievement, the effects of psychological father absence appear qualitatively similar to, although quantitatively less than, the effects of physical father absence.

"The effects of father absence on girls have been less thoroughly studied and appear to be less severe than the effects on boys. Problems in heterosexual relationships may emerge in adolescence even though, as in boys, the effects again are more severe when father absence began earlier.

Ibid., p. 111. Statement of David W. Bahlmann, Executive Vice President of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, and Chair of the National Collaboration for Youth: "Present research indicates that children from one-parent homes show lower achievement and present more discipline problems than do their peers. It also shows that they tend to be absent from school more often, late to school more often, and may show more health problems than do their peers."

Ibid., p. 128. Statement of Rev. Herman Heade, Jr., National Director of Urban Affairs and Church Relations, Prison Fellowship, Washington,D.C.: "[P]aternally deprived individuals are overrepresented among individuals with psychological problems."

Heather Munroe Blum, et al., "Single Parent Families: Academic and Psychiatric Risk," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27 [1988], 214-219; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1988: "The children of broken homes are frequently emotionally disturbed and academically incompetent. In a new study of nearly 3,000 Canadian children (ages 4-16), researchers found that 'children with psychiatric disorder are 1.7 times more likely to be from a single-parent family than a two- parent family.' One major disturbance--'conduct disorder'--was found to be well over twice as common in children of single parents. The same children who are suffering emotionally are also suffering educationally: 'single-parent children are 1.7 times as likely to demonstrate poor school performance as are two-parent children.'

"Perhaps fearful of antagonizing some feminists, the authors suggest that it is poverty, not divorce and illegitimacy, that is the cause of the children's problems. They state that, when household income is allowed for, single-parent family status 'does not have a significant independent relationship with either child psychiatric disorder or poor school performance, except in particular subgroups'(emphasis added). But the list of 'particular subgroups' who suffer in one-parent homes regardless of income turns out to be surprisingly inclusive: "rural children, girls, and older boys.' Since when were girls merely a 'particular subgroup' of the young population? Furthermore, the authors concede, 'the younger boys might also develop problems' in later years."

Richard Polanco, Los Angeles Times, 7 May, 1989: "As of 1988, more than 35,000 adolescents nationwide were in psychiatric treatment in the private sector. This figure has doubled since 1980, and the numbers are growing....The absence of involvement of the father in so many post-divorce families, coupled with the overburdened state of many single mothers, seems at least partly responsible for the prevalence of externalizing, aggressive behavior problems among children of divorce."

Elyce Wakerman, Father Loss: Daughters Discuss the Man that Got Away (Garden City, N. Y: Doubleday, 1984), p. l09: "A study of teenage girls by Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington revealed that daughters of divorced parents had lower self-esteem than those of intact or widowed families. By aligning with mother's anger, they may have blunted the reconciliation wish, but it was at the cost of their own self-image. Describing the self-defeating pattern, Deidre Laiken writes, 'Being one with Mother means relinquishing our natural and necessary longings for Father...[But] low self-esteem is a natural and very evident result of a merger with the...parent who was left...' Identifying with the rejected female, as most daughters of divorce do, has two other, far-reaching influences on the young girl's developing attitudes. First, she may incorporate her mother's bitterness and distrust of men. And she is reluctant to succeed where her mother has failed. Having lost her father, she is acutely dependent on her mother's continued affection, and to surpass her in the romantic arena would be to risk separation from her one remaining parent."

Ibid., p. 169: "It is little wonder that fatherless girls are visibly anxious around men. In fact, both fatherless groups in the Hetherington study scored a higher overall anxiety level on the Manifest Anxiety Scale than did girls with fathers at home. Craving male attention, they are equally resolved to remain invulnerable. They would like to be loved, without the threat posed by loving. That way, the need for approval may be safely gratified and the attachment to father unrelinquished."

