Robert L. Sain, MD is a board certified child psychiatrist who’s spent over 20 years working with kids in residential placements, including young criminals and juvenile offenders. In a statement which should be remembered by any father who’s ever abandoned his child and any mother who’s ever driven a decent, loving father out of his child’s life, he says:
One of the things
I discovered from my clinical work with male, juvenile, felony offenders, who mostly grow up without their fathers, is the hole in the heart that accompanies these kids through life. These are kids in juvenile hall (aka residential placement). Many of them tell me, “I wouldn’t be here if I’d had a father.” Measuring the emotional attachment to such statements convinces me that they mean what they tell me.