A number of researchers have tried to understand how father abandonment happens, most importantly Kathryn Edin<br />and Timothy J. Nelson, who moved to Philadelphia and Camden, N. J., immersed themselves in the neighborhoods there and produced an amazing account, “Doing the Best I Can.”<br />Pregnancy is rarely planned among the populations they studied.<br />You meet guys who desperately did not want to leave their children, who swear they have tried to be with them, who may feel unworthy of fatherhood<br />but who don’t want to be the missing dad their own father was.<br />Why Fathers Leave Their Children -<br />Millions of poor children and teenagers grow up without their biological father,<br />and often when you ask them about it, you hear a litany of male barbarism.<br />Buried in the rigors of motherhood, the women, meanwhile, take a very practical view of what they need in a<br />man: Will this guy provide the financial stability I need, and if not, can I trade up to someone who will?<br />You hear teens describe how their dad used to beat up their mom, how an absent father had five kids with different women and abandoned them all.<br />He believes in fatherhood and tries it again with other women, with the same high hopes,<br />but he’s really only taking care of the child he happens to be living with at any given moment.
