essay about absent father

I planned on confronting my absent father about his parenting. But when I asked to hear his side, I learned a powerful lesson.

• My father was absent throughout most of my life, so I went to Ghana to confront him about it. 
• In Ghana, I learned about my father's past and understood his perspective for the first time. 
• Although we will never be close, the conversation healed our relationship and taught me empathy. 

A few years ago, I visited my father in Ghana and asked to hear his story about why he was an absent parent . This conversation helped me heal, forgive, and transform how I view disagreements today.

At the time, I had a lot of built-up resentment and anger toward my dad. In my mind, he stopped making a meaningful effort to see me or show up for me after he remarried. He and his new family lived in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Finland — while my mom, my brother, and I initially struggled with being unhoused and being on welfare here in the US.

I dealt with a lot of feelings of rejection , which I'd reflected on and worked through in therapy during my 20s. But in my 30s, it all came back, and I needed to deal with it head-on.

I decided to meet with my father to talk things through

There were times when I'd be driving, and I'd find myself weeping, questioning what I'd done to cause him not to fight for me. It was clear his rejection of me was still affecting the way I move about the world.

During a leadership training program, my cohort and I discussed our origins. I shared with the cohort that I had an upcoming trip to Ghana, and I had plans to confront my father.

Politely, a cohort member raised their hand. "Hey, what would it look like if you took a different approach?" he asked. "We all have empathy for each other because we know each other's stories."

I felt my heart rate quicken and my jaw clench in defensiveness. Despite my defensiveness, his words planted a seed that I brought up with my therapist. Together, my therapist and I started preparing for how I would turn my "confrontation" into a "conversation" with my father.

When the time came for my kids and me to travel to Ghana, I asked my father for one-on-one time and broached the topic.

"Hey, Dad, I never really heard your story. What was life like growing up for you, and what happened between us?"

Related stories

My father told me about his journey with his dad, his custody struggles , and the interpersonal conflicts between him and my mother. Eventually, he explained that he concluded: "Justin will come find me when he's ready."

I also asked my father to share his experiences growing up

My father grew up in Ghana, and his own father was only around a fraction of the time. My father also left his entire family for boarding school at 14 years old, and at 16, he left Ghana to come to the US.

Hearing this story, a lump formed in my throat as I felt — for the first time — empathy for my dad. I wonder how he felt as a little boy.

Fully immersing myself in my dad's story wasn't easy. It was challenging to remove my biased perspective of anger and distrust. I pushed myself to engage from a place of curiosity and ask him questions as if I was a student.

Hearing my dad's story helped me understand

At the end of our conversation, I told my father I disagreed with his approach but understood how he arrived at his conclusion. We hugged, and my father told me he was proud of me, which I never heard growing up.

This conversation did not transform us into a father-son duo holding hands and walking into the sunset. My dad's decision not to fight for a place in my life robbed both of us of father-son experiences that we can never get back.

However, this conversation gave me access to my heritage, Ghana, which I'd previously avoided. This allowed me to get involved in social entrepreneurial projects, like working with an elementary school and hiring and training Ghanaian staff members.

It also gave me access to an incredible mentor, my father . Previously, I avoided my dad. Now, I actively seek him out, particularly when I need feedback on a project.

Perhaps most importantly, this conversation taught me a profound lesson I now apply to every area of my life. I learned that when we do not seek to understand and respect the person we disagree with, it only hurts us.

That day, if I had chosen to confront my father from a place of vitriol and anger, his rejection would still haunt me, and I would have never learned the powerful lesson that every person has a story that shapes who they are today.

Justin Jones-Fosu's book, I Respectfully Disagree (releasing April 2024), challenges the reader to focus on building bridges with people rather than barriers from them. You can download an excerpt here . Justin is also a dad, the founder of Work.Meaningful where he serves as an international keynote speaker, a social entrepreneur, a critically acclaimed author, and a mountain climber.

Watch: I was assaulted by a Met Police officer at 14, I now train them. Here's how police racism works

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Are Children Raised With Absent Fathers Worse Off?

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, isabel v. sawhill isabel v. sawhill senior fellow emeritus - economic studies , center for economic security and opportunity @isawhill.

July 15, 2014

Children raised by single mothers are more likely to fare worse on a number of dimensions, including their school achievement, their social and emotional development, their health and their success in the labor market. They are at greater risk of parental abuse and neglect (especially from live-in boyfriends who are not their biological fathers), more likely to become teen parents and less likely to graduate from high school or college. [i]   Not all children raised in single parent families suffer these adverse outcomes; it is simply that the risks are greater for them.

Why are the children of divorced or unwed parents at greater risk of experiencing poor outcomes? There are a number of possibilities.

One possibility is that children in two parent families do better because of the increased resources available to them. Single parents only have one income coming into the house. On top of that, single parents often have to spend a greater proportion of their income on child care because they do not have a co-parent to stay home with the child while they work. Even beyond having more income, two parents also have more time to spend with the child. A recent  study  by Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard finds that parenting skills vary across demographic groups and that forty-four percent of single mothers fall into the weakest category and only 3 percent in the strongest category.

The weak parenting skills found among single parents in the study may be related not only to the lack of a second parent, but to a lack of income and education as well. Education, in particular, stands out as the most critical factor in explaining poor parenting. But it is not clear that we should look at these variables in isolation from one another. In real life, compared to married parents, single parents tend to be poorer (because there is not a second earner in the family) and less well-educated (in part because early childbearing interrupts or discourages education), and this is what matters for their children. 

Another possibility is that children born to unmarried mothers face more instability in family structure and that this instability results in worse outcomes for the child. In recent years, the focus of social science research has been less on the absence of a father and more on how family instability affects children. In fact, stable single-parent families in which a child does not experience the constant comings and goings of new boyfriends (or girlfriends) or the addition of new half siblings have begun to look like a better environment than “musical” parenthood. [ii]

Lastly, any discussion of the impacts of single parenthood must take into account selection effects. Single parents may be more likely to have other traits (unrelated to their marital status) that cause their children to have worse outcomes than children raised in two-parent homes. It may not be the divorce or unwed birth that causes the problem but instead the underlying personal attributes, mental health or competencies that produce both a broken family and worse outcomes for the child.

Children who end up in a single parent family as the result of the death of one parent do not have the same poor outcomes as children raised by single parents due to a divorce or out of wedlock birth. This may be because death, unlike divorce or out-of-wedlock childbearing, is more likely to be a random event, not connected to the attributes or temperaments of the parents. The lesser disadvantages for children ending up in a single parent family as the result of the death of one parent may reflect this fact and point to the importance of taking unobserved attributes, temperaments or behaviors into account when talking about the consequences of single parenthood for children.

[i]  McLanahan and Sandefur,  Growing up with a Single Parent ; Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. “Fragile families and child wellbeing.” The Future of children  (2010), p. 87.

[ii]  Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn, “Fragile families and child wellbeing.”

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September 29, 2023

Sophia Espinoza, Charlotte Wright, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

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The Causal Effects of Father Absence

Sara mclanahan.

1 Office of Population Research, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544; ude.notecnirp@ahanalcm

2 Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853; ude.llenroc@hcatarual

Daniel Schneider

3 Department of Sociology and Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720; ude.yelekreb@redienhcsjd

The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, children’s social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.

INTRODUCTION

A long tradition of sociological research has examined the effects of divorce and father absence on offspring’s economic and social-emotional well-being throughout the life course 1 Overall, this work has documented a negative association between living apart from a biological father and multiple domains of offspring well-being, including education, mental health, family relationships, and labor market outcomes. These findings are of interest to family sociologists and family demographers because of what they tell us about family structures and family processes; they are also of interest to scholars of inequality and mobility because of what they tell us about the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

The literature on father absence has been criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to account for reverse causality, for omitted variable bias, or for heterogeneity across time and subgroups. Indeed, some researchers have argued that the negative association between father absence and child well-being is due entirely to these factors. This critique is well founded because family disruption is not a random event and because the characteristics that cause father absence are likely to affect child well-being through other pathways. Similarly, parents’ expectations about how their children will respond to father absence may affect their decision to end their relationship. Finally, there is good evidence that father absence effects play out over time and differ across subgroups. Unless these factors are taken into account, the so-called effects of father absence identified in these studies are likely to be biased.

Researchers have responded to concerns about omitted variable bias and reverse causation by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including designs that use longitudinal data to examine child well-being before and after parents separate, designs that compare siblings who differ in their exposure to separation, designs that use natural experiments or instrumental variables to identify exogenous sources of variation in father absence, and designs that use matching techniques that compare families that are very similar except for father absence. In this article, we review the studies that use one or more of these designs. We limit ourselves to articles that have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, but we impose no restrictions with regard to publication date (note that few articles were published before 2000) or with regard to the disciplinary affiliation of the journal. Although most articles make use of data from the United States, we also include work based on data from Great Britain, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Indonesia, and Norway. Using these inclusion rules, we identified 47 articles that make use of one or more of these methods of causal inference to examine the effects of father absence on outcomes in one of four domains: educational attainment, mental health, relationship formation and stability, and labor force success.

In the next section, entitled “Strategies for Estimating Causal Effects with Observational Data,” we describe these strategies, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they have been applied to the study of father absence. In the section entitled “Evidence for the Causal Effect of Family Structure on Child Outcomes,” we examine the findings from these studies in each of the four domains of well-being. Our goal is to see if, on balance, these studies tell a consistent story about the causal effects of father absence and whether this story varies across different domains and across the particular methods of causal inference that are employed within each domain. We also note where the evidence base is large and where it is thin. We conclude by suggesting promising avenues for future research.

STRATEGIES FOR ESTIMATING CAUSAL EFFECTS WITH OBSERVATIONAL DATA

Identifying causal effects with observational data is a challenging endeavor for several reasons, including the threat of omitted variable bias, the fact that multiple---and often reciprocal---causal effects are at work, the fact that the causal treatment condition (such as divorce) may unfold over a period of time or there may be multiple treatment conditions, and the fact that the effects of the treatment may change over time and across subgroups. Traditional approaches to estimating the effect of father absence on offspring well-being have relied primarily on ordinary least squares (OLS) or logistic regression models that treat offspring well-being as a function of father absence plus a set of control variables. These models are attractive because the data requirements are minimal (they can be estimated with cross-sectional data) and because they can accommodate complex specifications of the father absence effect, such as differences in the timing of father absence (early childhood versus adolescence), differences in postdivorce living arrangements (whether the mother lives alone or remarries), and differences by gender, race, and social class. Studies based on these models typically find that divorces that occur during early childhood and adolescence are associated with worse outcomes than divorces that occur during middle childhood, that remarriage has mixed effects on child outcomes, and that boys respond more negatively than girls for outcomes such as behavior problems (see, for example, Amato 2001 , Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan 2004 ).

Interpreting these OLS coefficients as causal effects requires the researcher to assume that the father absence coefficient is uncorrelated with the error term in the regression equation. This assumption will be violated if a third (omitted) variable influences both father absence and child well-being or if child well-being has a causal effect on father absence that is not accounted for in the model. There are good reasons for believing that both of these factors might be at work and so the assumption might not hold.

Until the late 1990s, researchers who were interested in estimating the effect of father absence on child well-being typically tried to improve the estimation of causal effects by adding more and more control variables to their OLS models, including measures of family resources (e.g., income, parents’ education, and age), as well as measures of parental relationships (e.g., conflict) and mental health (e.g., depression). Unfortunately, controlling for multiple background characteristics does not eliminate the possibility that an unmeasured variable is causing both family structure and child well-being. Nor does it address the fact that multiple causal pathways may be at work, with children’s characteristics and parents’ relationships reciprocally influencing each other. Adding control variables to the model can also create new problems if the control variables are endogenous to father absence. (See Ribar 2004 for a more detailed discussion of cross-sectional models.)

