In 1970 there were 500,000 couples cohabitating (living together outside of marriage) in the United States. Today there are more than 5 million. The marriage rate in our nation has declined almost 20 percent since 1995. Cohabitating couples are twice as likely to experience aggression and three times more likely to experience depression than married couples. If cohabitating couples marry, they are more likely to divorce than couples who did not live together before marriage.

The effects on children of cohabitating couples show they are more likely to experience emotional problems, alcoholism and drug abuse. They are 20 times more likely to be abused, and the poverty rate is five times greater than in a home with a married father and mother. All these statistics point toward one fact: The result of cohabitation is, more often than not, due to absentee fathers in our nation.

Cohabitation and divorce are not the only reasons children suffer from the absence of a father. Missing fathers are not limited to low-income or minority households.  Middle and upper-income houses are often the victims of a father whose residence is there, but who doesn't truly live there. Working 60 or more hours a week, recreating 10 hours a week, sleeping 49 hours a week, and watching television 30 hours a week leaves only 19 hours for the people fathers are supposed to love the most.

The latest findings show the average father spends a little over 27 seconds a day in meaningful conversation with each child he has, whether one or 10.    While fathers have to compete with iPods, cell phones, cable TV and video games, we do not have to sacrifice our roles as fathers to be present in our children's lives. Too many fathers prefer casual friendship over parenting responsibilities with their children.

Personal, face-to-face, time with your children will leave greater impressions on their minds and hearts than all the video games and toys you provide for them as a substitution for your absence. Very few fathers, when they reach retirement and sit alone, will say, "I wish I had spent more time at work or on the golf course." Proverbs 4:1 tells us, "Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, and give attention to know understanding for I give to you good doctrine; do not forsake my law." In order for a dad to give his children instruction, he must be absorbed in their lives; to do otherwise leaves children with a legacy of the absentee father