There’s no good time to be an absent father — but especially not now.
The pandemic has created too many absences in our children’s lives: absence from school (and for some, absence from nutritious breakfasts and lunches), absence from friends, absence from grandparents who must guard their own health, absence from the financial security that comes from a parent having work, absence from a sense of safety and stability.
I know all about absent fathers; I was one myself. And if I could relive those decades, I would do it all differently.
Nearly 1 in 4 American children today (more than 24 million) live in single-parent households, usually without fathers. For minority children, the numbers who live without fathers is even greater: 42% of Hispanic children and nearly 67% of black children.
I don’t believe that all two-parent homes are better for children than single-parent homes, but I do think that our children are in the midst of a crisis. This is no time for any father living separately from his children to be an absent father as well.
When my son was born, I was 31 years old and busy with a drug habit. He was a few months old before I even saw him. Then, I became a street-walking, vacant-building living crack addict. During the next dozen years of my son’s life, I probably laid eyes on him just two or three times.
Back then, everyone called me “Hammer,” and I thought of myself as tough. Now, as I near 70, I know I wasn’t tough at all. Tough would have been being an active and supportive father.
I was 43 before I got myself clean. One morning, I woke up on a bench at a bus stop and said: “I must be crazy. This ain’t me.”
After rehab, I went to community college and earned a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s in social work from Washington University in St. Louis. When the opportunity came along to help other men (mostly dropouts with drug habits and prison records like I had) to become responsible fathers, I grabbed it.
That’s how the Fathers’ Support Center was born. It’s still what I do. In 23 years, we’ve had 17,000 men go through our programs, affecting the lives of more than 42,500 children.
Let’s be clear: if you’ve made a baby, you need to help support your child and your child’s mother. You also need to understand the psychological and emotional negatives for your child if you are not supportive. Children without fathers in their lives are more likely to run away, more likely to drop out of high school, more likely to become involved in crime and illegal drugs, and more likely to commit suicide. Girls without fathers in their lives are more likely to become teenage mothers.
And that’s without all the extra stresses on children from absences caused by the coronavirus.
So, what can fathers living outside their children’s homes do right now to help?
With all the loss of jobs, maybe you can’t contribute much to your child’s financial well-being. And with social distancing, even if it was OK with your child’s mother, you probably shouldn’t enter your child’s home.
But you can still enter your child’s daily life — with a phone, with FaceTime, with Zoom.
Call your children and ask about their day. Help with homework. Talk over problems they’re having. At bedtime, read a story. Or tell a story. Maybe tell the story of your own life: the things you did wrong and the things you did better.
As social distancing rules relax, take your son or daughter for a walk in the park, spend an afternoon playing ball, or explore a new part of town.
If you can be there every day for your child (even for now just by phone), you increase their sense of stability, support, and love. That will encourage them to strive to do their best and to have hope for the future.
In this moment, when our children experience so many absences, we — their fathers — need to help. Don’t be absent. Instead, it’s time to step up and say, “Here I am.”
Halbert Sullivan is the founder and CEO of Fathers & Families Support Center in St. Louis.