Sara McLanahan and Larry Bumpass, "Intergenerational Consequences of Family Disruption," American Journal of Sociology 4 [July, l988], l30-52; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, October, l988: "In a new study at the University of Wisconsin, sociologists found that daughters raised in single- parent households do not do well in building successful family life as adults. A particularly striking pattern emerged among white women who had lived in a single-parent family created through divorce or illegitimacy. Compared to white women raised in intact families, these women were '53 percent more likely to have teenage marriages, 111 percent more likely to have teenage births, l64 percent more likely to have premarital births, and 92 percent more likely to experience marital disruptions.' Overall, 'there appears to be some lower family orientation associated with one-parent childhood experience.'...The study concludes that the present upheaval in the American family is liable to have aftershocks which will be felt for generations to come: 'More than half of today's children will have had family experiences that are likely to have negative consequences for their subsequent marital and fertility life courses.'"

Alfred A. Messer, "Boys' Father Hunger: The Missing Father Syndrome," Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, 23, January, 1989, 44-47, epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1989: "Nightmares often trouble the sleep of young boys who have lost their fathers. A psychiatrist at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, Alfred A. Messer describes 'father hunger' as 'the newest syndrome described by child psychiatrists.' Dr. Messer reports that this syndrome, which occurs in boys ages 18 to 36 months, 'consists primarily of sleep disturbances, such as trouble falling asleep, nightmares, and night terrors, and coincides with the recent loss of the father due to divorce or separation....In boys who exhibit the father-hunger syndrome, these sleep disturbances usually begin within one to three months after the father leaves home.'

"Young boys suffer from troubled sleep because of 'the abrupt loss of a father' during a 'critical period of gender development.' Dr. Messer explains that 'children recognize the difference between maleness and femaleness as early as 14 months of age' and that between the ages of 18 to 36 months, a young boy 'learns to establish his physical and gender role identity.' 'If the young boy is deprived of the father's presence, the result can be deeply traumatic,' Messer emphasizes. When the father is absent, the young boy may 'remain in a prolonged state of dependence on the mother, with "sissy" behavior often a concomitant.'"

Henry Biller, Father, Child and Sex Role (Lexington, Mass: D. C. Heath and Company, 1971), p. 3: "In a very thorough investigation, Stolz et al. [Stolz, L. M., et al. Father Relations of War-Born Children. Stanford: Stanford University Press, l954] gathered data concerning four- to eight-year-old children who from approximately the first two years of their lives had been separated from their fathers. Interview results revealed that the previously father-separated boys were generally perceived by their fathers as being 'sissies.' Careful observation of these boys supported this view. They were less assertively aggressive and independent in their peer relations than boys who had not been separated from their fathers; they were more often observed to be very submissive or to react with immature hostility."

Ibid., pp. 6f.: "A study of lower-class fifth grade boys by Santrock [Santrock, J. W., "Influence of Onset and Type of Paternal Absence on the First Four Eriksonian Developmental Crises," Developmental Psychology, l970, 3, 273-4.] revealed that boys who became father-absent before the age of two were more handicapped in terms of several dimensions of personality development than were boys who became father-absent at a later age. For example, boys who became father-absent before age two were found to be less trusting, less industrious, and to have more feelings of inferiority than boys who became father-absent between the ages of three to five. The impact of early paternal deprivation is also supported by Carlsmith's findings [Carlsmith, L., "Effect of Early Father-Absence on Scholastic Aptitude," Harvard Educational Review, l964, 34, 3-21] concerning cognitive functioning. Additional evidence is consistent with the supposition that early father- absence is associated with a heightened susceptibility to a variety of psychological problems."

Ibid., p. 14: "However, many boys separated from their fathers between the ages of 6 and 12 exhibited a feminine-aggressive pattern of behavior. A feminine-aggressive pattern of behavior can be a consequence of sex-role conflict and insecurity. It is interesting that Tiller [Tiller, P. O., "Father-Absence and Personality Development of Children in Sailor Families," Nordisk Psyckologi's Monograph Series, 1958, 9, 1-48] described a somewhat similar pattern of behavior for Norwegian father-separated boys."

Ibid., p. 18: "Comparisons of father-absent and father-present boys suggested that availability of the father is an important factor in the masculine development of young boys. There is evidence that the young father-absent boy is more dependent, less aggressive, and less competent in peer relationships than his father-present counterpart. He seems likely to have an unmasculine self-concept."

Ibid., p. 65: "In societies in which fathers have little contact with their young children, there is more of a tendency to blame others and/or supernatural beings for one's illness. Blaming one's self for illness was strongest in nuclear households and least in polygamous mother-child households. Such evidence is also consistent with the view that paternal deprivation can inhibit the development of trust in others."

