New Report Measures Father Absence in NZ
Thousands of New Zealand children struggle
with having no father in their lives, and a new report from Family First -
WHERE
DOES HE LIVE? Measuring Father Absence in New Zealand
- finds little change since Children's Commissioner Laurie O'Reilly described fatherless families
as the 'greatest social challenge facing New Zealanders' in 1998.
Report
author Lindsay Mitchell says, "Last year one in twenty births
had no father registered; one in six did not have a father living at
the same address as the mother and almost one in five had parents with
no stated legal relationship.”
“For
the past fifty years married and unmarried births have broadly
trended in opposite directions and are steadily converging. In the year
to June 2022, 49.8% of all births were unmarried. In the June quarter
alone births to unmarried parents surpassed the halfway mark for the
first time reaching 50.7%. Children are also
increasingly being born to de facto relationships (30% of all births)
which do not have the same stability as marriages.”
“Maori
children are the most likely to experience father absence.
The proportion of Maori babies born to married parents has fallen from a
relatively high level of 72% in 1968 to just 20% in the June 2022
quarter. Maori children are the most likely to experience living with a
sole parent.”
For
children, father absence is associated with poverty, material
hardship, abuse and neglect, lower cognitive capacity, substance use,
poorer physical and mental health and criminal offending. But estranged
fathers can also suffer materially and emotionally. The mortality rate
of fathers paying child support is significantly
higher than the norm.
Mitchell
says, “There are some positive trends for the prospects
of father absence reducing. The teenage birth rate is plummeting, and
men are first-time fathering when they are older and more stable. But
official projections show sole parent families maintaining their current
level through to 2043.”
“So
there is good and bad news. Actual trends hold some promise
- predictions, less so. Perhaps those children who grew up without
parental stability are successfully seeking it in their own
relationships? Let’s hope so."
