But what about sex-specific outcomes?

So here’s an article published in September 2018 titled Sex-specific developmental effects of father absence on casual sexual behavior and life history strategy. It’s authored by Jessica Ehrman and Katherine Salman. It’s published in Evolutionary Psychological Science Volume 5, 2019.

Here’s the abstract.

A substantial body of research has investigated the effects of early family environments on the sexual maturity and behavior of adolescents and young adults.

Most of this research has focused primarily on, one, early childhood environments, two, these effects in females rather than males. Much less attention was devoted to males’ sexual maturity and behavior.

And additionally, there was emphasis on sexual behavior of adolescents and young adults.

To address these limitations, say the authors, they conducted a study.

And in this study, over 20 years, they discovered and they asked the participants about how many casual sex partners did they have, etc.

And here are the conclusions.

Consistent with theoretical predictions, males had more casual sex partners and a faster life history strategy than females.

In other words, males went for short-term mating.

For both males and females, continue the authors, longer time spent growing up with their biological father was associated with fewer casual sex partners and a slower life history strategy.

The current study also provides clear evidence of sex-specific developmental effects on reproductive strategies as a function of when, during development, father absence occurs.

When father absence occurred during middle childhood, females exhibited faster life history strategies.

Whereas when father absence occurred during adolescence, males exhibited faster life history strategies.

Together, these findings suggest the effects of father absence are not specific to females nor early childhood environments.

In addition, effects of father absence appear to persist beyond adolescence and early young adulthood with opposite effects on males and females reproductive strategies, depending on when during development, it occurs.

Family relations, interdisciplinary journal of applied family science.

As an article, trends in the economic well-being of unmarried parent families with children.

New estimates using improved measure of an improved measure of poverty was authored by Christopher Weimer, Liana Fox, Erwin Garfinkel and others. It was published in Population Research and Policy Review, volume 14 in 2021.

So it’s a very recent study.

Another surprise finding.

I’m again quoting the abstract.

Children born to unmarried parents make up an increasing share of American children.

But official poverty statistics provide little insight into their economic well-being because these statistics use an outdated definition of the family unit and an incomplete measure of family resources.

Using current population survey data and an improved measure of poverty, the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, we reassess long-term trends in poverty for children in unmarried parent families.

Those led by single mothers, those led by single fathers and those led by cohabiting couples.

And so we contrast this with their counterparts in married couple families.

So I repeat what they’re doing.

Using current population survey data and an improved measure of poverty, the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, what they did, they compared children in unmarried parent families, families with single mothers, families with single fathers, families where couples cohabited intermittently, they compared these children to children who lived in married couple families, typical traditional 1950s families.

What they found was a bit surprising.

We find, say the authors, that single mother families have the highest poverty rates among families.

No surprise there, both historically and today.

But the improved measure shows much larger declines in single mother’s family poverty rate over time.

Single father and cohabiting families also have high poverty rates, but those rates have also fallen by approximately one third since the 1960s.

So father absence is associated with poverty rates, mother absence is associated with poverty, and single mother households do a lot better than single father households in terms of poverty reduction and amelioration.

Journal of marriage and family, family diversity and child health.

Where do same sex couple families fit in?

Laura Freeman and others, published in December 2017.

They say increasing family diversity during the past half century has focused national attention on how children are faring in non-traditional family structures. Much of the limited evidence of children in same sex couple families suffers from severe shortcomings, including a lack of representative data.

We used a National Health Interview Survey, 2004-2012, and the National Survey of Children’s Health, 2011-2012, to identify children in different sex married and cohabiting families. Never in previously married single parent families and same sex couple families.

Considering important characteristics such as the child’s race and ethnicity, adoption status, household socioeconomic standing, family stability, parent health, we examine the relationship between family type and parent rated overall childhood.

The results suggest that poorer health among children in same sex couple as well as different sex cohabiting couples in single parent families appears to be largely the product of demographic and socioeconomic differences rather than exposure to non-traditional family forms.

Let me translate this to you. Health effects.

Until 2007, everyone said father absence adversely impacts the health of children. They become less healthy.

But this study and other studies show that the problem is not father absence. The problem is not same sex families. The problem is not single mother households. The problem is poverty. The problem is demographic, which neighborhood you live in. We saw it in COVID, you know, different health outcomes, depending on your skin color and your neighborhood.

So this has nothing to do with father absence. I’m using studies to demolish one by one all the myths associated with father absence. Are you listening there?

The men who wrote to me, infuriated and enraged by what I said.