Ibid., p. 65: "Father-absent boys consistently scored lower than father-present boys on a variety of moral indexes. They scored lower on measures of internal moral judgement, guilt following transgressions, acceptance of blame, moral values, and rule-conformity."

Ibid., p. 65: "A number of clinicians including Aichorn [Aichorn, A., Wayward Youth, New York: Viking Press, l935] and Lederer [Lederer, W. "Dragons, Delinquents, and Destiny," Psychological Issues, l964, 4, (Whole No. 3)] have speculated about inadequacies in the conscience development of the father-absent boy. In his experience as a psychotherapist, Meerloo [Meerloo, J. A. M., "The Father Cuts the Cord: The Role of the Father as Initial Transference Figure," American Journal of Psychotherapy, l956, l0, 471-80] found that a lack of accurate time perception is also common among father-absent children. Meerloo assumed that the father represents social order and that his adherence to time schedules gives the child an important lesson in social functioning. The paternally deprived boy may find it very difficult to follow the rules of society. Antisocial acts are often impulsive as well as aggressive, and there is evidence that inability to delay gratification is associated with inaccurate time perception, lack of social responsibility, low achievement motivation, and juvenile delinquency....the father-absent boy may lack a model from whom to learn to delay gratification and to control his aggressive and destructive impulses. A boy who has experienced paternal deprivation may have particular difficulty in respecting and communicating with adult males in positions of authority. There is some evidence that perceived similarity to father is related to positive relationships with authority figures....The boy whose father has set limits for him--in a nurturant and realistic manner--is better able to set limits for himself. Investigators have found that boys who receive appropriate and consistent discipline from their fathers are less likely to commit delinquent acts even if they are gang members."

Irma Moilanen and Paula Rantakallio, "The Single Parent Family and the Child's Mental Health," Social Science and Medicine, 27 [l988], l8l-6; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, October, l988: "The evidence mounts that children without two parents are much more likely to develop psychiatric problems....Finnish researchers found that children from single- parent homes were at significantly greater risk from most psychiatric disorders than children from intact homes. Those who had only one parent through the child's life were at greatest risk: boys were three times as likely to be disturbed as their counterparts from intact families, and girls were four times as likely to be disturbed. Nor was the harm strictly mental."



Patricia Cohen and Judith Brook, "Family Factors Related to the Persistence of Pshchopathology in Childhood and Adolescence," Psychiatry 50 [November, 1987]: 332-345; quoted in The Family in America, April, 1988: "One-parent families and families with multiple marital disruptions are apparently unable to mount effective means of counteracting pathological reactions that have developed in their children."

R. G. Robertson, et al., "The Female Offender: A Canadian Study," Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 32 [December, 1987], 749- 755; epitomized in The Family in America, April, 1988: "Two thirds had children, but almost as many had never been married, and less than one in 10 was married at the time of her arrest. The majority...were single or divorced mothers. Most came from broken homes...."

Viktor Gecas, "Born in the USA in the 1980's: Growing Up in Difficult Times," Journal of Family Issues 8 [December, 1987], 434- 436; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1988: "'What are the consequences of these family trends [rising levels of divorce, illegitimacy and maternal employment] for child rearing? Not good. At the very least, these trends suggest decreasing contact between parents and children, and decreasing parental involvement in child rearing....Poor cognitive and emotional development, low self-esteem, low self-efficiency, antisocial behavior, and pathologies of various kinds are some of the consequences.'

"Professor Gecas blames family breakdown for the disturbing levels of drug use, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, delinquency, and academic failure now found in America. Nothing, he urges, could be more important than to strengthen the family 'if the next generation is to have much of a chance.'"

Richard Dalton, et al., "Psychiatric Hospitalization of Preschool Children: Admission Factors and Discharge Implications," Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 26, No. 3 [May, 1987], 308-12; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, August, 1987: "When preschoolers end up in psychiatric wards, they typically come from homes where there is no father and where the mother is herself mentally disturbed....In assessing the 'family situation' of all of the preschool children admitted to the psychiatric units of two New Orleans hospitals over a 34-month period, [Dalton's] study found a depressingly uniform pattern. When preschool autistic patients were excluded from the sample, it was found that the fathers were not living in the homes of almost 80 percent of the preschool patients and that the mothers suffered with 'major psychiatric disorders' in over 90 percent of the homes. The authors of the study observe that 'the data reflect the fact that most of the preschoolers were hospitalized because their severe symptoms could be neither contained nor successfully treated within their disturbed and unsupported family settings.'"