Lagged Dependent Variable Model

A second approach to estimating the causal effect of father absence is the lagged dependent variable (LDV) model, which uses the standard OLS model described above but adds a control for child well-being prior to parents’ divorce or separation. This approach requires longitudinal data that measure child well-being at two points in time---one observation before and one after the separation. The assumption behind this strategy is that the pre-separation measure of child well-being controls for unmeasured variables that affect parents’ separation as well as future child well-being.

Although this approach attempts to reduce omitted variable bias, it also has several limitations. First, the model is limited with respect to the window of time when father absence effects can be examined. Specifically, the model cannot examine the effect of absences that occur prior to the earliest measure of child well-being, which means LDV models cannot be used to estimate the effect of a nonmarital birth or any family structure in which a child has lived since birth. Second, if pre-separation well-being is measured with error, the variable will not fully control for omitted variables. Third, lagged measures of well-being do not control for circumstances that change between the two points in time and might influence both separation and well-being, such as a parent’s job loss. Another challenge to LDV studies is that divorce/separation is a process that begins several years before the divorce/separation is final. In this case, the pre-divorce measure of child well-being may be picking up part of the effect of the divorce, leading to an underestimate of the negative effect of divorce. Alternatively, children’s immediate response to divorce may be more negative than their long-term response, leading to an overestimate of the negative effect of divorce. Both of these limitations highlight the fact that the LDV approach is highly sensitive to the timing of when child well-being is measured before and after the divorce. In addition, many of the outcomes that we care most about occur only once (e.g., high school graduation, early childbearing), and the LDV strategy is not appropriate for these outcomes. (See Johnson 2005 for a more detailed technical discussion of the LDV approach in studying family transitions.)

These advantages and limitations are evident in Cherlin et al.’s (1991) classic study employing this method. Drawing on longitudinal data from Great Britain and the United States, the authors estimated how the dissolution of families that were intact at the initial survey (age 7 in Great Britain and 7--11 in the United States) impacted children’s behavior problems as well as their reading and math test scores at follow-up (age 11 in Great Britain and 11--16 in the United States). In OLS regression models with controls, the authors found that divorce increased behavior problems and lowered cognitive test scores for children in Great Britain and for boys in the United States. However, these relationships were substantially attenuated for boys and somewhat attenuated for girls once the authors adjusted for child outcomes and parental conflict measured at the initial interview prior to divorce. By using data that contained repeated measurements of the same outcome, these researchers argue that they were able to reduce omitted variable bias and derive more accurate estimates of the casual effect of family dissolution. This approach also limited the external validity of the study, however, because the researchers could examine only separations that occurred after age 7, when the first measures of child well-being were collected.

Growth Curve Model

A third strategy for estimating causal effects when researchers have measures of child well-being at more than two points in time is the growth curve model (GCM). This approach allows researchers to estimate two parameters for the effect of father absence on child well-being: one that measures the difference in initial well-being among children who experience different family patterns going forward, and another that measures the difference in the rate of growth (or decline) in well-being among these groups of children. Researchers have typically attributed the difference in initial well-being to factors that affect selection into father absence and the difference in growth in well-being to the causal effect of father absence. The GCM is extremely flexible with respect to its ability to specify father absence effects and is therefore well suited to uncovering how effects unfold over time or across subgroups. For example, the model can estimate age-specific effects, whether effects persist or dissipate over time, and whether they interact with other characteristics such as gender or race/ethnicity. The model also allows the researcher to conduct a placebo test---to test whether father absence at time 2 affects child well-being prior to divorce (time 1). If future divorce affects pre-divorce well-being, this finding would suggest that an unmeasured variable is causing both the divorce and poor child outcomes.

The GCM also has limitations. First, it requires a minimum of three observations of well-being for each individual in the sample. Second, as was true of the LDV model, it can examine the effect of divorces that occur only within a particular window of time---after the first and before the last measure of child well-being. Also, like the OLS model, the GCM does not eliminate the possibility that unmeasured variables are causing both differences in family patterns and differences in trajectories of child well-being, including growth or decline in well-being. For example, an unmeasured variable that causes the initial gap in well-being could also be causing the difference in growth rates. We are more confident in the results of the GCMs if they show no significant differences in pre-divorce intercepts but significant differences in growth rates. We are also more confident in studies that include placebo or falsification tests, such as using differences in future divorce to predict initial differences in well-being. If later family disruption is significantly associated with differences in pre-divorce well-being (the intercept), this finding would indicate the presence of selection bias. [See Singer & Willett (2003) for a more detailed technical discussion of GCMs and Halaby (2004) for a more detailed discussion of the assumptions and trade-offs among the various approaches to modeling panel data.]

Magnuson & Berger’s (2009) analysis of data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) is illustrative of this approach. These authors used GCMs to examine the relationship between the proportion of time children spent in different family structures between ages 6 and 12 and scores on the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) cognitive ability test and the Behavioral Problems Index. They focused on several family types: intact biological-parent families (married or cohabiting), social-father families (married or cohabiting), and single-parent families. They found no differences in the initial well-being of the children in these different family structures, suggesting that controls for observable factors had successfully dealt with problems of selection. In contrast, they found major differences in children’s well-being trajectories, with time spent in intact biological-parent families leading to more favorable trajectories than time spent in other family types. The combination of insignificant differences in intercepts and significant differences in slopes increases our confidence in these results. However, it remains possible that time-varying unobserved characteristics were driving both time spent in different family structures and changes in child behavior and achievement.

Individual Fixed Effects Model

A fourth strategy for estimating causal effects is the individual fixed effects (IFE) model, in which child-specific fixed effects remove all time-constant differences among children. This model is similar to the LDV and GCM in that it uses longitudinal data with repeated measures of family structure and child well-being. It is different in that instead of including pre-separation well-being as a control variable, it estimates the effects of father absence using only the associations between within-child changes in family structure and within-child changes in well-being, plus other exogenous covariates (and an error term). The IFE model is equivalent to either including a distinct dummy variable indicator for each child, that absorbs all unobserved, time-constant differences among children, or to differencing out within-child averages from each dependent and independent variable. In both of these specifications, only within-child variation is used to estimate the effects of father absence. The advantage of this model is that unmeasured variables in the error term that do not change over time are swept out of the analysis and therefore do not bias the coefficient for father absence. (See Ribar 2004 for a discussion of fixed effects models.)

The IFE model also has limitations. As with LDVs and GCMs, IFE models cannot be estimated for outcomes that occur only once, such as high school graduation or a teen birth, or for outcomes that can be measured only in adulthood, such as earnings. Also, as with LDVs and GCMs, the IFE model does not control for unobserved confounders that change over time and jointly influence change in father presence and change in child well-being. Third, because the model provides an estimate of the effect of a change in a child’s experience of father absence (moving from a two-parent to a single-parent family or vice versa), it does not provide an estimate of the effect of living in a stable one-parent family or a stable two-parent family. Unlike the other approaches, the IFE model estimates the effect of father absence by comparing before-after experiences for only those children within the treatment group, rather than comparing children in the treatment and control groups. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the IFE model is very sensitive to measurement error because estimates of the effect of a change in father absence rely heavily on within-individual changes.

A good illustration of the IFE approach is a study by Cooper et al. (2011) . Using data from the first four waves of the Fragile Families Study, the authors examined the link between two measures of school readiness---verbal ability and behavioral problems at age 5---and children’s exposure to family instability, including entrances and exits from the household. Using an OLS model, they found that the number of partnership transitions was associated with lower verbal ability, more externalizing behavior, and more attention problems, but not more internalizing behavior. These relationships held for both coresidential and dating transitions and were more pronounced for boys than girls. To address potential problems of omitted variable bias, the authors estimated a fixed effects model and found that residential transitions, but not dating transitions, reduced verbal ability among all children and increased behavior problems among boys. The fact that the IFE estimates were consistent with the OLS estimates increases our confidence in the OLS results.

Sibling Fixed Effects Model

A fifth strategy for dealing with omitted variable bias is the sibling fixed effects (SFE) model. This model is similar to the previous model in that unmeasured family-level variables that are fixed (i.e., do not vary among family members) are differenced out of the equation and do not bias the estimates of father absence. In this case, the group is the family rather than the individual, and the difference that is being compared is the difference between siblings with different family experiences rather than the change in individual exposure to different family experiences. The literature on father absence contains two types of SFE models. One approach compares biological siblings who experience father absence at different ages. In this case, the estimate of the causal effect of father absence is based on the difference in siblings’ length of exposure. For example, a sibling who is age 5 at the time of a divorce or separation will experience 12 years of father absence by age 17, whereas a sibling who is age 10 when the separation occurs will experience 7 years of father absence by age 17. In some instances, children may leave home before their parents’ divorce, in which case they are treated as having no exposure. A second approach compares half-siblings in the same family, where one sibling is living with two biological parents and the other is living with a biological parent and a stepparent or social father. Both of these strategies sweep out all unmeasured family-level variables that differ between families and could potentially bias the estimate of the effect of divorce.

Both approaches also have limitations. The first approach assumes that the effect of divorce does not vary by the age or temperament of the child and that there is a dose-response effect of father absence with more years of absence leading to proportionately worse outcomes, whereas the second approach assumes that the benefits of the presence of both a biological mother and father are similar for children living with and without stepsiblings. With respect to the first assumption, as previously noted, both theory and empirical evidence suggest that, at least for some outcomes, divorces occurring in early childhood and adolescence have more negative effects on child outcomes than divorces occurring in middle childhood ( Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan 2004 ). Moreover, if siblings differ in their ability to cope with divorce, and if parents take this difference into account in making their decision about when to divorce, this approach will lead to an underestimate of the effect of a change in family structure.

The major limitation of the second approach is that it assumes that the benefits of living with two biological parents are similar for children living in blended families and children living in traditional two-parent families. With respect to this assumption, there is good evidence that stepparent families are less cooperative than stable two-parent families, which means that living in a blended family is likely to reduce the well-being of all children in the household ( Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan 2004 ). A final limitation of the SFE model is that estimates cannot be generalized to families with only one child. 2

Within-family fixed effects models are employed in Gennetian’s (2005) analysis of data on 5- to 10-year-old children interviewed from 1986 to 1994 for the children of the NLSY79 study. Gennetian examined how children in two-biological-parent families, stepfather families, and single-mother families fared on the PIAT cognitive test as well as how children living with step- or half-siblings compared to those with only full siblings. In simple comparisons, the data revealed a significant disadvantage in PIAT scores for children in single-mother families, stepfather families, and blended families relative to those in two-biological-parent families. Gennetian (2005) then leveraged the data, which included repeated measurements over time of family composition and outcomes for all of the mother’s children, to estimate models with mother and child fixed effects. These analyses found very little evidence that children living in single-mother, stepfather, or blended families were disadvantaged on PIAT scores relative to children in nonblended two-biological-parent families, although they did indicate that number of years in a single-mother family had a small negative effect on PIAT scores.

Finally, Gennetian further tested the logic of the sibling approach by comparing the well-being of half-siblings, one of whom was living with both biological parents and the other of whom was living with a biological parent and a stepparent. The analyses showed the expected negative effect on PIAT scores for children living with stepfathers, with this relationship remaining negative (but declining in size and losing significance) in models with mother and child fixed effects. Importantly, these analyses also revealed a negative effect of the presence of a half-sibling on the child who was living with two biological parents.

