Prison or College? Fathers’ Impact on Young Men’s Path in Life
The War on Men is a disturbing reality. There is a growing crisis in America of criminal or otherwise dysfunctional youth, and fatherlessness is a key factor. As society ever more aggressively denigrates true masculinity, the family, and fatherhood, young men in particular are stuck in a cycle of immaturity, abuse, crime, and lack of either motivation or success.
My mother has frequently observed that most men in America now are either bullies or effeminates; that is, they either wrongly believe that masculinity means exploiting and domineering over others, or they are spineless cowards. Societies run by the former look like the hell of Gaza or Iran, while the latter group (effeminates) is running the West into the ground. A major part of the problem in the West is absent or abusive fathers.
The Institute for Family Studies published new research:
‘What we see for young men today is a family-to-prison-or-college pipeline that is more likely to deliver boys from intact families towards college graduation and boys from non-intact families towards prison or jail…
Young men from a range of different non-intact family forms are more likely to end up in prison than graduate from college by their late-20s…
Young men raised by their two married, biological parents are almost 20 percentage points more likely to graduate college than end up in prison/jail…
Family structure, particularly the presence of a father in the home, should not be overlooked when trying to remedy the plight of young men…young men are 3-4 times more likely to spend any time in jail or prison compared to young women by the time they turn about 30.’
Now, of course, college certainly isn’t the only measure of success. But young men are also not joining the workforce in general in as great a number as they used to. “For young men (ages 16-24), labor force participation rates are dropping. In 1980, the share of young men who were looking for or had a job was 84%, but now it has dropped to 60 percent.”
Of course, there are various factors feeding into the “male malaise,” including (right now) migrants taking all Biden’s “job gains,” and, most especially, all of the woke ideologies like radical feminism, Marxism, and LGBTQ ideology teaching men to reject marriage and fatherhood and to be selfish, weak, and apathetic. Indeed, these ideologies are dangerous precisely because they tell men either to sterilize themselves (contraception, transgenderism), to have relationships that cannot naturally produce children (homosexuality), or to hate themselves. And so, too many fathers now are neglectful, abusive, or entirely absent.
Related: No ‘Holier Name’: A Tribute to Fathers
As the Institute for Family Studies stated, “The most striking finding is that young men from non-intact families are more likely to land in prison or jail than they are to graduate from college, whereas young men raised by their married fathers are significantly more likely to graduate from college than spend any time in prison/jail.”
God knew what he was doing when He established the family, with mother, father, and children all living and working together. Until America has a new generation of dedicated, loving, and married fathers, the youth of America will only continue down the road of self-destruction.