Boris M. Segal, "A Borderline Style of Functioning--the Role of Family, Society and Heredity: An Overview," Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 18 [Summer, 1988], 219-238; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1988: "According to psychiatrist Boris M. Segal, the 'borderline style of functioning' (a diagnosis used 'to describe conditions which lie between psychosis and neurosis') should be understood as a symptom of a broader social malaise. Dr. Segal concludes that 'borderline organization' is increasing among Americans in part because of the 'decline of paternal authority.' 'The decline of the father- centered family...has left children to develop their own standards of behavior. This new freedom has been conducive...to such modern phenomena as lack of discipline and lack of a feeling of duty, overindulgence, narcissism, hedonism, sexual permissiveness, intolerance to frustration, [and] sex role confusion....All these behavioral patterns meet certain criteria of borderline organization.' Dr. Segal observes that 'disorganization of the family lead[s] to the loss of its protective functions....Children who have been brought up in "broken homes"...tend to develop a high rate of borderline pathology.'"

Irwin Garfinkel and Sara S. McLanahan, Single Mothers and Their Children: A New American Dilemma (Washington, D. C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1986), pp. 1f.: "Half of all American children born today will spend part of their childhood in a family headed by a mother who is divorced, unwed, or widowed....About half of them are poor and dependent on welfare. The mothers and children in such families also have poorer than average mental health and use a disproportionate share of community mental health services. Most important, perhaps, compared with children who grow up in two-parent (husband-wife) families, the children from mother- only families are less successful on average when they become adults. They are more likely to drop out of school, to give birth out of wedlock, to divorce or separate, and to become dependent on welfare."

Paul G. Shane, "Changing Patterns Among Homeless and Runaway Youth," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59, 1989, 208-214; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1989: "Teenagers who turn to state officials for shelter typically come from broken families. In a recent study of over 500 homeless and runaway youth in New Jersey, Paul Shane of Rutgers University discovered a clear pattern implicating 'family breakdown as a major cause of homelessness among youth.' Professor Shane found that a remarkably low 14 percent of the youth in his study come from 'a family with both biological parents.'"

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), p. 288: "[I]n recent years the "symbiosis" concept has crept with increasing frequency into the case histories of disturbed children. More and more of the new child pathologies seem to stem from that very symbiotic relationship with the mother, which has somehow kept children from becoming separate selves. These disturbed children seem to be 'acting out' the mother's unconscious wishes or conflicts--infantile dreams she had not outgrown or given up, but was still trying to gratify for herself in the person of her child....Thus, it would seem, it is the child who supports life in the mother in that 'symbiotic' relationship, and the child is virtually destroyed in the process."


HEALTH PROBLEMS

Ronald Angel and Jacqueline Lowe Worebey, "Single Motherhood and Children's Health," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 29 [March, 1988], 38-52; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1988: "[S]ingle mothers report poorer health in their children than do mothers in intact marriages. The authors cite a number of factors to account for this disparity. Living in poverty, many children of single mothers decline in health because of simple deprivation. Because many were low-birth-weight babies, they suffer from chronic illnesses. And some may be developing psychosomatic illnesses owing to the general misery of their lives."

Nicholas Eberstadt, researcher at Harvard's University's Center for Population Studies and the American Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles Times, 3 November, 1989: "An enormous--and growing--number of American children suffer from a serious health threat inflicted on them by their parents. Bluntly put, their health is at risk because they have been born out of wedlock.

"In some circles, it is fashionable to see illegitimacy merely as an 'alternataive life style,' as good as any other. From the standpoint of the children in question, this view is tragically wrongheaded. Illegitimacy, and the parental behavior that accompanies it, directly endangers the newborn and may even cost a baby its life....

"Indeed, if it were a medical condition rather than a social disorder, illegitimacy would be seen as one of the leading killers of children in America today."