Natural Experiments and Instrumental Variables

A sixth strategy is to use a natural experiment to estimate the effect of divorce on child well-being. The logic behind this strategy is to find an event or condition that strongly predicts father absence but is otherwise unrelated to the offspring outcome of interest. The natural experiment may be an individual-level variable or an aggregate-level measure.

Several studies use parental death as a natural experiment, generally comparing outcomes for children whose parents divorced with those whose parent died. The assumption behind this strategy is that experiencing parental death is a random event and can therefore be used to obtain an unbiased estimate of the effect of father absence. In such analyses, a significant negative relationship between child outcomes and both parental death and divorce is taken as evidence of the causal relationship of divorce on child well-being, particularly if the divorce and death coefficients are not statistically different. 3 A major challenge for these studies is that parental death is rarely random; whatever is causing the death may also be causing the child outcome. Violent and accident-related deaths, for example, are selective of people who engage in risky behaviors; similarly, many illness-related deaths are correlated with lifestyles that affect child outcomes, such as smoking. Children of deceased parents are also treated very differently than are children of divorced parents, not only by their informal support systems but also by government.

Other studies use natural experiments to estimate instrumental variable (IV) models. This strategy involves a two-step procedure. In the first step, the researcher uses the natural experiment to obtain a predicted father absence (PFA) measure for each individual. Then, in the second step, PFA is substituted for actual divorce in a model predicting offspring well-being. Because PFA is based entirely on observed variables, the coefficient for this variable cannot be correlated with unmeasured variables, thereby removing the threat of omitted variable bias. For this strategy to work, however, the researcher must make a number of strong assumptions. First, he or she must find a variable---or instrument---that is a strong predictor of divorce or separation but that is not correlated with the outcome of interest except through its effects on father absence or divorce. The second assumption is often violated [for example, see Besley & Case (2000) for a discussion of why state policies are not random with respect to child well-being]. A third limitation of the IV model is that it requires a large sample. Because PFA is based on predicted absence rather than actual absence, it is measured with a good deal of error, which results in large standard errors in the child well-being equation and makes it difficult to interpret results that are not statistically significant. Finally, the IV model requires a different instrument for each independent variable, which limits the researcher’s ability to specify different types of father absence.

A good example of the natural experiment/IV approach and its limitations is Gruber’s (2004) analysis of the effect of changes in divorce laws on divorce and child outcomes. Combining data on state differences in divorce laws with information from the 1960--1990 US Censuses, Gruber found a significant positive effect of the presence of unilateral divorce laws---which make divorce easier---on the likelihood of being divorced. This part of the analysis satisfied the first requirement for the IV model; namely, that the instrument be strongly associated with divorce. He then estimated the effect of living in a state (for at least part of childhood) where unilateral divorce was available on a host of adult outcomes. These analyses showed that unilateral divorce laws were associated with early marriage and more divorce, less education, lowered family income, and higher rates of suicide. Additionally, women so exposed appeared to have lower labor force attachment and lower earnings. To distinguish the effect of divorce laws from other state-level policies, Gruber investigated the associations between the presence of unilateral divorce laws and changes in welfare generosity and education spending during this same time period, finding no associations suggestive of bias. He did find, however, that his results were driven in large part by factors at work in California over this period.

Most importantly, Gruber concluded that divorce laws did not pass the second requirement of the IV model; namely, that they affect child well-being only through their effect on parents’ divorce. Instead, he argued that divorce laws are likely to affect child well-being by altering decisions about who marries and by altering the balance of power among married couples. Gruber’s analysis highlights the difficulty of finding a natural experiment that truly satisfies both assumptions of the IV model.

Propensity Score Matching

A final strategy used in the literature for obtaining estimates of the causal effect of divorce is propensity score matching (PSM). Based on the logic of experimental design, this approach attempts to construct treatment and control groups that are similar in all respects except for the treatment condition, which in this literature is father absence. The strategy begins by estimating the probability of father absence for each child based on as many covariates as possible observed in the data, and then uses this predicted probability to match families so that they are similar to one another in all respects except for father absence.

This approach has several advantages over the OLS model. First, researchers may exclude families that do not have a good match (i.e., a similar propensity to divorce), so that we are more confident that our estimates are based on comparing “apples to apples.” Second, PSM analyses are more flexible than OLS because they do not impose a particular functional form on how the control variables are associated with divorce. PSM estimation is also more efficient than OLS because it uses a single variable---predicted probability of divorce---that combines the relevant predictive information from all the potential observed confounders. Finally, it can accommodate the fact that the effects of divorce may differ across children by estimating separate effects for children in families with low and high propensities to divorce. Propensity scores may also be used to reweight the data so that the treatment and control groups are more similar in terms of their observed covariates ( Morgan & Todd 2008 , Morgan & Winship 2007 ).

The PSM approach has limitations as well. First, the model is less flexible than the OLS model in terms of the number and complexity of family structures that can be compared in a single equation. Second, the approach does not control for unmeasured variables, although it is possible to conduct sensitivity analyses to address the potential influence of such variables. For this reason, the approach is less satisfactory than IV models for making causal inferences. Finally, the strategy relies heavily on the ability of the researcher to find suitable matches. If there is not sufficient overlap in the kinds of people who divorce and the kinds of people who remain stably married, the approach will not work. Similarly, by limiting the sample to cases with a match, the researcher also reduces sample size and, more importantly, the generalizability of the results [see Morgan & Winship (2007) , Ribar (2004) , and Winship & Morgan (1999) , for a more extended technical discussion of the logic and assumptions of matching techniques].

The work of Frisco et al. (2007) serves as a useful example of the use PSM models in the study of the effects of divorce. Drawing on the Add Health data, the authors first estimated simple OLS regressions of the relationship between the dissolution of a marital or cohabiting relationship between waves I and II and adolescents’ level of mathematics coursework, change in GPA, and change in proportion of courses failed between the two waves. These models revealed a significant negative relationship between dissolution and the measures of GPA and course failure but no link to mathematics coursework, after controlling for a large number of potentially confounding variables.

Next, the authors calculated a propensity to experience dissolution as a function of parents’ race, education, income, work, age, relationship experience and quality, religiosity, and health and adolescents’ age, gender, and number of siblings, and then used this predicted propensity to conduct nearest neighbor matching with replacement and kernel matching. Regardless of matching method, the estimates from the PSM models accorded very well with those from the simple OLS regressions. As in those models, there were significant negative relationships between dissolution and GPA and positive relationships with course failure, and the point estimates were of a very similar magnitude across models. This study also examined how large the influence of an unobserved confounder would have had to be in order to threaten the causal interpretation of the results.

The study had some unique and some general limitations. Because of data limitations, the authors could not separate dissolutions stemming from divorce from those attributable to other causes, such as parental death. More generally, because matching is limited to observable characteristics, the authors could calculate only propensities of dissolution based on observable characteristics. To assess the sensitivity of their results to omitted variable bias, the authors conducted a simulation and discovered that an unobserved confounder that is moderately associated with dissolution and the outcomes ( r < 0.1) could bias their findings.

EVIDENCE FOR THE CAUSAL EFFECT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE ON CHILD OUTCOMES

In this section, we assess the evidence for a causal effect of father absence on different domains of offspring well-being. Empirical studies have used multiple strategies for identifying causal effects that each have unique strengths and weaknesses---as we identified in the previous section---but we are more confident in the presence of causal effects if we identify consistent results across multiple methods. Many of the articles we examine used more than one analytic strategy and/or examined outcomes in more than one domain. Consequently, our unit of analysis is each separate model reported in an article, rather than the article itself. For instance, rather than discussing an article that includes both SFE and LDV analyses of test scores and self-esteem as a single entity, we discuss it as four separate cases. The virtue of this approach is that it allows us to discern patterns more clearly across studies using similar analytic strategies and across studies examining similar outcomes. The drawback is that some articles contribute many cases and some only one. Consequently, if there are strong author-effects, for articles that contribute many cases, then our understanding of the results produced by a given analytic strategy or for a given domain could be skewed. We note when this occurs in our discussions below.

Studies in this field measured father absence in several ways, which the reader should keep in mind when interpreting and comparing results across studies. Some studies compared children of divorced parents with children of stably married parents; others compared children whose parents married after their child’s birth with those parents who never married; still others simply compared two-parent to single-parent families (regardless of whether the former were biological or stepparents and the latter were single through divorce or a nonmarital birth). More recently, researchers have started to use even more nuanced categories to measure family structure---including married biological-parent families, cohabiting biological-parent families, married stepparent families, cohabiting stepparent families, and single parents by divorce and nonmarital birth---reflecting the growing diversity of family forms in society. Still other studies look at the number of family structure transitions the child experiences as a measure of family instability. We did not identify any studies that used causal methods to study the effects of same-sex unions.

Finally, we include studies of father absence that use data from a range of international samples. We should note, however, that what it means to reside in a father-absent household varies a great deal cross-nationally. Children whose parents are not married face starkly different levels of governmental and institutional support and unequal prospects for living in a stable two-parent family in different countries. In fact, both marital and nonmarital unions in the United States are considerably less stable than in any other industrialized nation ( Andersson 2002 ).

We begin our review of the empirical findings by looking at studies that attempted to estimate the causal effect of divorce on school success. We distinguish between studies that looked at children’s test scores; studies that looked at educational attainment; and studies that looked at children’s attitudes, engagement, and school performance.

Test scores

We identified 31 analyses that examined the relationship between father absence and test scores, including tests of verbal, math, and general ability. The articles containing these analyses are listed and briefly described in the first section of Table 1 . Virtually all of the test score analyses used US-based samples (only Cherlin et al. 1991 used international data). Although the overall picture for test scores was mixed, with 14 finding significant effects and 17 finding no effect, there were patterns by methodology. 4 First, significant effects were most likely in the analyses using GCMs. Of the GCM studies finding significant differences in slopes between children of divorced and intact families, about half found no significant differences in the pre-divorce intercepts, which made their significant results more convincing. One GCM study ( Magnuson & Berger 2009 ) performed a falsification test and found no evidence that subsequent divorce predicted intercepts, ruling out the threat of selection bias.

Studies of the effects of father absence on education

In contrast with analyses based on the GCM design, the IFE and SFE analyses rarely found significant effects of family structure on children’s test scores. In general, standard errors tended to be larger in IFE and SFE analyses than in OLS analyses, but in virtually all of these analyses, the fixed effects coefficients were markedly reduced in size relative to the OLS coefficients, suggesting that the lack of significant results was not simply due to larger standard errors.

Several factors may have limited the generalizability of the fixed effects models, however. First, all of these analyses came from comparisons of siblings in blended families. The parents in blended families differed from those in traditional married families because at least one of the parents had children from a previous relationship, limiting the external validity of these results. Second, the father-absent category included children of divorced parents as well as children of never-married mothers, whereas the father-present category contained both children whose mothers were married at birth and children whose mothers married after the child’s birth. We might expect that the benefit of moving from a single-parent household to a married-parent household would be smaller than the benefit of being born into a stably married family. Given these comparisons and the small samples involved in estimation, it is understandable that we found little evidence of an impact of family structure on test scores using fixed effects models.

Although there were clear patterns in the GCM and fixed effects analyses, LDV studies were a mixed bag: Half found effects and half did not. Sometimes the results were not robust even within the same paper. For example, both Cherlin et al. (1991) and Sanz-de-Galdeano & Vuri (2007) found significant effects for math scores but not reading scores. Using the same data as Sanz-de-Galdeano & Vuri (the National Education Longitudinal Study), Sun (2001) found positive effects for both math and reading tests.

