Broken Homes Need Church Fathers

This article is published in full at Crisis Magazine.

The Catholic sphere is rightly occupied with emphasizing the need for two-parent homes and healthy marriages that provide children with the home lives that they have a right to. Yet, we must also acknowledge and confront the reality that an increasing number of children will be denied that.

Almost a quarter of children in the United States live with only one parent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s the world’s highest rate. It’s heart-wrenching; for single-parent homes are connected with higher rates of substance abuse, criminality, suicide, and poverty. If outcome is indicative of oppression, as many claim, then the most oppressive start is single parenthood. Despite this data being well known, almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019.

In the case of children raised without two parents, to whom could they be expected to turn to fill the void? Likewise, those who were raised in immoral households—becoming more common in a slipping secular society—must receive moral/spiritual guidance from somewhere. It’s not possible to receive no moral instruction, for there is always moral meaning and evaluation assigned to behavior: by word, by gesture, and—most ominously—by acquiescent silence. Whether from watching friends of the household, listening to the authoritarian guidance of the school system, or tuning in to the entertainment industry for role models, everyone gets moral instruction from somewhere.

Read the rest of this article at Crisis Magazine.