Jacob Babb 1

Jacob Babb

English 1201

Professor Flores

24 March 2019

Affect of Fatherhood on a Child’s Life

I decided to write my research paper on how having a father affected a child’s life

trajectory for a few reasons. First, I have an adopted little brother who is 11 years old. We

adopted him from Dayton and he never had a father growing up. While we adopted him while he

was 5 years old, the lack of a father figure for that short time very clearly impacted his life in

several ways. This sparked my interest in the topic and I have been very interested in it ever

since.

I also have seen many statistics online and on social media concerning the topic of

fatherhood. I am somewhat politically involved and so I find questions relating to our social

fabric very interesting. Many statistics I have seen claim that fatherhood, or as is sadly more

often the case the lack of fatherhood, impacts a child’s life more than any other significant factor

while growing up. I am excited to be able to do my own research on the topic to discover what is

true and what is exaggerated about the impact a father can have on a child’s life.

I feel very passionately about this topic. I fear the direction that America is going from a

moral and political point of view. I think that the fatherhood has a huge impact on the trajectory

of a child’s life and because of this, I believe it is a very important topic to address. I believe that

if more fathers were in children’s lives, there would be less problems that stem from crime, gang
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violence, etc. I think this is due to the fact that a strong father figure provides a good role model

to follow and while having a father doesn’t prevent a child from going down the “wrong path”

100% of the time, I do believe that it greatly decreases the odds of this happening. I know that

right now in America statistically speaking, there are more fatherless homes of black children

than fatherless homes of white children. I know that there are many studies already out that

discuss this affect and am very interested to learn more about it.

Over the course of doing research for this paper, I am excited to have the opportunity to

learn about a few things. First, how large is the impact of fatherhood on a child’s life versus

other factors such as poverty. I know that this is by no means an easy problem to fix and I am

curious to discover the answers to this question. I am also curious to learn how race impacts

fatherhood, or lack thereof and if it does have an impact, why this is. Finally, I am curious what

current solutions are being discussed if any and how effectively they are working.