Educational attainment

There is stronger evidence of a causal effect of father absence on educational attainment, particularly for high school graduation. Of nine studies examining high school graduation using multiple methodologies, only one found null effects, and this study used German data to compare siblings in blended families. There was also robust evidence of effects when attainment was measured by years of schooling. Again, the only studies that found no effect of father absence were those that used international samples or compared siblings in blended families. Finally, there was weak evidence for effects on college attendance and graduation, with only one of four studies finding significant results. Taken together, the evidence for an effect of father absence on educational attainment, particularly high school graduation, is strong in studies using US samples, perhaps because of the relatively open structure of the US educational system compared with the more rigid tracking systems within many European countries.

How might one explain the stronger, more consistent evidence base for father absence effects on educational attainment relative to cognitive ability? One explanation is that measurement error in test scores is to blame for the weak and sometimes inconsistent findings in that domain. Another explanation is that the methods involved in measuring attainment---sibling models and natural experiments---do not control as rigorously for unobserved confounders as the repeated-measure studies (GCM, LDV, IFE) of cognitive ability.

The lack of strong test score effects is also consistent with findings in the early education literature that suggest that cognitive test scores are more difficult to change than noncognitive skills and behaviors (see, e.g., HighScope Perry Preschool Project; Schweinhart et al. 2005 ). Given that educational attainment is based on a combination of cognitive ability and behavioral skills (that are influenced by family structure, as we describe below), it makes sense that we find strong evidence of effects on the likelihood of high school graduation but not on test scores.

Attitudes, performance, and engagement

A smaller number of analyses (10) examined the effect of father absence on children’s school performance, including GPA, coursework, and track placement. Of these analyses, four found no significant effect on track placement using German data and multiple methodologies ( Francesconi et al, 2010 ). Three analyses came from a study in the United States by Frisco et al. (2007) that found effects for GPA and courses failed, but not for a third, somewhat unusual measure: years of math coursework completed. It is difficult to draw any conclusions about the effects of family structure on school performance across these disparate samples and measures.

Finally, seven studies examined the effect of father absence on educational engagement and aspirations among teenagers in the United States. Five of the seven analyses found no effect on these noncognitive measures. For example, one study ( Sun & Li 2002 ) found positive effects on aspirations, but the other two found no effect. Similarly, one study ( Astone & McLanahan 1991 ) found positive effects on school engagement, but the other three found no effect. The latter findings suggest that educational aspirations and orientations toward schooling may form at younger ages, and none of these analyses examined aspirations among children younger than age 12.

Mental Health

After education, the second most common outcome examined in the literature is mental health, which is measured as social-emotional development when respondents are children and adolescents. Mental health and social-emotional development are closely related to what social scientists call noncognitive skills or soft skills to distinguish them from cognitive skills such as math and reading tests. Recent research shows that social-emotional skills play an important role in adult outcomes, not only in influencing mental health but also in influencing educational attainment, family formation and relationships, and labor market success ( Cunha & Heckman 2008 ).

Adult mental health

We identified six studies that examined the association between parental divorce and adult mental health (see Table 2 ) Three of these studies were based on UK data, and TWO were based on US data. All of the empirical strategies that we discussed in the previous section were used to estimate the effects of divorce and father absence on adult mental health. The findings were quite robust, with four of the six analyses showing a negative effect of parental divorce on adult mental health. Moreover, one of the two null findings ( Ermisch & Francesconi 2001 ) was overturned in a subsequent paper by the same authors that distinguished between early and later exposure to divorce ( Ermisch et al. 2004 ).

Studies of the effects of father absence on mental health

Social-emotional problems

Social-emotional problems in childhood are typically measured using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) ( Achenbach & Edelbrock 1981 ), which includes behaviors such as aggression, attention, anxiety, and depression. Some researchers use the full CBCL scale, whereas others use subscales that distinguish between externalizing behavior (aggression and attention) and internalizing behavior (anxiety and depression).

For adolescents, researchers often use a delinquency scale or a measure of antisocial behavior, which overlaps with some of the items on the externalizing scale. A few of the studies we examined looked at other psychological outcomes, such as locus of control and self-esteem, and several studies looked at substance use/abuse.

We identified 27 separate analyses that examined the association between parental divorce and some type of externalizing behavior or delinquency. These analyses were based on data from four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia,. Of these, 19 analyses found a significant positive effect of divorce or father absence on problem behavior for at least one comparison group, whereas 8 found no significant association. The findings varied dramatically by method, with the LDV approach yielding the most significant results and the two fixed effects approaches yielding the fewest significant findings. Two analyses found effects among boys but not girls ( Cooper et al. 2011 , Morrison & Cherlin 1995 ), and one analysis found effects among girls but not boys ( Cherlin et al. 1991 ).

Of the analyses reporting null findings, several had characteristics that might account for the lack of significant findings. One combined cohabiting parents with married parents ( Boutwell & Beaver 2010 ), which likely weakened the effect of father absence on child outcomes, as prior research shows that disruptions of cohabiting unions are less harmful for children than are disruptions of marital unions ( Brown 2006 ). A second controlled for family income, which is partly endogenous to divorce ( Hao & Matsueda 2006 ). And a third used a small, school-based sample ( Pagani et al. 1998 ).

Six analyses examined internalizing behavior in children, including studies that measured loneliness and difficulty making friends. Three of these analyses reported significant effects of father absence, whereas the other three reported no effects. As was true of the externalizing analyses, the internalizing analyses relied on multiple strategies. Also, as before, the analyses reporting null effects had characteristics that might account for their lack of strong findings. Two of the analyses that used IFE models were based on low-income samples ( Bachman et al. 2009 , Foster & Kalil 2007 ), and a third study controlled for income ( Hao & Matsueda 2006 ). In addition, the Bachman analysis compared single mothers who married with those who remained single. Finally, five analyses looked at low self-esteem and low self-control, which are sometimes treated as markers of depression or psychological distress. The findings from these studies were mixed.

Substance use

We identified six analyses that examined substance use, measured as cigarette smoking and drug and alcohol use. The evidence for this set of outcomes was very robust, with only one analysis reporting a null effect ( Evenhouse & Reilly 2004 ). Furthermore, the findings were consistent across multiple strategies, including SFE models, which often showed no effects for other outcomes.

Labor Force

We found only a few analyses that examined the effect of father absence on children’s labor force outcomes in adulthood (see Table 3 ). In part, this is because earnings, employment, and welfare receipt in adulthood do not lend themselves to analysis using IFEs, GCMs, or LDVs, which require observations before and after the divorce. Indeed, all the analyses of this domain of outcomes used SFE models or natural experiments.

Studies of the effects of father absence on the labor force

However, in many other respects, there is limited comparability between the studies. Although several studies used data from the United States ( Biblarz & Gottainer 2000 , Björkland et al. 2007 , Gruber 2004 , Lang & Zagorsky 2001 ), many of these analyses were derived from estimates based on British or Canadian data. Further, the Gruber (2004) and Corak (2001) studies, which contributed 9 of the 14 analyses, differed in the ages and periods examined, with Gruber using data from a longer time period (1960--1990), a wider range of ages (20--50), and so a much larger set of cohorts (births 1910--1970) than Corak (2001) : ages 25--32 and births 1963--1972. The remaining analyses, with the exception of Biblarz & Gottainer (2000) , accorded with Corak (2001) insofar as they used data from the mid to late 1990s and focused on respondents in their 20s and early 30s.

The findings for effects of father absence were, however, consistent. Both Gruber (2004) , using changes in US state laws to allow for unilateral divorce, and Corak (2001) , using parental death in Canada, found that divorce was associated with lower levels of employment. The studies disagreed, however, about for whom these effects were most pronounced, with Gruber’s (2004) analyses suggesting that female children of divorce were less likely to work and Corak (2001) finding that male children exposed to parental loss had lower labor force participation. Similarly, using SFE models with British data, Ermisch and coauthors ( Ermisch & Francesconi 2001 , Ermisch et al. 2004 ) found evidence of higher levels of labor force inactivity among those who experienced divorce in early childhood. Looking at adult occupational status rather than simply employment status, Biblarz & Gottainer (2000) found that although children growing up in divorced-mother households fared worse than those growing up in stable two-parent households, there was no significant disadvantage to growing up in widow-mother households. However, these researchers did find that children growing up in stepparent households were disadvantaged regardless of whether father absence was due to divorce or widowhood.

The results of analyses of the effect of divorce on income and earnings were less consistent than the results for employment. Again, Gruber (2004) and Corak (2001) contributed most of the analyses for these outcomes, with Gruber finding evidence of negative effects of divorce on income per capita and on women’s earnings (but not poverty), and Corak finding negative effects of divorce on men’s family income (but minimal impacts on earnings). Corak’s result is consistent with analyses by Lang & Zagorsky (2001) who, using parental death as a natural experiment, found no effect of father absence on wages and by Björkland et al. (2007) who, using SFE models with US and Swedish data, found no effects on earnings. Corak (2001) also investigated how divorce was related to the receipt of unemployment insurance and income assistance in Canada, finding a higher probability of receiving income assistance but not unemployment assistance.

Family Formation and Stability

Like the evidence base for labor force outcomes, there is relatively little research on how family structure affects patterns of offspring’s own family formation and relationship stability. The lack of research in this domain is somewhat surprising, given that these outcomes are closely related to the causal effect under consideration. The dearth of studies may be because these outcomes do not lend themselves to LDV, GCM, or IFE analyses.

Marriage and divorce

Virtually everything we know about the effects of father absence on marriage and divorce comes from just three studies (see Table 4 ), all of which used a natural experiment design, with the experimental variable being parental death ( Corak 2001 , Lang & Zagorsky 2001 ) or changes in divorce laws ( Gruber 2004 ). All three studies examined marriage as an outcome but came to different conclusions. Lang & Zagorsky found that parental death and divorce reduced the likelihood that sons will marry but found no effect on daughters. Using parental death as a natural experiment, Corak found no evidence of a causal effect of father absence on marriage for either sons or daughters. Finally, using divorce laws as a natural experiment, Gruber found that growing up under the newer, relaxed divorce laws actually increased the likelihood of marriage for youth. The evidence for an effect of father absence on marital stability was more consistent, with both Corak and Gruber finding evidence of a positive effect on separation but not on divorce.

Studies of the effects of father absence on family formation and stability

Early childbearing

We identified only two analyses that examined the effect of father absence on early childbearing ( Ermisch & Francesconi 2001 , Ermisch et al. 2004 ). These analyses were conducted by the same research team, they used the same SFE model, and they used the same data---the British Household Panel Survey data in Great Britain. Both analyses found a positive association between parental absence and early childbearing, with divorce in early childhood having a stronger effect than divorce in middle childhood.

CONCLUSIONS

The body of knowledge about the causal effects of father absence on child well-being has grown during the early twenty-first century as researchers have increasingly adopted innovative methodological approaches to isolate causal effects. We reviewed 47 such articles and find that, on the whole, articles that take one of the more rigorous approaches to handling the problems of omitted variable bias and reverse causality continue to document negative effects of father absence on child well-being, though these effects are stronger during certain stages of the life course and for certain outcomes.

We find strong evidence that father absence negatively affects children’s social-emotional development, particularly by increasing externalizing behavior. These effects may be more pronounced if father absence occurs during early childhood than during middle childhood, and they may be more pronounced for boys than for girls. There is weaker evidence of an effect of father absence on children’s cognitive ability.

