One out of three children in America are raised with an absent father, and for them, the quixotic hope of a picturesque, ideal home life lies further away than those with a “man of the house” to guide them. While a complicated social issue among children of all race and gender, Wes Moore, in the book "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates," magnifies how being a fatherless black boy in the gritty Baltimore undergrounds is an even higher bump in the road to adulthood. While all children with no father are susceptible to violence and crime, the situation in which they lost their father is directly related to the intensity of their struggles. Thus, the absence of a father can have dissimilar effects on male offspring in cases of death or abandonment. …show more content…
Wes 1 (whose father died) turned out to be a business leader, Rhodes Scholar, and White House Fellow while Wes 2 (who was abandoned) became a convicted murderer. The death of a father has many devastating consequences on his son, as it causes a higher risk of domestic violence, rebellion (Joiner), and “leaves a permanent vacuum in family dynamic” (Kruk). All fatherless children, regardless of cause, are left with a gap in their childhood and are more likely to struggle in academics, succumb to peer pressure, and fall into the prison system. Studies conclude that 85% of youth in prison have an absent father (Sawhill). Isabel V. Sawhill, in her article, “Are Children Raised with Absent Fathers Worse Off?”, explains that “children who end up in a single parent family as the result of death do not have the same poor outcomes …show more content…
His life is not only missing a key component, but he is betrayed; feeling bewilderment and resentment towards the man who willingly decided to leave him fatherless. On page 101 of “The Other Wes More: One Name, Two Fates,” Moore writes, “Wes’s (2) nonexistent relationship with his father probably contributed to his seeming indifference of becoming a father himself. All he knew was his mom… he wasn’t even sure he had a role.” During this time in the novel, Wes 2’s family is discovering that his girlfriend is pregnant. While his family is under great distress and trauma, Wes 2 has grown desensitized of growing up in a single parent home, and therefore is naïve of the correct steps a father must take. He presumes that parenting is one-sided, only a responsibility on the mother, because that is the exact setting he has lived in his entire life. Boys with late fathers usually have no significant displeasure toward them and may have at least caught a glimpse of that consideration, if not the hope that their father would’ve been affectionate enough. Since death is an independent factor, children with dead fathers are not forsaken, but simply unlucky