This is true for boys and girls alike, although boys fare quite a bit worse. Boys make up a majority of youthful substance abusers, the majority of homeless children, the majority of children in foster care. They are most neglected and institutionalized. A boy living in a single-parent home is twice as likely to be incarcerated as his peer living with mother and father, regardless of the parents race, income or education level. None of this should surprise us.
Fathers are models for manhood.
When the popular culture no longer recognizes what it means to be a man and has to a large degree denigrated manhood, some people may actually start to believe it. A girl spends much of her adolescence trying to figure out how to relate to boys. Girls need their fathers and their father s guidance and knowledge about boys and men. Look at teenaged girls whose fathers are mostly absent from their lives, and the importance of fathers becomes clear. Fathers serve the role of household protector.