Bon Bonin. Children and Youth Services Review, volume 125, June 2001. Article. Comparison of intergenerational transmission of gender roles between single parent families and two parent families. The influence of parental, child rearing, gender role attitudes.

One of the main arguments is that if there’s no father in the family, the boys in the family will never grow to be proper men.

Because gender differentiation and gender role acquisition, they are heavily influenced by the presence of a male.

You need to have a male to become a male. To become a man, you need to have a man in the family. You need to have a father figure.

So this is a study. The lead author is Menping Yang.

And these are the highlights from the study.

Gender roles of two generations, mother, father and children, parents and children, gender roles of two generations are similar in both single and two parent families. It’s very clear.

This sentence alone demolishes all the nonsensical arguments of the manosphere and similar thinking people, including people like Jordan Peterson and others.

The father’s presence is not critical in gender formation, gender differentiation and gender role acquisition, not critical. End of story.

The authors continue.

There are significant differences in the proportion of undifferentiated and androgynous in different family structures. Family socioeconomic status, family structure and parental child rearing gender role attitudes significantly positively affect the intergenerational transmission of gender roles.

The gender and age of children significantly negatively affect the intergenerational transmission of gender roles. Parental child rearing gender role attitudes play a partial mediating role between family structure and intergenerational transmission of gender roles.

This is a summary. I’m going to read a part of the study that goes deeply, more deeply.

This is a crucial question. This is actually also the main argument of father advocates.

They say it’s very bad that so many children are growing up in single mother families because they are exposed only to females. They don’t see the day-to-day presence of a male, so they can’t learn gender roles.

Unfortunately, it’s not true.

Okay, on the very contrary, by the way, the presence of fathers induces actually problems with sexual and gender differentiation, shockingly as it may sound.

Here’s a section from the study.

The characteristics of parents gender roles directly impact the children’s gender roles, thus forming intergenerational transmission of gender roles.

Based on the bio-ecological theory, this study conducted paired survey of adolescents generation two and their parents generation one and explored the intergenerational trans transmission of gender roles in different family structures, examining the mechanism of various factors in the family microsystem.

The results were this.

Both in single parent families, most of which are headed by women, both in single parent families and in two parent families, the distribution of gender role types of generation two is similar to that of generation one and the distribution of undifferentiated.

This is the shocking part. The distribution of undifferentiated androgeny in the two generations is bipolar.

In single parent families, the proportion of undifferentiated is the highest, but it’s the highest in both generations.

In other words, it doesn’t have anything to do with the absence of the father.

Well, there’s something with the mothers that crosses intergenerationally and affects gender differentiation and gender role acquisition.

And they say undifferentiated gender roles is significantly higher than in two parent families.

In two parent families, the proportion of androgeny, transgender and similar phenomena, the proportion of androgeny in two parent families is the highest in both generation one and generation two, which is significantly higher than that of single parent families.

Family socioeconomic status, family structure and parental child rearing gender role attitudes as three family environment factors, as well as the gender and age of children as two individual factors, significantly influence intergenerational transmission of gender roles.

The mediating analysis shows parental child rearing gender role attitude plays a mediating role in the influence of family structure on this transmission.

Advances in life course research, December 2021. Article titled Fair Comparisons: Life course selection bias and the effect of father absence in US children.

Alejandra Rodriguez Sanchez is the author and the highlights are life course selection bias, the trajectory of confounders may have a future further bias, casual effect, estimates in demography.

Exposure of children to divorce is a marker of life course socioeconomic disadvantages, not a cause of negative effects.

That finally is common sense.

Divorce is going to disadvantage children economically, mainly, socially, because of poverty, but it’s not going to have other negative effects on their well-being, psychology, gender role or anything else for that matter.

Father absence is irrelevant and has very little impact.

The author continues, when divorce and separation occur close to or during adolescence, negative effects are found in the problem behavior domain, but it’s because of the divorce.

Okay, so this is, I’m going to try to find a segment, like a quote from, she says, studies have shown that father absence in opposite gender couples, she is referring to old literature, has detrimental effects on children’s well-being, net of selection bias.

However, she says, life course informed research suggests that the problem of selection bias may be more complex than currently thought.

In other words, she disparages prior studies, she says they are biased.

That’s a nice way of putting it. So she explains that she was data from the fragile families and child well-being study to estimate the total effect of the departure of a biological father on children’s well-being, as well as delayed or fade out effects on this transition.

And she explains the statistical methods and so on and so forth.

And she says, after all this, after we’ve worked out the statistics, estimates of father absences effects on children’s well-being are reduced substantially.

I’m going to read this again. Estimates of father absences effects on children’s well-being are reduced substantially, finding which may be referred to as a life course selection bias.

