McLanahan, Tach & Schneider 2013 — The causal effects of father absence

What the study found

McLanahan, Tach and Schneider reviewed research on how growing up without a father relates to children's later outcomes, focusing on studies that use rigorous designs — fixed-effects models, natural experiments and propensity-score matching — to separate causation from selection. They concluded that these stronger designs still detect negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, though the effects are smaller than those reported by traditional cross-sectional studies, and that the evidence is strongest and most consistent for high school graduation, children's social-emotional adjustment and adult mental health. ^[1]

studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs

^[1]

Why it matters here

This review is a central reference point in debates over whether absent fathers cause bad outcomes for children rather than merely correlating with them. It lends qualified support to the causal claim — better-designed studies still find real effects — while cautioning that the size of those effects is often overstated by simpler correlational work, and that the clearest evidence concerns education, adjustment and mental health rather than crime specifically. Those distinctions bear directly on the check on whether fatherlessness causes crime, where correlation is frequently presented as settled causation.