Fathers
According to a new report from the Institute for American Values, men who have never married or are divorced have higher levels of testosterone than do married men, particularly married fathers. Since testosterone is associated with risk-taking and anti-social behavior, this makes the married man more civilized and dependable.
Girls in intact married households experience puberty later than girls in single-parent households. This is important, W. Bradford Wilcox explains, “because when girls develop prematurely, they are more likely to become attracted to older boys and men and to have sex and become pregnant at an early age.”
If a girl lives with an unrelated male (say, a stepfather or a mother’s boyfriend), she hits puberty even earlier than a girl living with only her mother. The speculation is that the father emits pheromones – biological chemicals communicating sexual signals – that delay puberty in his daughter, while an unrelated male emits pheromones that accelerate it.
Boys in a single-parent home are roughly twice as likely to have served jail time by their early 30s.
White and Hispanic teens living in households with a co-habiting couple actually have more behavioral problems than teens in single-parent households.
Sweden has an all-enveloping welfare state and system of socialized medicine, but even there, the report says, “Boys reared in single-parent homes were more than 50 percent more likely to die from a range of causes – such as suicide, accidents or addiction – than were boys reared in two-parent homes.”
“The Father Effect,” by Rich Lowry