Privileges of Two Healthy Parent Relationships for Children Growing

Father Privilege

Experiencing life in a fatherless home can have devastating effects on a person’s future. One of the biggest privileges that a person can be granted is being born into a stable family. In America, fatherless homes are a growing phenomenon which seems to be growing worse by the year. Statistics have revealed that just having two good parents in a home will drastically improve a child’s chances of becoming a good future parent and less likely to end up in jail. It is predominately important for a person to grow up with a healthy fatherly relationship in their life. Growing up with a father in the family has been proven to be a key advantage in helping both young boys’ and girls’ emotional state of mind and improving their opportunities and futures.

Having two healthy parent relationships growing is preeminent to a boy’s psychological well-being. As stated in an article from Marripedia, “According to Rolf Loeber, Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Epidemiology at the Western Psychiatric Institute in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, ‘A close and intense relationship between a boy and his father prevents hostility and inappropriate aggressiveness’” (Marripedia). Boys who grow up with a father are less likely to display aggressive behaviors due to having the security of his father. Males are more prone to violence than females, so it is a crucial point in development that young boys learn how to control their aggression. It is a sad disadvantage that many boys cannot learn these things from their fathers, being subjected to the world without lessons from their father.

Young boys need a masculine figure who can show them what it means to be a good man in society. They need guidance through their development to adulthood. This is prevalent with fatherless home’s constantly being cited as a source of crime rates. “These children are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact families and have the highest rates of incarceration in the United States” (Marripedia). Having an involved and nurturing father in the family is substantial to a child’s emotional development.

Masculine roles traditionally set societal and moral duties for children to follow, and because of this there is a direct correlation with damaged people coming from homes without these advantages. According to a source from Scout, “Almost all psychologist and sociologists believe that being reared without a father is bad for children, and that children reared in such homes are less likely to turn into well-behaved adolescents and well-adjusted adults” (Harris). It is important for a boy to grow up with a father to be successful in life. The lack of masculine role models affects many young women as well.

An article from Psychology Today states, “Girls whose fathers left either before they were born or up to age 5 were seven to eight times more at risk of becoming pregnant as an adolescent than girls living with their fathers” (Allen). A home without a healthy masculine model in a young girl’s life can cause her to be dependent on an unhealthy relationship with a man in the future, leading to a higher risk of teenage pregnancy. Experiencing pregnancy as a teen can be very traumatic on both the mother and her child.

The mother is forced to completely change her lifestyle before she is completely mature, and the stress is felt by her unborn child. In a lot of cases where teenage girls become pregnant abortion occurs, which is a murder of the unborn baby. Often times women who give birth in their teenage years are more likely to have to raise the child without the father’s involvement in raising their child. Other dangers include a young woman subjecting herself to an abusive relationship in the future. Fathers are needed in young girls lives to role model the type of man she should seek out as a husband in the future.

Young girls are very impressionable to their fathers; Therefore, it is important for a young girl to see her father being a loving husband to her mother so that when the daughter is one day seeking out her potential husband, there will be a higher chance that she will be attracted to men who are like her father. Most girls withouta father gravitates toward accepting any masculine “love” that they can find, which oftentimes can be entering an abusive relationship or prostitution. The lack of a father in the home is likely to cause a young girl to have extremely low self-esteem in multiple ways.

A therapist, Deborah Moskovitch, states “Academically, personally, professionally, physically, socially, and romantically, a woman's self-esteem is diminished in every setting if she did not form a healthy relationship with her father”(WeHaveKids). A young girl growing up in a home with a supporting and loving father present is essential to her confidence with herself and her abilities. When a father is missing in a girl’s life it can lead her on a dangerous road emotionally, leaving her to believe she will never be enough for the world. If a young woman is abandoned by her father, she is more likely to end up in prostitution verses a young woman who was shown love from her father.

When a girl is neglected of her father’s masculinelove and care in her younger years, her low self-esteem may provoke her to believe her life has little to no purpose. As a result of this she may be susceptible to prostitution. An involved father is one of the highest privileges a young girl can have in her life.Another harmful effect of a father neglecting his family is the reduction of the mother’s physical ability to take care of her child.

Marripedia reveals, “the added emotional and physical stress may result in fatigue and less parent availability to the child, increasing the risk of a relationship with the child that is emotionally more distant. The single mother generally is less able to attend to all of her child's needs as quickly or as fully as she could if she were well taken care of by a husband”(Marripedia).

When a father abandons his family, the mother experiences drastic emotional stress which disturbs her physical ability to nurse her child. People often do not appreciate the psychological advantages they were given as kids. Young boys need a father to lead them to be a man of moral standards. Girl’s younger years have a great impact on what an eventual woman will find admirable in men. Having a father present in the home is a privilege that is sadly becoming a less common occurrence within families. An abandoned mother experiencing effects from the neglect can sometimes stimulate her to be neglectful of her children as well.Children need unconditional love from both the feminine and the masculine alike.