Pity the fathers who leave their children

New York

MILLIONS of poor children and teenagers grow up without their biological father, and often when you ask them about it, you hear a litany of male barbarism. You hear teens describe how their dad used to beat up their mum, how an absent father had five kids with different women and abandoned them all.

The children's tales often reinforce the standard image we have of the deadbeat dad - the selfish cad who spreads his seed and leaves generations of wreckage in his wake.