Sara A. Mullett, et al., "A Comparison of Birth Outcomes by Payment Source," Minnesota Medicine, 72, [June, 1988], 365-69; Wilma Bailey, "Child Morbidity in the Kingston Metropolitan Area, Jamaica 1983," Social Science and Medicine, 26 [1988], 1117-1124; both articles epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, October, 1988: "In a new study at the University of Minnesota, researchers found that an infant's birth weight depends heavily on the mother's marital status. 'Single women,' they reported, 'had smaller infants, with a mean birth weight of 3,192 grams as compared with 3,534 grams for infants of married women.'

"Mothers in Jamaica confront much harsher economic challenges than those in Minnesota. Yet in a recent study in Kingston, Jamaica, geographer Wilma Bailey at the University of the West Indies found a parallel pattern of impaired health among children in female-headed households compared to children in two-parent households. Dr. Bailey found a statistical correlation between the percentage of female-headed households in any given area and the hospital admissions of children in that same area. Her findings suggest 'that the children of young, unemployed and single women may be particularly vulnerable' to ill health and malnutrition. Dr. Bailey interprets her work in light of American studies which have 'documented the vulnerability of families of female-headed households in the U.S.A.'"

Lorian Baker and Dennis P. Cantwell, "Factors Associated with the Development of Psychiatric Illness in Children with Early Speech/Language Problems," Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 17 [1987], 499-507; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, July, 1988: "Children with speech problems, according to a growing body of evidence, are at risk of developing psychiatric problems. Now a new study suggests that broken homes are causing or aggravating speech-related problems. Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles studied 600 children who were patients at a Los Angeles speech clinic, finding half of them to be psychiatrically ill. While the background of the ill children differed little from the mentally healthy in most respects--gender, parental education and occupation, birth order, language background, etc.--one distinction stood out: the 'ill' children were nearly twice as likely to have unmarried parents."


DRUGS

Judith A. Stein, et al., "An 8-Year Study of Multiple Influences on Drug Use and Drug Use Consequences," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, No. 6 [December, 1987], 1094-1105; epitomized in The Family in America, March, 1988: "[N]ewer research...suggests that the family is often the most important factor in whether or not a teenager abuses drugs. In an eight-year study of 654 young people, psychologists at the University of California at Los Angeles found that early parental influence--especially parental drug use--'exerted a potent and pervasive influence on a teenager that apparently continues for many years into adulthood.' The authors also suggest that 'inadequate family structure and a lack of positive familial relationships' often lead to 'substance use...as a coping mechanism to relieve depression and anxiety.' The study stresses that parental divorce can often foster teen rebelliousness, which leads to poor selection of friends and to social perceptions conducive to drug use."

Bryce Christensen, "From Home Life to Prison Life: The Roots of American Crime," The Family in America, April, 1989, pp. 5f.: "In two new studies on drug use conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles, researchers have provided new evidence of the importance of the family. In 1987, UCLA psychologists published an eight-year study of 654 young people. Their findings demonstrate that 'inadequate family structure and a lack of positive familial relationships' often caused young people to use drugs as 'a coping mechanism to relieve depression and anxiety.' The authors also stressed that parental divorce can foster teen rebelliousness, leading to poor selection of friends and self- destructive attitudes. In a different study published just last year, UCLA psychiatrists examined drug use among 443 young people, concluding that paternal authority was decisive. In families with strict fathers, only 18 percent of the youth studied used drugs and alcohol, compared to 27 percent where fathers were less strict and 40 percent in homes with permissive fathers. Frequent drug use occurred in 35 percent of mother-dominant homes. Overall, the UCLA researchers concluded that 'with regard to youthful drug use, fathers' involvement is more important' than mothers'."

Clarence Lusane, staff aide to Rep. Walter Fauntroy, and Dennis Desmond, staff aide to D. C. Counmcilmember Hilda Mason, The Guardian, 25 October, 1989: "Women, particularly women of color, are disproportionately victimized by the drug epidemic. For the first time, health officials see more women drug users than men. In New York, Washington, D.C., Kansas City and Portland, women outnumber men in drug abuse. Girls as young as 12 trade sex for crack as prostitutes in crack houses.

