Recent Shootings Highlight America’s Fatherhood Crisis

Chris Woodward 3 Comments

The head of a faith-based scouting organization is offering a solution to prevent shootings and other attacks.

“The fix for this stuff isn’t gun control and all the other things we’re debating,” Trail Life USA CEO Mark Hancock told The Todd Starnes Show. “It’s fathers and father-likes that step up and find ways to provide moral, strong, clear, leadership.”

Hancock said many boys today are angry, and boys who are hurt and angry hurt themselves and other people.

“When you look at some of these mass shooting situations, the number of those young men that were involved do not have an active father at home is 90 percent or higher depending on how you count these things,” Hancock explained. “It points to something that’s relatively recent in our society, and we talk a bit about it as a boy crisis.”

Hancock stressed that boys need and want firm boundaries, and they want to know the difference between right and wrong.

“As we distance ourselves from things that for generations we’ve paid attention to, we put these boys adrift, and they tend to look like they’re in rebellion or that they’re just apathetic because they’re just not sure of the rules,” he continued. “Boys need that clear structure, and we need to recognize that boys and girls are different, and boys and girls both need programs that are aimed at their specific strengths and in the ways that they grow best.”

Difference Between Boys and Girls

“That idea that boys and girls are different runs contrary to what they’re trying to teach us in society,” said Starnes.

“Yes, and that’s really sad,” replied Hancock. “It’s not a social construct that their eyes are constructed differently, that their hearing is different, that their brains are designed differently and that they develop at different rates, that they mature at different rates.”

Hancock encouraged fathers and ‘father-likes’ to step up and spend time with their sons and boys.

“There are so many of them they don’t have a dad at home and are desperately in need of somebody in order to show them the way that they can become a responsible and a winning man,” said Hancock. “That’s how we fix this. Hurt boys will hurt other people. We’ve just got to put a stop to that.”


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https://www.toddstarnes.com/faith/america-doesnt-need-gun-control-it-needs-more-father-figures/

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Chris Woodward

Comments 3

  1. Boys are in need of their fathers, or mentors. This was never more apparent to me than at the recent Arkansas Rendezvous, where Trail Life Troops gathered in Northwest Arkansas for fun and fellowship. Having Dad’s participating with their sons at the event caught the attention of some neighbor boys. The father is a corporate executive who has property adjacent to the event. The man’ personal opposition to the beliefs that Trail Life was not enough to thwart the interest (and the longing) of his boys, who see the Trail Life Fathers mentoring their sons.

  2. This issue is so under-discussed and so critical and central to the breakdowns in society people bemoan and think legislation can fix, and it can’t because it is a core family breakdown.

    Very happy to see an organization identifying the problems accurately, The lag act of the family breakdown and alienation and trivialization Of the role of father over the last 55 years is central to the biggest issues we now face.

    Thank you for holding up some truth in this. I will be proud to involve my son and myself in your organization. I was a scout and just can’t bring myself to have my son join the BSA in its present state. It breaks my heart so I’m very happy to have found Trail Life!

    Blessings to you all.

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