Results suggest early and middle childhood are not negatively affected by the departure of the biological father.

That’s a shocking statement, flies in the face of old literature prior to 2007.

Results suggest early and middle childhood are not negatively affected by the departure of a biological father.

Life course selection bias mostly affects estimates of this effect on adolescence, which is explained by children directly experiencing changes in parents’ socioeconomic trajectories that lead to divorce or separation.

This would not be the case when father absences is experienced in early childhood.

Results suggest that father absences is mostly a marker of life course, cumulative socioeconomic advantage, not a cause of negative psychological or other effects.

Fast forward to August 2021, article, absent father timing and its impact on adolescent and adult criminal behavior, Michael Tenike, Kristin Knox, Sarell Said, American Journal of Criminal Justice 2021.

The authors say, although prior research has examined the link between having an absent biological father and self-reported delinquency, few studies have assessed the influence of the timing of parental absence, the child’s age when the father leaves.

How does that affect delinquency and adult criminal behavior?

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the present study examines this relationship to determine whether the timing of biological father absence impacts delinquency, adult criminal behavior and arrest across the life course.

Results reveal that biological father absence before birth was related to criminal behavior in later adulthood. Before birth, having an absent father in early childhood, birth to age five, was related to criminal behavior in early adulthood as well as arrest.

An absent biological father, later to lessons, age 14 to 18, was related to arrest.

These findings suggest that, one, the timing of the father’s absence does not have a clear pattern of impact on delinquency and arrest, two, the negative impact of having an absent biological father at any time may not appear at all until adulthood.

Social Science and Medicine, volume 222, February 2019, article titled, Father Departure in Children’s Mental Health: How Does Timing Matter?

Authors are Emily Fitzsimmons, Aaseh Rilatsen, and so on.

Highlights. The timing of father’s departure matters for children’s mental health. Departure in mid-childhood is more detrimental to mental health than earlier on. It increases internalizing in boys and girls and externalizing in boys.

High maternal education, not a buffer for child mental health after father departure. Departure in early childhood associated with better maternal mental health later on.

Now, it all sounds very old-fashioned and very supportive of the view that when fathers depart, there are adverse consequences on delinquency and on mental health.

But when you delve deeper into these studies, you discover nuances that render the whole thing very dubious.

I want to read to you a segment from this research.

Father’s permanent departure from the household in childhood has the potential to affect child mental health.

The event is non-random, and a major limitation in most previous studies is lack of adequate control for unobserved confounders.

Using five waves of data spanning ages 3 to 14 from the Micellani cohort study, which is a UK-wide, nationally representative longitudinal study, so using this data, this paper uses fixed effect models to examine the effect of paternal absence on children’s mental health, externalizing and internalizing problems.

Sample was very big, 6,245 children.

The authors concluded, “…heterogeneity of effects are examined by gender and maternal education.

A novel aspect is to examine how the timing of departure matters and to assess whether there are developmental periods that are especially sensitive to paternal departure and whether effects are temporary or enduring.

We find that paternal departure is a negative effect on child mental health, particularly on internalizing symptoms like depression, anxiety.

Striking gender differences emerge in examining effects by timing and duration. There are no short-term effects of departure in early childhood, and only weak evidence of females showing an increase in internalizing symptoms in the medium term.

So now we are coming to the nuances.

Actually, if the father departs in early childhood, there are no effects, or at least no short-term effects. If the father departs in early childhood, there are essentially no effects on females until they become adults.

Paternal departure in later childhood, on the other hand, is associated with an increase in internalizing problems in both males and females, and increased externalizing symptoms for males only. We do not find maternal education to be a protective factor.

To summarize, father absence has extremely limited impacts, depending crucially on context, timing, sex of the child, and the behavior of the mother.

By far, the most critical factor is the mother.

Again, it’s again the mother.

Even the father’s departure, the effects of the father departure, father’s departure are mediated from the mother.

If the mother is loving, caring, holding, empathic, sympathetic, affectionate, compassionate, almost nothing will happen. The father’s absence will go unnoticed or unaffected, will not affect, will not have effects.

If the mother, of course, is absent, selfish, parentifying, instrumentalizing, in other words, not good enough mother, then, of course, the father’s absence will have effects because there will be no one to balance her.

And in any case, the major factors have nothing to do with the father or with his absence. They have to do with socioeconomic status, namely poverty, with demography, race, ethnicity, place of residence, and other similar factors.

We know today after COVID, the COVID pandemic, that health outcomes depend crucially on these things, not on internal family structure or system.

Thank you for surviving this. I’m not sure I have.