Meron Medhanie
Breaking the Cycle The importance of having a father is crucial to the development of a young boy into a man. A lot of these fathers are missing due to willful neglect, but significant amounts are imprisoned or deceased. Government research has concluded that children whose fathers are not involved in their lives are 20 times more likely to end up in prison, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, and 10 times more likely to abuse drugs. Having a broken home is an issue that creates a vicious cycle that affects not just underprivileged households, but the entire United States.
Fathers play a large role in nurturing language, cognitive, and motor development in the lives of their young children. Leaving a child without the influence of a strong male role model unfairly sets them up for failure. Fixing the problem stays focused on African Americans in specific, because nationally, more than 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock compared to 53 percent Hispanics and 29 percent whites. This cycle can be seen through boys who grow up without fathers, making them more inclined to engage in crime and risky activities such as unprotected sex, and as a result are more likely conceive a child. In turn, these people are generally not fit to raise a child because they lack proper education, thus creating a cycle.
Despite the magnitude of this situation, there is a solution: educate youth about the negative effects of crime, drug use, unprotected sex, and the abandonment of a child. Ideally, all middle school curricula will incorporate a program for both genders using our property and sales taxes to cover the costs. However, education will sway kids from engaging in dangerous acts such as drugs, unprotected sex, and crime. In addition, these programs will emphasize the importance that a family plays in the development of a child’s life. The benefits from these programs include less spending on police, prisons, and legal officials because of the crime reduction. In addition, because children in the future are raised better, this will decrease their financial issues
Psychological research across families from all ethnic backgrounds suggests that fathers' affection and increased family involvement help promote children's social and emotional development. A man named Sony Lee, whom I’ve had the pleasure to volunteer with, has created an organization called Son of a Saint that educates and mentors young minority boys who have missing fathers or no parents at all. This program provides structure, educational courses, and positive male role modeling in order to foster their development into contributing members of society. Granted only have been up and running for a few years, drastic improvements in the boys attitudes, grades, and social lives have been noticed to those that have stuck with Son of a Saint program. From observing the charisma of these kids personally and from the testimony of Mr. Lee, I can attest that improvements can be made in the behaviors of boys without fathers.
Providing educational courses for youths in school has potential flaws getting passed the learning barriers that are associated with school. When a child learns something in school, he or she associates it with school. Presenting topics that are outside the control of the schools are very challenging to teach. One could debate that matters such as sex and drugs might be better taught by responsible family members. However, some households do not