VIRGINIA ALLEN: The Importance of Dads in an Increasingly Fatherless America.

There is a “father absence crisis in America,” according to National Fatherhood Initiative, and the results are sobering.

Studies have found that children raised without a father are:

At a higher risk of having behavioral problems.
Four times more likely to live in poverty.
More likely to be incarcerated in their lifetime.
Twice as likely to never graduate high school.
At a seven times higher risk of teen pregnancy.
More vulnerable to abuse and neglect.
More likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.
Twice as likely to be obese.

From education to personal health to career success, children who lack a father find themselves at a disadvantage to their peers raised in a two-parent household.

Murphy Brown was wrong and Dan Quayle was right.