In every U.S. state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade, the Washington Times reports. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or one in three, currently live without a father -- compared to 1960, when just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers. And in an America awash in crime, poverty, drugs and other problems, Vincent DiCaro of the National Fatherhood Institute ultimately points to absent fathers: "[People] look at a child in need, in poverty or failing in school, and ask, 'What can we do to help?' But what we do is ask, 'Why does that child need help in the first place?' And the answer is often because [the child lacks] a responsible and involved father."
