I also want to acknowledge the work of Chairman Shaw in this area. His bill last year helped spark a healthy debate about how to best deal with this problem. The irony in America's unprecedented economic prosperity is that many Americans still feel the country is on the wrong track. There seems to be a fraying of the social fabric and many indicators point to the increase in absentee fathers as the cause. America's mothers, including single moms, are heroic in their efforts to make ends meet financially while raising good, responsible children.
Many dads are too.
But an increasing number of men are not doing their part - or are absent entirely. When both parents are involved, children are more likely to learn about respect, honor, duty and the values that make our communities strong. The troubling decline in the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children over the last 40 years is a trend that should worry us all. The number of children living in households without fathers has tripled over the last forty years, from just over 5 million in 1960 to more than 17 million today. The United States leads the world in fatherless families and too many children spend their lives without any contact with their fathers.