Effects on social-emotional development persist into adolescence, for which we find strong evidence that father absence increases adolescents’ risky behavior, such as smoking or early childbearing. The evidence of an effect on adolescent cognitive ability continues to be weaker, but we do find strong and consistent negative effects of father absence on high school graduation. The latter finding suggests that the effects on educational attainment operate by increasing problem behaviors rather than by impairing cognitive ability.

The research base examining the longer-term effects of father absence on adult outcomes is considerably smaller, but here too we see the strongest evidence for a causal effect on adult mental health, suggesting that the psychological harms of father absence experienced during childhood persist throughout the life course. The evidence that father absence affects adult economic or family outcomes is much weaker. A handful of studies find negative effects on employment in adulthood, but there is little consistent evidence of negative effects on marriage or divorce, on income or earnings, or on college education.

Despite the robust evidence that father absence affects social-emotional outcomes throughout the life course, these studies also clearly show a role for selection in the relationship between family structure and child outcomes. In general, estimates from IFE, SFE, and PSM models are smaller than those from conventional models that do not control for selection bias. Similarly, studies that compare parental death and divorce often find that even if both have significant effects on well-being, the estimates of the effect of divorce are larger than those of parental death, which can also be read as evidence of partial selection.

The Virtues and Limitations of the Key Analytic Strategies

Although we are more confident that causal effects exist if results are robust across multiple methodological approaches, it is understandable that such robustness is elusive, given the wide range of strategies for addressing bias. It is also the case that each of these strategies has important limitations and advantages. Although GCMs, LDV designs, and PSM models allow for broad external validity, these approaches do less to adjust for omitted variables than do IFE and SFE models. Yet such fixed effects models require one to assume that biological parents in blended families are just like parents in nonblended families and that the age at which children experience father absence does not affect their response. In general, studies that employ more stringent methods to control for unobserved confounders also limit the generalizability of their results to specific subpopulations, complicating efforts to draw conclusions across methods.

In many ways, the natural experiment strategy is appealing because it addresses concerns about omitted variable bias and reverse causality. In practice, however, these models are difficult to implement. Approaches that use parental death must make assumptions about the exogeneity of parental death and the comparability of the experiences of father absence due to death and divorce. Similarly, approaches that use instruments such as divorce law changes and incarceration rates must make a convincing case that such policies and practices affect child outcomes only through their effects on family structure.

Some of these methodological approaches are better suited to examining one set of outcomes rather than others. For instance, GCM, LDV, and IFE designs do not lend themselves to the investigation of the effects of father absence on adult outcomes. In contrast, although natural experiments and PSM models can be used to examine a wider range of outcomes, they are much less flexible in how father absence can be measured, generally using dichotomous measures of absence rather than the more detailed categorical measures of family type or measures that seek to capture the degree of instability experienced by children.

Because of these differences by method in the domains that are examined and the definitions of family structure that are used, it is difficult to discern if some methods seem more apt than others to find evidence for or against the effect of father absence on children. But our impression is that LDV and GCM designs tend to find stronger evidence of effects of father absence on education and, particularly, social-emotional health than do the other designs. The evidence on the effects of father absence is more mixed in studies using IFE and SFE. The relatively smaller number of papers that use PSM designs also return a split verdict. Among those studies using natural experiments, there is some evidence of negative effects of father absence from changes in divorce laws, weak evidence when incarceration is used as an instrument, and mixed evidence from studies using parental death.

Areas for Future Research

Looking across studies, it is apparent that father absence can affect child well-being across the life course. But, within any one study, there is rarely an attempt to understand how these different types of outcomes are related to one another. For instance, studies separately estimate the effect of father absence on externalizing behavior, high school completion, and employment, and from these analyses we can tell that family disruption seems to have effects on each outcome. But it is also plausible that the effect of father absence on high school completion operates through an effect on externalizing behavior or that the effect on employment is attributable to the effect on high school completion. Stated differently, the articles reviewed here do a good job of attempting to estimate the causal effects of father absence on particular outcomes, but they do not tell us very much about why or how these effects come about. This omission reflects a fundamental tension, extending beyond our particular substantive topic, between the goal of estimating causal effects versus the goal of understanding the mechanisms and processes that underlie long-term outcomes ( Moffitt 2003 ).

Few of the studies reviewed here investigate whether the effects of father absence vary by child age, but those that do find important differences, with effects concentrated among children who experienced family disruption in early childhood ( Ermisch & Francesconi 2001 , Ermisch et al. 2004 ). New developments in the fields of neuroscience and epigenetics are rapidly expanding our understanding of how early childhood experiences, including in utero experiences, have biological consequences, and sociologists would benefit from a better understanding of these dynamics as they relate to a wide range of potential outcomes, especially health in adulthood ( Barker 1992 , Miller et al. 2011 ). Similarly, although there has been some attention to how boys and girls may respond differently to father absence, researchers should continue to be attentive to these interactions by gender.

We found surprisingly little work on interactions between father absence and race or class. Given that African American and low-income children experience higher levels of father absence than their white and middle-class counterparts, a differential response to absence could serve to mitigate or further exacerbate inequalities in childhood and adult outcomes. More work, particularly using the methods of causal inference discussed here, remains to be done on this topic. We also suggest that more research is needed to understand if the effects of father absence on child well-being may have changed over time. We might expect that if stigma has lessened, as father absence has become more common, then the negative effects may have diminished. Alternatively, diminishing social safety net support and rising workplace insecurity could have served to make the economic consequences of father absence more severe and the negative effects more pronounced.

Finally, emerging research on family complexity shows that children raised apart from their biological fathers are raised in a multitude of family forms---single-mother families, cohabiting-parent families, stepparent families, blended families, multigenerational families---many of which are often very unstable ( McLanahan 2011 , Tach et al. 2011 , Tach 2012 ). Indeed, stable single-mother households are quite rare, at least among children born to unmarried parents, which means that unstable and complex families may be the most common counterfactual to the married two-biological-parent family. Thus, studies of the causal impact of father absence should not treat father absence as a static condition but must distinguish between the effect of a change in family structure and the effect of a family structure itself.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Support for S. McLanahan was provided by NICHD through grants R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421. L. Tach acknowledges support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program. D. Schneider received support from Princeton University and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program. We are grateful to Anne Case, Andrew Cherlin, Stephen Morgan, and David Ribar for their comments.

1 We use the term “father absence” to refer to children who live apart from their biological father because of divorce, separation from a cohabiting union, or nonmarital birth. We use the terms “divorce” and “separation” to talk about change in children’s coresidence with their biological fathers.

2 Children of twin studies are a variation of the SFE model. These studies, pioneered by D’Onofrio and colleagues (2006 , 2007 ), compare the offspring of identical (MZ) twins, fraternal (DZ) twins, and regular siblings in cases in which one sibling or twin divorces and the other does not. These analyses control for family differences that are common to both siblings; however, they do not control for within-sibling differences that lead one sibling to divorce and another to be stably married. Twin studies go one step further, by comparing MZ twins (who share identical genetic information) and DZ twins (who have half of their genes identical), allowing researchers to determine the role of genetics in accounting for the effect of divorce.

3 We only include studies of the effect of parental death on child outcomes if the author uses one of the causal methods described below or explicitly uses death as a natural experiment for divorce or other types of father absence.

4 The picture remains mixed even within particular types of tests (math, reading/verbal, or general ability). Most studies used the PPVT or PIAT Math and Reading tests.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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Self-Esteem

Fatherless daughters: the impact of absence, a daughter’s sense of self may be shaped by what a father is not able to give..

Posted May 26, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

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• While most research focuses on the impact of mothering on children, fathers play an important role too.
• From self-confidence to relationships, fathers have a particularly strong influence on daughters.
• Even if a father is physically present, his emotional absence can negatively affect a daughter into adulthood.

One summer day, when I was nine, I came in from playing jump rope, discovered my father unconscious in his chair, and thought he was dead. He survived another 20 years, but for the rest of my childhood and early adulthood, I lived with the fear of losing him. The possibility that, at any moment, I might suddenly be a fatherless daughter shaped the woman I would become.

Mothers and mothering occupy a lot of space in psychological literature, but the role fathers play in a daughter’s development does not get equal attention . The National Initiative for Fatherhood, the nation's leading provider of research on evidence-based fatherhood programs and resources, reports that according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 data, one in four children in this country lives in a home without a biological, step, or adoptive father. Their research indicates that children raised in a father-absent home face a four times greater risk of poverty, are more likely to have behavioral problems, are at two times greater risk of infant mortality, are more likely to go to prison, commit crimes, become a pregnant teen , abuse drugs or alcohol , drop out of school.[1]

Daughters growing up without a father face specific challenges. Fathers influence their daughters' relational lives, creativity , sense of authority, self-confidence , and self-esteem . Her relationship to her sexuality and response to men will in part be determined by her father’s comfort or discomfort with her gender and her body, starting at birth. (This post addresses one’s personal or biological father. The capacity for “fathering” is not based on anatomy, nor is it gender-specific.)

In post-modern societies, both parents may contribute to the family’s financial stability, or the mother may be the primary wage earner. However, through the lens of patriarchal values, a father is a failure if he cannot provide for and protect his family. Fairytales convey societal and psychological truths in magical settings, and many of the most popular tales— Cinderella, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White —depict the reality of inadequate, neglectful, or harmful fathers.

The story of Hansel and Gretel portrays the quintessential feckless father. He can neither provide for his family nor stand up to his wife’s cruel demands. Instead, he succumbs to her insistence that they leave their children in the woods to die so that they, the parents, can have enough to eat.

Why does the father disappear after the first page in some tales as if his relevance hardly matters? In real life, though, we know that an absent father is a haunting presence for his daughter. She will wonder why he left, why he has abandoned her, and if she did something to cause him to disappear. She will look for him in the men in her life or perhaps choose men who are the opposite of her father.

One positive outcome for fatherless daughters is hinted at in some fairy tales, as in The Girl Without Hands . The story recounts the survival challenges faced by a daughter who flees the father who maimed her. With no father and no sympathetic maternal figure to rely on, the heroine undergoes a self-revelatory process. In undertaking a series of impossible tasks, she discovers her moral and emotional strength, her courage and inner authority. She survives and thrives.

Psychotherapist Susan Schwartz has written extensively about the wounds daughters suffer from inadequate or harmful fathers. In The Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds , she notes that fathers often have difficulty relating to a daughter’s emotional life. Even if the father is physically present, the daughter may feel unseen and unknown and will take on the burden of this failure as her own. She will feel a lack in herself. She may also strive to fulfill her father’s expectations in sports, in scholarship, in financial success, or she may try to fill his emptiness, his depression , with her own energy. Dr. Schwartz describes how a father’s wounds can depotentiate a daughter’s capacity to use her energy for herself, which can compromise her ability to focus and value who she is.[2]

Author Patricia Reis’s book Daughters of Saturn: From Father’s Daughter to Creative Woman is part memoir about her father, part analysis of the father-daughter relationship. She finds Freud ’s theory that the meaning in life is found in work and love too reductive. For women, she says, another dimension must be added. That question is “Whom do I serve?”—self or other.

“It is not enough to claim our power as women: we must be able to use our powers consciously, knowing where and how our energy is spent, on what, on whom, for what purpose—both in work and in relationships.” [3]

To be a fatherless daughter is to feel abandoned by a paternal figure, emotionally, physically, or both. A father may be absent from the home for reasons beyond his control. The list of reasons is extensive, and each situation impacts a daughter differently. Illness and death may burden her with additional grief , while military service, deportation, adoption , incarceration, divorce , or disinterest will have their own effects. A father who is physically present but emotionally distant, manipulative, abusive, or depressed also sets up a daughter for psychological distress. Her sense of herself, her ambition, her independence, and her trust of the world will be shaped by her relationship with her father.

