Where Are The Dads?

   To say that our country is going through a crisis, is not an exaggeration. With COVID-19 forcing families to stay in their homes, the stock market up one day and down the next, rioting in the streets by people who have no respect for persons or property, hospitals and jails at maximum capacity, families more and more in disarray, with more and more single mom trying to raise their children alone. Where are all the dads? Are they working extra ours, staring at a computer screen, watching sports, or hanging out at the corner with their buddies?

    At the very beginning when God created the world He proclaimed that it was not good for man to be alone and through Adam he instituted the family as the foundation of society. And at the center of the family God gave the man responsibility for the family. The most important job in our society is for men to teach, protect, care for, and guide their families. Within the family men are to train young boys to be responsible, establish good habits, and build character! So what has happened? Many dads are out of the picture. Why do we say that?

 Let’s look at some statistics.

•    Only 41 percent of today’s children will grow up in a two-parent family.

·         Over 100,000 children are left with one parent because of divorce each year. Nine out of 10 of these are with their mother.

·         Over 20 percent of children born are born without a father in the picture.

·         The majority of special needs children at school are boys.

·         It is not surprising that the FBI estimates that a massive amount of burglaries, drug abuse violations, motor vehicle theft, aggravated assault, and arsons are committed by youths under the age of 18. Eighty percent of these youths are boys.

·         In some cultures, the rate of infants being born to unwed mothers is in the 70 percent range.

 What does this lead to?

·         90 percent of all murders are committed by men

·         85 percent of all robberies are committed by men

·         80 percent of rapes are committed by men

·         75 percent of people arrested are men

And of young man without a father around:

·         71 percent will be high school dropouts

·         63 percent will be teenage suicide

·         70 percent will end up in prison

    This is an epidemic and it is generational. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. They do not take into account the number of wives that say their husband’s done really communicate with them. Men have copped out and dropped out and abandoned their God given role of father in the home either from ignorance or for various reasons that may even be either conscious or subconscious.

    This is the reason that our approach at A Call for Men is to teach men to accept responsibility, accept accountability, and to lead courageously with purpose to protect and grow family and community.

    This problem is the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century: turning the hearts of the fathers to their children so that the hearts of the children will turn back to their fathers.

    May the Lord grant us Grace and Strength to accomplish this.