Yet several small studies do indicate a significant correlation between fathers' level of engagement and children's emotional health and cognitive development. And there remains a strangeness in even asking whether fathers are important to children. To argue against reconnecting fathers and their children is to deprive children of the opportunity for a unique and profound human tie. There may also be substantial monetary value in keeping nonresidential fathers engaged with their children. A significant correlation exists between fathers' amount of contact with their children and the payment of child support.
Children are almost twice as likely to be living in poverty after their parents divorce as before.
The problem is not simply a matter of the evaporation of nonresidential fathers. Even when fathers do live with their children, large numbers are emotionally remote and function as appendages to mothers in the basic care of children. To be sure, the entry of women into the full-time labor force has changed this some. The percentage of children whose fathers cared for them during their mothers' working hours increased from 15 percent to 20 percent from 1977 to 1991. Moreover, while some fathers spend a good deal of time with their children playing, watching television, or engaged in other activities, in the vast majority of households, it is still mothers who maintain the infrastructure of children's lives.