The data that reveals their effectiveness in reducing human suffering is available for all who care to know in a free website, FamilyFacts.org. www.FamilyFacts.org is a clearinghouse of useful, reliable information distilled from numerous studies and academic journals worldwide. The findings from lengthy reports are boiled down into bite-sized blocks that even the most jaded citizen, lofty politician or pontificating pundit can understand.
The following finding about fathers, for example, shows why BOND’s mission is so critical. It was published in the journal “Child Development” and compiled from samples of girls in the United States and New Zealand (followed from age 5 to about age 18):
“Even when controlling for differences in family background, father absence was associated with the likelihood that adolescent girls will be sexually active and become pregnant as teenagers. This association was strongest for daughters whose fathers were absent when they were younger. Compared with the pregnancy rates of girls whose fathers were present, rates of teenage pregnancy were 7 to 8 times higher among girls whose fathers were absent early in their childhoods and 2 to 3 times higher among those who suffered father-absence later in their childhood.”
If that doesn’t prove the need to rebuild the family by “rebuilding the man,” nothing does. And unless each of us is willing to play an active role in changing America back into a Culture of Belonging, we can expect more brokenness, more poverty, more shattered hearts and lives -- more rejection.