Fathers who long to have a deeper relationship with their daughters might ask themselves: What is my daughter trying to tell me about herself? What does she want me to see? How can I be more curious about her and her experience in the world? And they might ask their daughters, “How can I be more attentive?”

[1] “ The Statistics Don't Lie: Fathers Matter ,” The National Fatherhood Initiative

[2] Schwartz, Susan, The Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds. Routledge, 2020

[3] Reis, Patricia, Daughters of Saturn: From Father’s Daughter to Creative Woman. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1995, Preface pp xiii-xix.

Dale M. Kushner, MFA , explores the intersection of creativity, healing, and spirituality in her writing: her poetry collection M ; novel, The Conditions of Love ; and essays, including in Jung’s Red Book for Our Time .

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The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health pp 67–85 Cite as

The Impact of Father Absence on Child Mental Health: Three Possible Outcomes

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This chapter is about absent fathers. Drawing upon clinical material it discusses three mental health outcomes for children and young people when their fathers are absent from their parenting. Focusing on ADHD, self-harm and sexually inappropriate behaviour the chapter highlights how these derive from the relationship the child or young person has with the mother as the single parent. The chapter concerns a particular type of relationship some single mothers have with their children. It is not a chapter about all single mothers.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Father — Impact of Absent Fathers: Child Development

Impact of Absent Fathers: Child Development

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Essays About Growing Up Without A Father: Top 5 Examples

Writing essays about growing up without a father deals with sensitive issues. To help you with your paper, check out our guide including top essay samples and prompts.

Of the 18.4 million children in America, one in four grows without a father . Writing an essay on this topic can be a great way to convey your feelings and share your experiences with others. If you grew up with a father, it can be an opportunity to learn about the challenges some of your peers may face. 

Learn how to deliver your essay with key research by reading the examples below:

1. Effects of an Absent Father by Anonymous on Eduzaurus.Com

2. life without a father by alexandria, 3. how a boy[’s] life [is] affected when raised without a father by meghan bush, 4. how growing up without a father affects the child by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 5. growing up fatherless essay by writer jill, 7 writing prompts for essays about growing up without a father, 1. the importance of having a father, 2. reasons why fathers can be absent, 3. life without a father, 4. effects of growing up without a father, 5. my dad and his illness, 6. taking on my father’s responsibilities, 7. without a father, i became….

“Without the role of a strong, loving and supportive father figure in the house, it can break a family and cause significant damage to the child mentally and cause a lap in many areas of their life.”

In this essay, the author mentions the psychological impact of not having a father at home. Repercussions include impulsiveness and anger issues. In addition, getting abandoned often makes the child jump to conclusions and blame themselves. This resentment and hostility lead to illegal substance abuse that ruins lives. The author also tells a story to explain that when the fatherless child grows up and has his children, he will not know how to be a good father because he didn’t have one.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about dads .

“I personally fall into this category and I believe that unless the other parent is deceased, there is no reason why one parent should raise a child.”

Alexandria writes down her thoughts on her mother’s lack of response when her father left their family. She says that it makes her blame herself for all the hardship they’re going through. But, despite her situation, Alexandria learns to respect her mother more, her feat inspiring her to be independent and strong as she is. She believes that no one should grow up fatherless as life is full of ups and downs, and a child will need a father figure to lean on. She advises those unfortunate like her to continue living and have faith in God.

“In life, we are given more than just luck, but an opportunity, a chance to be better and do better each and every day.”

Bush retells the story of two boys from the book “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates” and connects it to reality through research studies. She explains that while both boys lost their fathers at a young age, Wes Moore, who lost his father to an illness, had a more challenging time accepting what happened than The Other Wes Moore, whose father was gone from the beginning. Bush also doesn’t believe Wes Moore is luckier than the other boy because they had a choice, and both decided for themselves. Instead, she believes that whoever is there to guide a child as they grow up dramatically influences their future life choices.

“This deviant behavior seems to affect females more than males… On the other hand guys growing up with no dad are more often likely to drop out of school…”

The writer delves into research to examine the impact of growing up fatherless, the common cause, and who is more affected. According to their findings, susceptibility to addictive substances, behavioral problems, and depression are some effects of this unfortunate setup. Parents’ separation is the main reason a child grows up without a dad. In the end, the author concludes that while girls are more psychologically affected by facing life without a dad, it still affects boys in other ways.

“He was never really a father to me. Even after being with him for a couple of days, he was still a complete stranger to me.”

Jill’s essay shows how her story relates to Rick Braggs’s essay. She also includes some lines from his essay to prove it. She says that she grew up knowing nothing about her father except his appearance and the bad things her family said about him. So, when she had to move in with him for a while, Jill had no idea how to act, especially when he tried his best to act like her dad. But, in the end, she lets the readers know that her dad became her best friend, and while their bond is not as strong as other father-daughter duos, she is grateful to have him back.

Here are prompts to inspire you in writing your essay:

Identify and explain to your readers why a father is vital in a home and their child’s life. Write down their roles in raising a child and include things only a father can give his kid, such as essential parenting, life lessons, and a father’s perspective on life. Looking for more? See these essays about brothers .

Use this prompt to learn and discuss the most common reasons a child loses a father. There can be many reasons a father is absent from their child’s life. These include death, childcare difficulties, medical challenges, or choosing to be an absent father for personal reasons. Discuss these reasons in your essay and make sure to include relevant examples and research data to support your reasons.

If you have a personal experience living without a father, share it with your readers if you are comfortable doing so. Relay your story of how it is living without a dad present in your life. Include his reason for absence and how it made you feel. Use this prompt to create a compelling and engaging personal essay for your readers to enjoy.

Use this prompt to discuss how the absence of a father in a home positively and negatively affects the entire family. Then, support your claims by interviewing someone who finds life easier without one parent and adding research results and statistics. For example, the father is abusive, so everyone’s life becomes happier and more peaceful when he leaves. However, losing a father due to death can be catastrophic for some families, resulting in grief and depression.

If you like to write more on this topic, check out other essay topics about family .

Not all fathers leave because they want to evade their obligations. Some just don’t have the chance to stay. This prompt is for all who have lost a father due to an illness. First, introduce your father to your readers, what his passions were, how you bonded, and things you learned from him. Next, write down the most significant change in your life since losing him and explain why. Then, advise others in the same situation on how to move forward with life.

In some cases, when you lose the presence of a parent in the household, the responsibilities can then fall on the children. For this essay, look into the father’s responsibilities and discuss how these responsibilities can burden the children if they lose a parent. If you have personal experience with this, discuss your feelings and the challenges you face. For an interesting essay, conduct interviews with those who live in a fatherless household to understand their experiences.

In this essay, discuss how the absence of a father affected children, for better or worse. Research by conducting interviews to discover the experiences of those who have lived without a father and discuss the difference between the two with your readers. Remember to ask for permission before sharing another person’s personal experience in your essay.

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The Impact of Absent Fathers: Understanding the Consequences and Coping Strategies

Having a father figure in a child’s life has been shown to impact their development and overall well-being greatly. When a father is absent, children can face emotional and behavioral challenges, struggle with academic achievement, and be at a higher risk for substance abuse and criminal behavior. 

The purpose of this content is to delve into the consequences of absent fathers and offer coping strategies for those affected by this issue. By comprehending the effects of absent fathers and developing effective coping mechanisms, individuals and families can navigate the difficulties that arise from this situation.

• Statistics About Absent Fathers 

Statistics show that the absence of fathers is a significant issue affecting families worldwide. In the United States, for example, nearly one in four children live in a household without a father present. In the UK, over one million children have no contact with their fathers. In Canada, approximately 38% of children will experience the separation or divorce of their parents before the age of 18. 

These statistics highlight the far-reaching impact of absent fathers on children and families, emphasizing the importance of understanding the consequences and developing effective coping strategies. You don’t know how lucky you are if you live in a home where both parents are there or at least have equal access to both of them.

10 Negative Effects of Absent Fathers on Child Development

• 1. Cognitive Ability Reduction

The absence of fathers can have a negative impact on a child’s cognitive development , leading to a reduction in cognitive abilities. Studies have shown that children without a father figure may have lower scores on cognitive tests, including IQ tests, compared to children with both parents present. 

This can be attributed to a lack of stimulation and support in the home environment, which can affect a child’s learning and academic achievement. 

In addition, the emotional stress that comes with an absent father can also impact a child’s cognitive functioning, further exacerbating the issue.

• 2. Mental Health Problems 

When a father is absent, children may miss out on the sense of security and love that a dad provides. A father’s presence can greatly impact a child’s sense of identity and belonging, and the absence of such support can leave them feeling lost and insecure. 

As a result, children with absent fathers may be more susceptible to anxiety and depression compared to those with both parents present. However, seeking professional help can help counter the negative effects of an absent father. 

• 3. Communication Problems

Children with absent fathers may experience decreased development in their prefrontal cortex, which can lead to impulsivity and an inability to recognize the long-term consequences of their actions. 

As a result, some may engage in sexual activity at a young age, which can have serious consequences such as teen pregnancy. Additionally, girls growing up without a father may develop attachment disorders and view sex as a way to fulfill a need for male connection. 

• 4. Psychosexual Problems

The absence of fathers can also contribute to psychosexual problems in children. Sons growing up without a father may struggle with developing a healthy sense of masculinity and may feel uncertain about their role in relationships. 

This can lead to a range of issues, such as difficulty forming close relationships or engaging in risk-taking behaviors to prove their masculinity. Meanwhile, girls growing up without a father may experience difficulties with their self-esteem and develop unhealthy relationships with men. They may have the tendency to engage in early sexual activity or become victims of sexual abuse.

• 5. Problems In Relationships

Children who grow up without fathers may also experience difficulties in their relationships with others. They may struggle with developing trust and forming attachments due to the lack of a strong paternal figure in their lives. 

They may also struggle with understanding and managing their emotions, leading to conflicts and issues in their relationships. In addition, children without fathers may struggle with setting boundaries and may be more likely to experience issues with peer pressure. 

• 6. Absenteeism And Academic Failure

Children growing up without a present father in their lives are more likely to struggle academically and experience absenteeism from school. The lack of a father figure can lead to a lack of motivation as well as a sense of purpose, making it challenging for children to focus on their education. 

As a result, these children are at a greater risk of academic failure and dropping out of school. This can have significant long-term consequences, as a lack of education can limit future opportunities and career prospects.

• 7. Increase The Rate Of Drug Use

Children who face absent fathers are at a higher risk of developing drug and alcohol addiction. Studies have shown that fatherless children often smoke, drink alcohol, and abuse drugs with a higher tendency in their childhood and adulthood.

The absence of a father figure can leave a void in a child’s life, leading them to seek solace in harmful substances. This can have long-lasting effects on their physical and mental health and their ability to form healthy relationships and succeed in life.

• 8. Mortality

Growing up without a father can have severe consequences, one of which is an increased risk of mortality. Fatherless children are more likely to die during childhood and live an average of four years less over their lifespan. The absence of a father can result in poorer physical and mental health, risky behaviors, and a lack of proper guidance and support. 

The emotional toll of not having a father can also contribute to a higher risk of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. Overall, the impact of fathers’ absence on mortality is a serious problem that should not be taken lightly.

• 9. Promiscuity and Teen Pregnancy

Having multiple sexual partners and early pregnancy in teenagers can lead to various sexual health issues, such as a higher chance of engaging in sexual activity before the age of 16, not using contraception during their first sexual encounter, becoming teenage parents, and contracting sexually transmitted infections. 

