When the father isn’t in the picture, boys suffer. When 12 million boys are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, America suffers.

There are a hundred reasons a child might grow up without a father in the house, and most boys in such a circumstance turn out fine, thanks to a heroic mother, a stepfather, adoptive parents, or just plain resilience and luck. But the odds are against the boys without their biological fathers present, as the Institute for Family Studies laid out in a recent brief titled “‘Life Without Father’: Less College, Less Work, and More Prison for Young Men Growing Up Without Their Biological Father.”