As appeared in “The Public Square”
Richard John Neuhaus
First Things | March 1999

I have already mentioned this quality newsletter written by David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values. It's called Propositions, and the following item on a question of great importance gives you some idea of the incisive manner in which it cuts through the cant: "Which variable most accurately predicts the likelihood of criminal behavior by a young man? His skin color? His family's income? His or his parents' level of education? Where he lives? Or whether or not he lives with his father? Well, all of these variables matter; everything is connected; no single study is definitive; and blah, blah, blah. But the scholarly evidence continues to mount that fatherlessness is the single most important predictor. A new study by Cynthia C. Harper of the University of Pennsylvania and Sara S. McLanahan of Princeton examines a nationally representative sample of 6,403 teenage boys who were followed over a period of fifteen years, up to their early thirties. Of boys who were living in mother-headed families at age fourteen, about 13 percent had been incarcerated by their early thirties. For boys from father-present homes, the figure is 5 percent. But of course one could argue - and I have found, whenever I speak to groups on this issue, that many people strongly believe – that this finding, properly understood, actually points less to father-absence 'per se' than to other, presumably more potent variables such as poverty or racism. So in their study, Harper and McLanahan 'controlled' for a wide variety of factors, including race, income, residential instability, urban location, neighborhoods with a high proportion of single mothers, parents' education, the child's cognitive ability, and child support payments. None of these factors could explain - could do what some scholars call 'make go away' - the strong relationship between fatherlessness and the risk of incarceration. Even after all the controls, fatherless boys were twice as likely as boys living with two parents to have been incarcerated. Moreover: 'For each year spent in a nonintact family, the odds of incarceration rise 5 percent.' Can't stepfathers substitute in this regard for fathers? Apparently not: 'Youths living in stepparent families face odds of incarceration 2.9 times as high as those in mother-father households.'

In fact: 'The odds for youths from stepparent families are similar to those from youths who do not live with any parents, although these children, in addition to not having any parents care for them, are selected for more difficult family circumstances.' When single mothers remarry, it seems that many boys do not so much gain a father as lose some of their mother's attention and support. Another recent study by William S. Comanor and Llad Phillips of the University of California at Santa Barbara reaches similar conclusions: 'Examining the likelihood that boys will be stopped, charged, or convicted of a crime between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, we find that the single most important factor, more relevant even than family income, is the presence of the father in the home. The probability of delinquency, measured in this way, is typically twice as high in cases where the father is absent than when he is present.' This study, too, looked at the role of stepfathers and boyfriends: 'There is strong evidence that delinquency rates a lower when the mother is alone with her son than when she has invited another man into the house. To be sure, these rates are not as low as when the father is present, but they clearly indicate the stepfathers or boyfriends are not the solution. There is no statistical difference between rates with father-mother families and those with fathers and stepmothers, while delinquency rates are much higher with mothers and stepfathers."