Fatherless children are more likely to experience these problems. Additionally, teenage girls who lack a father figure in their lives may seek attention from males and may feel rejected when their emotional needs are not met, making them vulnerable to exploitation by adult men.

• 10. Attachment Trauma

When a child experiences a father’s absence, whether it is due to physical or emotional factors, it can result in attachment trauma or an attachment style that can cause problems in their relationships later in life.

6 Ways To Break The Cycle of Absent Fathers

The absence of a father figure in a child’s life can create a void that seems impossible to fill. It’s like a puzzle missing a crucial piece, leaving it incomplete and unsatisfying. But fear not, for there are ways to break the cycle of absent fathers and help children thrive. So let’s explore five powerful ways to bring positive changes and build a brighter future for the fatherless.

• 1. Ask for Help 

We all need support on our journey toward fulfilling our true potential. Seeking help from a healing professional is not a sign of weakness but rather a strength. 

Allowing someone to guide us toward becoming the best version of ourselves shows that we are committed to taking responsibility for our lives and that we have the courage to be vulnerable. It takes bravery to open up to someone, but the benefits can be life-changing.

• 2. Learn to Forgive and Accept

One way to overcome the absence of a father figure is to learn how to forgive and accept the situation. Holding onto resentment and bitterness can only create more pain and suffering. By choosing to forgive, we release ourselves from the burden of anger and hurt, allowing us to move forward with greater clarity and peace of mind. 

Acceptance is also key, as it helps us acknowledge the reality of the situation and find ways to work around it.

• 3. Become Self-Aware

We can take proactive steps to respond to our pain when we acknowledge the emotional impact and behavioral tendencies of having an absent parent or living in a divorced home. This means choosing to respond with greater self-love, control, and wisdom rather than reacting impulsively and unconsciously. 

Without this understanding, we may find ourselves aimlessly searching for something to fill the void, not truly knowing what we’re looking for or why.

• 4. Believe In Yourself and Your Power

Only when we fully realize our incredible capacity for growth, transformation, healing, and forgiveness can we truly live our lives to the fullest. We possess the power to build our own reality, regardless of what external circumstances we may face. This realization can be a radical shift in perspective, as it means taking full responsibility for our lives. But it’s a powerful mindset that works. 

• 5. Choose Your Relationship Wisely 

We need to realize our own worth and guard our inner light, being cautious of those who only care about themselves and aren’t interested in being a part of a family. It’s not hard to fall into the trap of accepting crumbs of attention just to avoid being alone, but we must break this cycle and choose partners who are capable, balanced, and open to personal growth.

• 6. Write Your Own Story

Last thing, don’t let your past define you, but take control of your narrative. Decide who you want to be and what you want to achieve in life. Write down your goals and aspirations, and take steps towards making them a reality. By focusing on your own journey and creating a positive future for yourself, you can break free from the limitations of your past and create a brighter future.

• Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the impact of absent fathers can be significant and far-reaching, affecting various aspects of an individual’s life. However, understanding the consequences and adopting effective coping strategies can overcome these challenges and lead a fulfilling life. Whether it’s seeking the help of a professional, practicing self-love and forgiveness, or writing your own story, some steps can be taken toward healing and personal growth. Remember that you are not alone, and with time, effort, and support, it is possible to break free from the cycle of absent fathers and create a brighter future for yourself.

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Coming to terms with the absence of my father

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It’s been about 15 years since my father has actually been in my life. You wouldn’t know that though if you were friends with him on Facebook because he wants those who do to think he’s in my life. The last time I saw him in person was five years ago when I was 14, which was by chance. 

I was at The Fresh Grocer on 40th and Chestnut with my mother and siblings. We bumped into him at the exit as we were leaving and he was coming in. We made small talk — he asked about school and I asked him about his life and his other children. 

I barely remember most of it but what I will never forget is, as we were saying goodbye, I told him I loved him.  He responded with a hesitant, “I love you, too,” as if he wasn’t expecting to have to say it at all.

As a child, the thing I dreaded the most was Father’s Day and having to spend it with my mother, who was celebrated on both of the parent holidays. I’d still always wish him a happy Father’s Day on Facebook just to keep the facade going, mostly for my sake. 

My big theory for him not being there was because of my mother. She’d always argue with him over the phone about child support and him just being a “deadbeat dad.” That theory stuck until I was old enough to realize it wasn’t a good excuse at all.

I can’t remember anything that happened to me before the age of four and I never understood why. My mother always tells me stories about how my dad was and the activities he used do with me. He’d bring me around his friends’ children and bought me my favorite cinnamon gum and soda pop. 

Over the years, I have tried so hard to remember those things but I can never seem to remember them. Today — for once — I understand why. He wasn’t just absent for most of my life; he was also absent in my mind.

For a while, I tried to just be content with his love through the internet, but it wasn’t enough. For my eighth grade graduation, he posted a picture of me that my mother sent to him on his Facebook and captioned it, “I’m proud of you, my son.” 

I had a seat reserved for my dad to sit in, but it remained empty throughout the entire ceremony. It was the exact same way for fifteen of my birthdays. 

I tried to see him again last year. I planned it about five days prior, and it was all supposed to go just like this: We’d meet up on a Saturday at noon. He’d introduce me to his father, who had just been released from prison. We’d go see “Black Panther” together since it had just come out, and maybe we’d go eat. 

He agreed to the plans. 

The days leading up to it, I was excited. I was looking at the start of redeeming a relationship with my father, and I was so happy he even agreed in the first place. Then the day came. 

Around 3 p.m. that Saturday, he texted me explaining that a family member of ours was in a car accident and that he couldn’t make it. As heartbroken as I was, I told him that I understood. However, I found out that same night from his Facebook that he actually went to go see the movie on his own, which made me feel stupid and naïve.

Sadly enough, I wasn’t the only child in Kensington that had or still has to deal with having an absent father. I see it all the time here — sons with fathers who are strung out on drugs, incarcerated, or just for other reasons are not around. For example, recently there was a child on a bus who was with his parents, and just beside him, his father was strung out, bent over, and under the influence of drugs. 

All of that takes more of a toll on kids than those who don’t experience this can fathom. Lots of young men who lacked their own fathers grow up to either be the same way or grow up thinking it is okay to disrespect women because they had no male figure to teach them otherwise. The mental battle that a person can carry for many years is something that no one should have to go through.

There are too many men like my father in this world and many more people like me. Although I’ve never had these feelings, I know things, like brushing your daughter’s hair, teaching your son how to play basketball, and being there for their high school graduation, are some of the best feelings in the entire world to a father and a child. If you’re a dad now or soon will be, don’t miss out on those things and don’t let your kid miss out on a father.

Coming to terms with having an absent father is a long and painful path. This past January, my father sent me his traditional “Happy birthday, champ.” It was the first time he messaged me in a year after standing me up. But this time was different; I told him how I felt about everything, hoping he would feel that pain I have felt for almost fifteen years and change his ways. 

I didn’t get that much from expressing myself, but what I did get was a chance to finally let him know my true feelings, which helped me a lot. There’s still pain, and for others going through this, there will still be pain for them, too. 

However, no one is alone in this. 

Just as much as this essay is for me, it’s for all of those who have an absent father. My voice is yelling for all of us. It may be cracked and hoarse, but it will never stop until we’re all heard.

What did you think about this story? Send a note to [email protected], and we’ll consider publishing it in our Voices section. You can also tell us what you think in person at our neighborhood events .

Editor: Siani Colón / Story Designer: Jillian Bauer-Reese / Translator: Kristine Aponte

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My Absent Father

By Jane Smiley

Our family abounded in tall, handsome veterans of the Second World War. My uncle Hal had been an Army photographer—his job was to lie in the belly of U.S. bombers and take pictures of the bombings, to make sure that the targets had been destroyed. My uncle Carl flew planes in the Pacific. My absent father was said to be cut from the same angular, dark-haired, hypermasculine pattern. The war may not actually have been a constant topic of conversation in my childhood, but it seemed to be, at least to me. These men stood up straight, as if still in uniform, spoke in loud voices, as if still giving orders.

But, around the time of my first birthday, in 1950, my father was placed in a veterans’ hospital with some sort of mental disorder, which may have been schizophrenia or may have been P.T.S.D. or may have been something else. For a year and a half after my father went into the hospital, I lived with my mother’s parents in St. Louis while my mother stayed in Michigan, attempting to understand their future, her future, and my future, and so my father became a fictional character—portrayed by my mother in detail and with a tragic air. He was uniquely handsome (“Gregory Peck”), brilliant, and charismatic. He had gone to West Point and chosen the cavalry—but the cavalry was disbanded, so they put him in the tank corps, except that he was too tall for a tank. He turned to the Army Air Forces, but because he was too tall for a plane he invented a way of refueling planes in midair. When they tested his “hypodermic method,” one of the testing planes crashed and the pilot was killed. While my father was working out the kinks, the British came up with another method, and he found himself back in the infantry. He was sent to Bavaria to organize and aid the sea of refugees then flooding in from the east, and there he met my mother, who was serving in the Wac. The Army and the war provided the grand backdrop for my father’s dramatic episodes of bad luck, but he did not fit in there.

When my father did visit, when I was four, he filled our one-bedroom apartment with his resonant voice and his six-foot-four frame. I found it strange that he was there in bed with her (where I often nestled or played or chatted) and strange to see his things on the bathroom counter. I felt a hovering shift in the atmosphere that denoted that things would soon be done differently around here, and an answering feeling of dread. My father didn’t have a lot to say to me, but one morning he called me over to him when I came out of the bathroom, turned me around, and pulled down my pants to see whether I had wiped myself properly. The rest of the visit remains hazy—maybe because the hygiene incident was so vividly unprecedented. I do remember him showing us how to work the new television.

My parents were divorced shortly after the visit, but my mother continued to tell me about my father’s dashing genius. His uncle, a Michigan state legislator, had gotten him into West Point after misadventures elsewhere. At West Point, he was almost cashiered for insubordination several times. At the end of the war, he got a general discharge instead of an honorable discharge. When my mother and he ended up in Los Angeles, in the late forties, he could not find a job—my mother earned their daily bread. The implication of this latest fact might have been that his problem was unusual. Though unemployment among veterans was generally high, perhaps potential employers could sense that he would be hard to handle and arrogant. But another possibility was always there in my mother’s stories—maybe he was just too good for them. When I was ten or eleven, she found a photograph from the newspaper announcement of their marriage. Since she’d been working for that newspaper at the time, it was a large picture, full length. She looked like Ingrid Bergman and he looked like, yes, Gregory Peck. The article was dated December 7, 1948. This time, she told me how he had wooed her with ideas for all sorts of brilliant inventions, which he had lost interest in prematurely. It was he who had bought my innovative baby bottles—they were right out of “Popeye,” the nipples at the ends of long hoses. For a long time, we did have a few items around the house that he’d thought were brilliant, for example a record player for 45s—33s, he thought, were going nowhere. Really, though, he preferred the wire recorder to the tape recorder, fidelity and purity over convenience. As for my mother’s aspirations as a writer, my father told her that writing was for “second-rate minds”—a novel, for example, could never be as well written as the Army Field Manual. She seemed to forgive him this prejudice—he was just so compelling.

My mother got full custody of me, and I later learned that my father had a habit of driving to St. Louis, then up and down my grandparents’ street, hoping to see me. My grandmother was adamant—she sent him away. I remember his arriving only one time. Perhaps I was seven. I was happy to see him, in spite of the toilet-training incident. He was still handsome and still had that fictional extra dimension that my now domesticated uncles lacked. I sat on his lap on the front porch of my grandparents’ house for a bit while he chatted with my grandfather in the other chair. My grandmother watched from just inside the screen door, and then my father walked down to the street and got into his car.

