Too many children are growing up without the active involvement of their fathers, O Bannon said, and at a high cost to those children and to society.
Fathers are important.
Without a father s involvement, children are less likely to get the attention and supervision they need. They are twice as likely to drop out of school. They are significantly more likely to end up in a foster home or group care or in custody as delinquents, O Bannon explained. Continuing the cycle, girls are three times more likely to have children themselves as unwed teenagers, and the boys stand a greater risk of growing up to be unemployed or jailed and uninvolved with their own children, the governor said. One Indiana child in five lives apart from his or her father, compared to nearly one in four nationally, O Bannon pointed out.