Who is Leading Today’s Family? The Detrimental Effects of an Absent Father

Fathers have an enormous role in their families – it was God’s original design. This study considered the detrimental effects of a physically absent father as the leader, mentor, disciplinarian, and husband of the family home, using a quantitative research design. The theoretical framework used for this descriptive design was John Bowlby’s attachment theory, Dr. Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, Daniel Goleman’s psychological theory on emotional intelligence, and, last, Albert Bandura’s view on aggression theory and the General Aggression Model (GAM). Additionally, the concept of father hunger was explored and measured as this was a crucial construct during this study. The Adult Attachment Scale (AAS), the Father Hunger Scale, the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BP-AQ), and the Schutte Self-Report Inventory (SSRI) were utilized to collect data from 113 men ages 18 and upward who had a physically present father in the home and 26 men, ages 18 and upward, whose father was not physically present in the home. Surveys were completed online by a random sampling of men who were informed of the study and had Internet access. Previous studies have focused either on the importance of a mother in the home or on father absence without noting any significance of father presence and the quality of time between the child and father. While a father’s relationship with both a son and daughter is significant, this study concentrated on the detrimental effects of a physically absent father in the family home, father-son relationship and the significance of the father’s physical presence in the father-son dyad, and the levels of aggression, emotional intelligence, attachment, father hunger, and biblical references related to fatherhood