Fathers play a crucial role in the family and society, but they often aren’t given enough credit as the essential leaders our children need. In the latest video in Live Action’s “Truth About Sex” series, founder and president Lila Rose discusses the crisis of fatherlessness in an attempt to show the value of a good father.
In the video, Rose discusses both the consequences and the causes of fatherlessness, ending with a call to action for men to step up and reverse these devastating social trends.
Consequences of fatherlessness
Rose explains that absent fathers play a large contributing factor in the country’s high abortion rates. “It’s no surprise that a common denominator in 90 percent of abortions is an uncommitted biological father,” she says. “Men matter.”
She says the foremost consequence of absent fathers is the killing of preborn children, pointing to statistics that show that there are over 2,500 abortions every day in America, and around 86-87% of those are to unmarried women. Rose says this is a massive problem, because this means that women often don’t have support from their babies’ fathers.
The pro-life movement has focused strongly on caring and supporting single mothers to empower them to choose life because when they don’t have that married, committed partner, they are more likely to abort.
Another consequence of fatherlessness is poverty, with Rose noting that the lowest poverty rate in the United States is for households headed by a married couple. Poverty rates rise in single family homes and in homes without a father. She also notes that a child raised in a home without a father is at a higher risk for poverty, alcohol or substance abuse, and criminal activity — and says that boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to engage in criminal activity.
Causes of fatherlessness
Rose says the primary contributors to fatherlessness today are abortion and contraception, which enable men to reject commitment and fatherhood.
Data shows that an increase in abortion coincides with an increase in father-absent homes. Statistically, a woman is more likely to commit abortion if she feels she doesn’t have the support of the father. This ties hand-in-hand with the availability of contraception, which often increases the number of sexual encounters between people who aren’t faithfully committed to each other and who aren’t intending to get pregnant.
Another contributor to fatherlessness is an increase in sex outside of marriage, which leads to so-called “unwanted” pregnancies and presents a significant temptation to abort. The sexual revolution succeeded in normalizing premarital sex, and the media has made sex outside of marriage the norm while simultaneously degrading the value of fathers; all of these have contributed to the breakdown of the family.
“So what is the solution?” asks Rose. “How can we fight back against the crisis of fatherlessness?”
The answer, she says, is a return to sexual ethics. “We can choose to practice sexual restraint and choose responsibility. We need to put sex back where it belongs — in marriage.” She goes on, “We also need depictions of strong, likeable, devoted fathers in media. Sex is for husbands and sex is for fathers.”
“Men, you are needed. You are desperately needed,” Rose says. “We need you as husbands, fathers, father figures and brothers. We need you as gentlemen who will respect and protect women and children. Lives literally depend on it.”
