Many children in the United States live without a father at home.
Families in Parker County and nearby communities are carrying this too.
In Texas, roughly one in three children, about 33 percent, lives in a single-parent family. In Tarrant County, where the Ranch's mission radius reaches into southwest Fort Worth, single-parent households with children outnumber 59,000 single-mother households alone.
Here in Parker County, where the median household income tops $104,000 and the poverty rate runs at eight percent, the boys exist too. They are harder to see, but they are there. The Ranch sits on the line between the two worlds, and serves both, with priority for the boys who need it most.
Father absence does not determine a child's future. It can make life harder.
These figures describe risks, not a child's future. Good support can change a path.
Foster care can be a hard road for young people and the families around them.
Young people in foster care often have a hard start. The figures below show why steady support before a crisis matters.
We hope to support boys before problems become harder to untangle.
Support can make a difference.
Mentoring is not magic. Research suggests that consistent relationships with trained adults can help boys do better at school and stay out of trouble.
Arrests cut by a third. Graduation rates lifted.
Two randomized controlled trials of a school-based program pairing at-risk adolescent boys with trained male group leaders. The program cut total arrests by 28 to 35 percent and violent-crime arrests by 45 to 50 percent. It raised high school graduation rates by 12 to 19 percent. This is causal evidence, not correlation.
Half as likely to skip school. 46 percent less drug use.
A randomized trial of 959 youth, sixty percent boys, most raised by single mothers, with matches meeting roughly three times a month for eighteen months. Mentored youth were 46 percent less likely to initiate illegal drug use, 32 percent less likely to hit someone, and half as likely to skip school.
