On New York’s East Twentieth Street, a man walks up and down a candlelit room. The shadows cast by his large, powerful physique move softly, almost gingerly. He moves this way because in his powerful arms he holds “a very small person.”

The limp and weak form of the child gasps desperately to choke down a breath as a violent respiratory attack wracks his body.

Although the child survives the night, his ailments apparently will doom him to a life of disability: chronic colds and coughs, nausea, fevers, diarrhea, sleeplessness, lack of appetite, malnutrition, and, of course, relentless asthma.

But Theodore Roosevelt Sr. would change all of that for his young son. While he was still very young and very sick, he issued a seemingly impossible challenge to his all-but-invalid son.

“You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”

“I will make my body,” young Theodore responded.

With the help of his father, “Teedie” Roosevelt Jr. would do just that. The “very small person” would build for himself a powerful frame and a personality to match, graduate from Harvard, travel the world, lead men in combat, enforce the law, ranch, develop his mind, and become the most dynamic, bombastic, and youngest man to literally bound up the steps of the White House as the president of the United States of America.

Thirty-seven years later, Theodore Roosevelt would remember his father as “the best man I ever knew.”

“Handsome dandy that he was, the thought of him now and always has been a sense of comfort. I could breathe, I could sleep, when he had me in his arms. My father—he got me breath, he got me lungs, strength—life.”

A City Without Fathers

Ten miles and one century away, children in Newark, New Jersey, might consider such an environment and such a father as Theodore Roosevelt Sr. a fantastic fairy tale.

The city is suffering from a litany of violent crime, bloodily punctuated by the execution-style murders of three young people in early August. The college students were forced to kneel against a fence in a school parking lot and then shot in the head at close range in a gruesome slaying that has brought Newark’s bloody crime problem back into the spotlight.

New Jersey’s largest city watched its homicide rate jump from 68 killings in 2002 to 106 in 2006. Its violent crime rate is twice the average national rate.

“Newark doesn’t really have crime hot spots,” one prominent crime expert said. “It has a couple of cool spots.”

Four of the triple-killer’s accomplices were teenagers: an 18-year-old, a 16-year-old, and two 15-year-olds. It’s hard to imagine—perhaps impossible—that any one of these children had a father or knew a father or had ever heard of a father like Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

More of the Same

The usual hue and cry has followed the slayings. Officials are vowing to uncover the root causes and implement the real solutions to Newark’s endemic violence. Some say more stringent measures against repeat offenders will prevent such horror stories. Others feel more effective prosecution is the answer; fewer than half of the city’s murders result in convictions. Still others think more security cameras will do the trick, increasing Newark’s surveillance cameras from 24 to 74. The Economist reports that the “real problem” is an ineffective policing strategy, and that the real solution is developing a new crime-fighting theory to fit mid-sized cities. And from all quarters, leaders are calling for additional funding, hoping that a congressman signing yet another check will make all of this go away.

Reading these clichéd “solutions” to the “real problems” behind our sick society is almost as unbearable as the endless accounts of the crimes themselves.

“A renewed campaign,” “additional funding,” “more policies,” “supplementary programs,” “enhanced strategies” and, again, “additional funding”: Is this our best hope for a city—and a world—gone horribly wrong?

Fifty more cameras?

And don’t words like “renewed,” “more” and “additional” mean that what we have is not working?

Instead, how about a father?

The Real Problem

The real problem in 21st-century Newark, New Jersey, and in cities across the United States and around the world is this: They lack fathers.

Only 32 percent of boys and girls in the city of Newark grow up living with two parents of any kind—whether they are involved in their lives or not. A shocking 60 percent grow up with no fathers at all.

Steven Malanga cuts through the noise of “new initiatives,” “promises of reform” and “additional funding” in “City Without Fathers” (City Journal, August 9). “Behind Newark’s epidemic violence are its thousands of fatherless children,” Malanga writes.

“[M]uch of the reaction, though well intentioned, misses the point. Behind Newark’s persistent violence and deep social dysfunction is a profound cultural shift that has left many of the city’s children growing up outside the two-parent family—and, in particular, growing up without fathers.”

“It isn’t that traditional families are breaking up,” he continues, “they aren’t even getting started. The city has one of the highest out-of-wedlock birthrates in the country, with about 65 percent of its children born to unmarried women.”

Malanga goes on to report that 70 percent of fatherless children in Newark are born into poverty, and 83 percent of poor families there are led by single parents. Children without fathers are five times likelier to be poor, and are 54 percent likelier to be poorer than their absent fathers, according to Fatherhood.org.

Single mothers are twice as likely as married moms to experience depression, are more susceptible to stress, have fewer relationships with family members and friends, are less involved with church or social groups, and experience less overall social support—of the non-governmental assistance kind (ibid.).

Children born out of wedlock are three times likelier to drop out of school than the average student, and much more likely to become a welfare-dependent adult. Around 70 percent of prisoners convicted of violent crimes grew up fatherless (City Journal, op. cit.).

By these statistics, just having a father in the house, even if he is less than ideal, makes a difference in many cases.

There are causes and effects. The effects are epidemic violence, spiraling crime and the wasted lives of our young people. The cause is not insufficient funding, too few programs, or unrenewed campaigns. The problem is fatherhood. For more on this all-important institution, read Conspiracy Against Fatherhood.