70 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
Kiss daddy good-bye. Let’s take a sobering look at the agonizing
phenomenon of a father having to deal with the pain of having his
children ripped away from him. Dr. Wade Horn of the National
Fatherhood Initiative publishes the following somewhat shock-
ing statistics in his booklet Father Facts. The United States is now
the world’s leader in fatherless families. We took over first place
from Sweden in 1986. Some 40 percent of America’s children do
not live with their biological fathers. It is estimated that 55 per-
cent to 60 percent of all children born in the 1990s will spend
part of their childhood living apart from their fathers. Some 40
percent of those children who live with their mothers have not
seen their fathers in at least a year. One-fifth of divorced moth-
ers have responded to surveys by blithely stating that they see
no value in a father’s contact with his children. Of that number,
many try to outright sabotage the father’s attempts to see his chil-
dren. Only one in six children of divorced or separated parents
sees the father at least once a week. Ten years after divorce, only
one in ten children has weekly contact with the father.
Fatherless families. The long-term societal costs of these father-
less families may prove to be horrific. Of the juveniles in state
reform institutions, 70 percent grew up in single-parent or no-
parent situations. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop
out of school than are their peers who live with both parents.
Studies have shown fatherless children to be at a dramatically
greater risk of suicide, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse,
poor academic performance, pregnancy, and criminality.
Younger Men
Bachelor: a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
—Helen Rowland
I’ve represented lots of young guys over the years who got
divorced in their twenties or early thirties. My experience with
them indicates that these fellows seem to have a much rougher
go of things than do divorcing women of their comparable age
group. In the majority of cases these men were on the receiv-
ing end of a divorce action initiated by their wives. Oftentimes,