As the years went by, I stopped listening to stories about my father, stopped paying attention to the murmurs of compassion for me as a fatherless girl. I took my uncle to father-daughter night at school, and I viewed the fathers of my friends with some skepticism—they seemed tall and vapid, much less dynamic than the mothers. Thinking of my father made me nervous, but I did visit one set of cousins. They were nice; they had a boat; they were well behaved and circumspect. When my uncle, my father’s youngest brother, spoke, he made pronouncements rather than jokes. The relationship went nowhere.

The traditional Freudian interpretation of how boys and girls grow into sexuality is based on Greek myths—Oedipus, Electra—but as soon as I read those myths (in eighth grade, in Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology”) I sensed that they had nothing to do with me, a child of divorce. I did have a complex, though, one I call the Tom Sawyer complex. The great boon of my childhood was my boy cousins. Jody was almost three years older (born in November, 1946), and Steve was two years older (born in July, 1947). They were dynamic and handsome, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

My grandparents’ house was where we gathered, and my grandparents let the boys run free. My grandfather had grown up a bit wild, in the eighteen-nineties and nineteen-hundreds, and though our parents recalled him as very strict, by the time we came along, those days had passed. My grandfather was more interested in playing golf and making jokes, and my grandmother liked baking and gossiping with her friends and neighbors. Their house was comfortable rather than stylish, filled with my grandmother’s crocheting and embroidery. If my grandmother ever yelled at us, I don’t remember it—the most she ever did was throw her hands in the air and tsk. My grandfather had a hotter temper, but, especially with the boys, he was playful and teasing.

The boys climbed on roofs and clambered up trees; they put pennies on the railroad tracks and firecrackers under tin cans. They threw water balloons out the front window of my grandparents’ house and they sledded down the steepest hills. They told me things (that I could not, in fact, marry my mother; that everything on the back of a cereal box was true; what a Communist was; that a bird ate seven times its weight every day) and showed me things (a German helmet that my uncle Hal brought back from the war with a hole where the shell fragment went through, the difference between a flush and a straight, why you couldn’t get a plain hamburger at McDonald’s). They took me places (to the swimming pool, on the Round Up at the carnival, downtown to the drugstore, to their friends’ houses where strip poker was being played—sort of). They propounded theories, fell asleep in front of late movies, stayed up all night. They were always on the go, but they were always nice to me, maybe nicer to me as their cousin than they would have been if I had been a pesky little sister.

When I was eleven, my mother remarried. My stepfather was portly and kind, too old to have fought in the war. He was far more successful than my father would ever be. What he did in the world—run a small petroleum company, oversee his own children as well as his birth family (he was the eldest and had a mentally handicapped brother), travel to the Middle East and Venezuela, build a house for my mother, and allow me to buy my first horse—was saintly but not mythic. I am sorry to say that this image of kindliness and success did not form the iconography of my desires.

My new stepbrother, Bill, though, was the same age as my cousins, just as good-looking but with a Catholic twist—he wore his hair in a ducktail with long sideburns, he smoked, and he was always working on the engine of his ’56 Chevy. He was as wild as they come, a good girl’s dream older brother, who climbed out of the upstairs window when he was grounded, had passionate girlfriends who called and came over day and night, and wore a permanent half smile, as if the joke of existence was always being freshly told. The Tom Sawyers were a threesome now, brawny and daring, handsome and on the move. If one didn’t have a motorcycle, another one did. The cops, the narrow escapes, the pieces of good luck, the sparkling blue eyes, the irreverent laughter were features of all their adventures.

When I left home to go to college, I was thrilled to discover that Tom Sawyers abounded, and that they were neither cousins nor stepbrothers. Just like the boys back home, they had theories and ambitions. If they were not in trouble at the moment, they recently had been in trouble, so they had stories to tell. And just like my cousins, they never even thought of restricting my freedom. There was a girl in my dormitory who told me that her boyfriend wouldn’t allow her to come out of her room unless her hair, clothing, and makeup were perfect—slavery. I wore what I wanted to wear, and if that included belting my navy surplus jeans with a string, well, I liked the effect. My boyfriends egged me on: Let’s do live in a Marxist commune and talk political theory day and night, let’s do work in factories or hitchhike to Cape Cod or drive a clunker from New York to St. Louis. Let’s go to Europe for a year with only our backpacks. Let’s work on an archaeological dig. Let’s get lost. Let’s do drive the motorcycle a thousand miles (including the mere six hours from St. Louis to Cleveland), and when it gets stolen let’s hitchhike home. Let’s live in a ramshackle cabin and forage for heating wood. Let’s take the band on the road, let’s live on two hundred and sixty dollars a month, let’s drive to California and up the coast to Oregon and back home. Let’s get pregnant, let’s start a family, what could go wrong?

Eventually, I became gainfully employed and the author of two novels. In the fall of 1983, one night when my husband was away and my daughters had been put to bed, I was unaccountably seized with thoughts of my father. I went to the phone and called information for the town where he lived, and tricked them into giving me his address. The next day I sent him “Barn Blind” and “At Paradise Gate,” my first two novels. I toyed with enclosing a note, decided against it. I didn’t know what to say, for one thing, and I wasn’t sure how big a step I wanted to take toward acquaintanceship, for another. I was a little relieved when there was no response, and I forgot about it until two months later, when I got a call telling me that my father had died, leaving me his only heir. The caller was a woman my father had known—the circumstances of his passing were mysterious. His friends suspected that he had starved himself to death, as he was prey to numerous anxieties about food. Or, they thought, maybe the hospital had let him die because he refused treatment. His abode was a mobile home, so full of books and pamphlets and other debris that it sagged on its foundation. Did I want to come and go through all the stuff?

I did not. I felt even less about the death of my father than I expected to feel—not only no sense of loss but also no curiosity.

And, by the way, a copy of one of my books was found in his bed. He had been reading it the night they took him to the hospital—this struck me as eerie but not moving. I knew he was a curious man—I gave it no more meaning than that.

In the end, they sent me his car. It was a Datsun, full of little gadgets that plugged into the cigarette-lighter socket. A pair of his flip-flops, very large, was under the seat. The carpeting was sandy. It was as if he had just gotten out of the driver’s seat and gone into the house, a patch of Florida in the midst of an Iowa winter. I sold it and bought a station wagon, but not before retrieving from the trunk a steel file box full of photographs, some identified and some mysterious—was my father’s father really the youngest of twelve? Really the son of a photographer from Rock Island, Illinois, who seemed to have taken the photos (including several of himself tipping his hat to the camera)? The possible great-grandfather had the look—tall, lean, bald, bespectacled. The most mysterious photo in the box was of a weather-beaten, unsmiling fisherman, taken in Nova Scotia. Was that where they came from—Glasgow to Canada to Illinois, hardscrabble all the way, until one of them, the youngest, the one with his arm around the dog, married into a dynasty?

All the Tom Sawyers settled down. Bill became an accountant. Steve became an editor. Jody completed his service in the Navy and went to work organizing large construction projects. They replaced their wild ways with self-knowledge and responsibility. Their avatars, the ones I married and had children with, made similar transitions. White-haired now, but still fun and funny. Our children are the same age that I was when I was glorying in our freedom.

A few years ago, after several decades of not saying much about my father, my mother remembered another story. They were living in Los Angeles. My mother was pregnant with me. They were walking down the street, and he suddenly grabbed her hand and took her into a Catholic Church, where he went up to the altar and knelt down. My mother was both surprised and alarmed—normally, my father was vociferously opposed to religion, his acknowledged deities being science and technology. But he knelt there for a fairly long time, and seemed to be praying. When he stood up, he took her to him and said, “You have been given to me as my handmaiden.”

I can easily imagine my mother, looking like Ingrid Bergman, recoiling from this role. My grandparents hadn’t raised their ambitious eldest daughter to be anyone’s handmaiden. But I was about to be born; my mother had committed herself. Maybe she thought it would all turn out O.K. And it did, though not in a way that anyone could have foreseen.

Because my father gave me two precious gifts. One of them was his height. The height was the surprise. All through elementary school, I was the same size as my friends, sometimes a half an inch taller or shorter, sometimes a couple of pounds more or less. I fit in with the crowd in the most obvious ways. When they weighed and measured us at the beginning of seventh grade, I was about the same as the other girls, five feet one and a hundred pounds. Two years later, I was six feet tall and a hundred and twenty-five pounds. My mother was so worried that she sent me to a growth specialist, and he estimated what was to come. He was right—between ninth and tenth grade, I grew another two inches and gained twenty pounds, and then I stopped and awakened from a growth-induced haze. I can’t say I minded being so tall. There were models my height—I had a picture of Veruschka on my mirror. She and Vanessa Redgrave were a two-person example for tall girls of how to get ahead. Usually, Veruschka and Vanessa were photographed alone, in a park, on a street or forest road, so that’s what I thought tall girls did—they made their way, free and strong.

But my father’s gift of absence—I’ve come to realize that that was even more precious. Because I have children of my own, I have theories and beliefs about raising children, and one of them is that a man who pulled down his daughter’s pants to check her hygiene would have had a role for me to play (maybe handmaiden, maybe something else) and a standard for me to live up to. He would have seen me as a reflection of himself, and as his self became more desperate and disorganized, his demands on me would have intensified—the world is full of men who, once they have lost power over their colleagues or their lives, redouble their power over their families. He would have made sure that I knew that I was female, and that females have limited capacities and defined roles. He would have disdained my failure to grasp, say, algebra, and my devotion to the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew. Unlike my grandparents, he would not have been wise enough to leave me alone, and unlike my mother he would have been idle and looking for a project.

About a year ago, one of my cousins on my father’s side said that he, his sisters, and another cousin were coming to California and would like to meet me. I was cool to the idea, but I did think that the metal box of old photos belonged more to them than it did to me.

We met in Los Altos over a long breakfast, and they were not only charming but affectionate and supportive of one another. I admired them. They had, indeed, suffered the difficult childhoods that my grandmother had been determined to protect me from, but they had also benefitted from years of therapy and years of scrupulous honesty. And they loved my father, who had befriended them and saved them when their own parents, his sister and her husband, failed them. To them, he was kind, good-natured, and funny. And my cousin told me a story about visiting my father in Florida. They were all in their teens. One day, he took them to his favorite beach, and after they laid out their towels and umbrellas he went over to a tree and set his loafers at the base. Into the heels of his loafers he put a few nuts, then he called out. I don’t remember the names he used, but let’s say Lucy and Desi—something amusing like that. Pretty soon, a pair of gray squirrels appeared in the upper reaches of the tree, looked at everyone. My father backed away, and the squirrels skittered down the tree and ate the nuts in the shoes, and also a few more that he gave them by hand. A nice man.

I enjoyed this story, but even so, I don’t feel that I missed anything. I know from my own experience as a parent that sometimes it takes disappointment and heartbreak, as well as a little distance, to disabuse you of your cherished notions of who you are, who your child is, and how you might “mold” him or her. When my father knew me, he seems to have been both confused and very sure of himself, a fearsome combination.

The Tom Sawyers made chaos and distracted my mother, stepfather, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. This gave me the private space of being a comparatively good girl, where I thought my own thoughts and came up with my own ideas. A girl who is overlooked has a good chance of not learning what it is she is supposed to do. A girl who is free can grow up free of preconceptions. Sometimes, from the outside, my work and my life look daring, but I am not a daring person. I am just a person who was never taught what not to try.

Books & Fiction

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By Alexandra Styron