"This has led directly to the rise in boarder babies-- abandoned babies born of drug-addicted parents. According to the Wall Street Journal, about 375,000 babies a year are born exposed to drugs. D.C. General, Harlem Hospital and other hospitals nationally have opened prenatal clinics for women addicts. At some Washington, D.C. hospitals, 40% of women having babies are drug addicts. This has resulted in the highest infant mortality rate in the nation at 32 per 1000 live births. In central Harlem, 21% of all pregnant crack users receive no prenatal care. Howard University hospital had no boarder babies until May, 1988; this year it had 21 in one week, five with AIDS.

"These infants' care costs $100,000 each per year. More than half of these babies develop smaller heads and smaller abdomens. They sometimes suffer strokes in the womb. Boarder babies stay in the hospital an average of 42 days while the normal stay is three days. At the human level, these children will probably grow up without love or closeness."

Carmen N. Velez and Jane A. Ungemack, "Drug Use Among Puerto Rican Youth: An Exploration of Generational Status Differences," Social Science and Medicine 29, 1989, 779-89; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, November, 1989: "Researchers from Columbia University and the University of Puerto Rico recently took a hard look at the drug problem among Puerto Rican youth in Puerto Rico and in New York City. They discovered more drug use among Puerto Rican students living in non-intact households than among students living in intact homes. Among students living in a nonintact household, three quarters live in female-headed households, suggesting to the researchers that greater vulnerability to drug use may be one 'effect of living in a female-headed family.'"


CHILD ABUSE

Los Angeles Times, 16 December, 1986: "Child molesters have a stronger relationship to their mothers during childhood than rapists do, a study of sex offenders suggests.

"Researchers at the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center interviewed 64 convicted sex offenders--21 rapists and 43 child molesters, Psychiatric News has reported.

"'Whereas the general pattern with both groups is characterized by a lack of fathering,' the study said, 'the pattern of the child molester is characterized by a singular degree of closeness and attachment to the mother.

"'Almost 83% of this group claimed to have had a close or very close relationship with their mothers.'"

L. Mitchel, "Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities: A Review of the Problem and Strategies for Reform," Working Paper 838. Monograph of the National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research, National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, Chicago, Illinois, 1987, p. 6; quoted in R. L. McNeely and Gloria Robinson-Simpson, "The Truth About Domestic Violence Revisited: A Reply to Saunders," Social Work, March/April, 1988, p. 186: "Active victims are typically males, under two years of age, living in low socioeconomic status families with multiple young siblings, and who die at the hands of a single mother."

Terrence Cooley, Inter-Office Communication, County of Milwaukee, "AFDC/Child Abuse Information," [11 September, 1989]; epitomized in The Family in America: New Research, December, 1989: "Child abuse typically occurs in impoverished single-parent households. In a recent survey, social-service officials established that of all 1,050 ongoing substantiated child abuse and neglect cases in Milwaukee County in May 1989, 83 percent involved households receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Since AFDC goes predominantly to single-parent households (generally the households of unmarried mothers), this survey reveals a remarkably high risk of child abuse in such homes. This new survey also clarifies the great difficulty of curtailing child abuse without reducing illegitimacy and divorce."

Richard J. Gelles and Murray Straus, Intimate Violence: The Causes and Consequences of Abuse in the American Family (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 112: "One skeptical reader of our study, Frederick Green, noted that he was seeing more child abuse now than ten years ago. Since he also reported that he sees a largely minority, single-parent, and poor population, this is not surprising."

Henry B. Biller and Richard S. Solomon, Child Maltreatment and Paternal Deprivation: A Manifesto for Research, Prevention and Treatment (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1986), pp. 21f.: "Upwards of 25 percent of children in our society do not have a father living at home. Children in such families are overrepresented in terms of reported cases of physical abuse and other forms of child maltreatment."

Persuasion at Work, August, l985: "The constant media focus on abusive parents from intact, suburban families belies the fact that a greatly disproportionate number of the serious physical abuse cases are found in the otherwise celebrated 'female-headed families,' commonly involving the illegitimate father or mother's current boy friend."

Los Angeles Times, l6 September, l985: "Most [victims of child molestation] were from single parent families or were the children of [pedophile] ring members."

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Annex to chapter I
Additional note
References