The loss of a father can leave a child emotionally scarred well into his or her adult years.
Whether the loss occurs through the divorce of parents, abandonment or death, the absence leaves children without a parent who could have been a positive role model.
But the loss of a father often does not leave children struggling as much when the parent dies, as opposed to a decision to leave the family.
“The death is more permanent (than divorce),” said Mark Seanor, minister to students at First Baptist Church, Huntsville. “It’s a closure, it’s final.”
Seanor said the realization of death removes the hope the family will reunite and allows children to move on, something children often yearn for in cases of divorce or abandonment.
“There’s no hope the family will be back together,” Seanor said.
Mike McLemore, pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church, Hoover, echoed Seanor’s comments.
“I think death is easier than divorce,” McLemore said. “There’s a finality to death. Even young children understand and they’re able to move on.”
David Popenoe said in his 1996 book “Life Without Father” that the negative effects on children of a father’s death are “far fewer” than those caused when parents divorce or children are born to unwed mothers.
“After a period of bereavement, the child of a widowed mother normally comes to accept the natural reality of the loss,” Popenoe said. “The lingering feelings of conflict, resentment and guilt associated with divorce are absent, as are feelings of betrayal and abandonment by the absent father.”
Wade Horn, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, agreed in an interview with Men’s Health in September 1995, that children who grow up in homes without a father because of death are usually as well-adjusted as their peers where the father is still present.
“That’s about the only father- absent situation where a child isn’t at risk,” said Horn.
“And it’s because the father’s memory is typically kept alive in very positive ways as opposed to a divorce situation where the father is generally not revered,” according to Horn.
“When a child’s father dies, he is still present in a very psychological sense,” said John Hill, director of research with the Alabama Policy Institute.
Although the father is physically absent, photographs of him remain on the wall.
Hill said there is also usually talk about happy memories when the father was alive.
“In the case of a divorce, this does not happen,” Hill said. “In houses with divorce, if they’re (absent fathers) talked about at all, it’s usually in a negative sense.”
A father’s death as opposed to his leaving or divorce of parents is also less traumatic on a child because the child realizes the parent did not choose to die.
“There’s not nearly the blame when there’s a death, as opposed to a divorce,” McLemore said.
Seanor said he has dealt with youth who have lost their parents to death and as well as to divorce during his 28 years in student ministry.
The difference, Seanor said, is that death does not produce the sense of guilt that often accompanies the divorce of parents or abandonment by the father.
“That’s an adult issue that students have to cope and deal with,” Seanor said.
“That (sense of guilt) puts a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress on the child,” Hill said. “The child thinks ‘it must be my fault.’ Many times they come to that conclusion.”
McLemore added that children usually come to accept a father’s death more readily than when their parents divorce.
“With death, it definitely takes months,” McLemore said. “But divorce, I think it takes years.”
McLemore said his counseling of children in broken homes has also brought out problems children have both at the time their parents separate as well as when one marries someone else.
“There is a tremendous resentment when the parents divorce and remarry,” McLemore said.
“They (children) still have in the back of their minds that mom and dad are going to remarry,” McLemore added.
Popenoe said children of deceased parents often carry “an idealized image of the dead father that can be consoling and even uplifting.”
The author also points to statistics showing a difference between children who lose a father to death versus divorce:
-The chances of a student dropping out of high school are 37 percent for children born out of wedlock and 31 percent for children of divorce, versus 15 percent for children whose fathers died.
-The chances of a girl becoming pregnant as a teenager are 37 percent for girls born out of wedlock and 33 percent for girls whose parents divorced, versus 21 percent of girls whose fathers died.
Seanor said the key to working with students — regardless of how they lose a parent — is involvement by the church.
“There’s similarities, yet there’s differences,” Seanor said.
“The important thing is helping them get their life back on track,” he added.
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