A Time magazine article from 1984, looked well into the future. It featured a cover story on fatherhood. In that story it documented the changing shape of what we call family life. It reported that fathers used to occupy a greater place in the home and that well into the 18th century, childrearing manuals in America were generally addressed to fathers, not mothers.

But as the industrialization began to separate home and work, fathers could not be in both places at once.

Family life in the 19th century was defined by what historians call the feminization of the domestic sphere and the marginalization of the father as a parent."

The article makes some other sobering points. "Rising divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births mean that more than 40% of all children born between 1970 and 1984 are likely to spend much of their childhood living in single parent homes."

And the impact of these fatherless homes on the children is significant, if not devastating. Time goes on to say, "Studies of young criminals have found that more than 70% of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. Children from broken families are nearly twice as likely as those in two-parent families to drop out of high school."

The decades old article was right.