     Between fifty and sixty percent of first time marriages break-up in the United States and has by far the highest divorce rate in the industrialized world. The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected, and extraordinary social trends of our time. Today, because the great social complexity of modern societies requires longer periods of socialization and dependency for children than ever before, the need for adult investments in children has reached new heights.
     Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes. They are twice as likely to drop out of school, 2.5 times more likley to become teenage mothers, and 1 .4 times as likely to be idle-out of school and out of work-as children who grow up with both parents. Loss of economic resources accounts for about 50 percent of the disadvantages associated with single parenthood. Too little parental supervision and involvement and greater residential mobility account for most of the rest.
     Fathers in America today are living apart from their biological children more than ever before in our history. Close to 40 percent of all children do not live with their biological fathers, a percentage that is steadily climbing. Of children born in the past decade, the chances that by age seventeen they will not be living with both their biological parents stand at over 50 percent. Many studies have shown that the typical nonresident father neither supports nor even sees his children on a regular basis. And, to make matters worse, many men who do live with their children are often removed from the day-to-day upbringing of those children. The new, nurturing fathers certainly exist, hut in overall numbers they remain in short supply.
     The widespread separation of fathers from their children in the late twentieth century is in many respects a suprising occurrence, something that no one anticipated. Thanks especially to the rise of modern contraceptives, men now have far fewer children needing their care; the average family size in America has dropped over the centuries from more than seven children to around two. Many fathers today, in fact, have only a single child, and that child has an excellent chance of living to adulthood. One would think that, with so few children, the responsibilities of fatherhood would be more readily accepted and more easily assumed.
     At the same time, men are healthier, better educated, and better endowed materially than they have ever been. America is the wealthiest society in the history of the world in terms of material consumption, and much of that wealth is held by men. Most men not only have the means to invest heavily in their offspring, but they must know, given the recent advances in psychological awareness, how important parenting is for child well-being. Yet male investments in children are dropping.
     So what has gone wrong? There are two proximate reasons for the contemporary outbreak of fatherlessness. The first is a very high rate of divorce around 50 percent. In the great majority of divorces, the children involved end up residing with their mothers and apart from their fathers.
     The second is a very high rate of out-of-wedlock births,now more than 30 percent of all births. For most nonmarital births, unlike cases of divorce, the father is absent from the very beginning of the child’s life. In only about a quarter of American nonmarital births is the father living with the mother, and in those cases the likelihood that the father will still be living with the mother when the child. reaches adolescence is very low, considerably lower than for married- couple families.
     Divorce has leveled off from its peak in the early 80s. But most of the leveling is due to an increase in nonmarital cohabitation. The marriage-warry and divorce-prone are now more likley to cohabit out of wedlock, and of course those who don’t marry can’t divorce. The national nonmarital cohabitation rate is growing by leaps and bounds, and cohabitation is a considerably less stable and committed relationship than marriage. The estimated combined breakup rate of both married and unmarried unions, therefore, continues to escalate.
     In 1974 for the first time more marriages ended in divorce than in death. But the date merely signifies the end of a long transition. The replacement of death by divorce had been quietly proceeding for more than a century.
     The decline of marriage is a disaster for fatherhood. Women have always been able to view marriage and childbearing as somewhat distinct institutions. Whatever their marital state, when women bear children they generally assume responsibility for those children and continue to care for them over the course of their lives. For men this not the case. Men tend to view marriage and childbearing as a single package. If their marriage deteriorates, their fathering deteriorates. If they are not married or are divorced, their interest in and sense of responsibility toward children greatly diminish.
     Although both joint legal and joint physical custody have become more common over the past few years, even when joint physical custody is awarded, most children reside almost full time with their mothers. Many fathers report that they would like sole or joint physical custody of their children following divorce but choose not to pursue it because 1. They believe their children would benefit more from their mothers, 2. Fathers’ job responsibilities are not flexible enough to accommodate the time demands of single parenthood, and3. Fathers want to avoid exposing their children to prolonged negative custody battles.
     Given that only about 14 percent of divorcing fathers are awarded sole custody, it is not suprising that relatively little is known about their parenting or the quality of their relationships with their children. Newly divorced resident fathers do appear to experience many of the same problems faced by resident mothers. They report feeling overloaded, socially isolated, and worried about their parenting competence and find that being a custodial father interferes with both their social life and work. However, many resident fathers have advantages less available to resident mothers; most notable are their greater economic resources and the concomitant better housing, neighborhood, schools and child-care facilities available to them.
     The decline of fatherhood and of marriage cuts at the heart of the kind of environment considered ideal for childbearing. Such an environment, consists of an enduring two-parent family that engages regularly in activities together, has many of its own routines and traditions, and provides a great deal of quality contact time between adults and children. The children have frequent contact with relatives, neighboring in a supportive setting, and contact with their parents’ world of work. In addition, there is little concern on the part of the children that their parents will break up. Finally, each of these ingredients comes together in the development of a rich family values as responsibility, cooperation and sharing.
     The main reason why some fathers are more successful than others is definately in the fathers values. Having good values makes an effective father; and to some it up an effective father needs to have the seven aspects of effective fathering, which are commitment, awareness consistency, providing and protecting, loving relationship with children's mother, active listening and spirital eqipping.