British children are growing disturbingly estranged from their fathers, according to statistics released in a recent report. The study, conducted by Newsround, a children’s news program affiliated with the bbc, was released Monday.

Newsround editor Sinead Rocks said her crew members were “very surprised and a little disheartened” by the study’s insight into British families. They found that one quarter of British children do not consider their father to be immediate family. Among lower-class households, the figure rose to one third (Telegraph, December 3).

Newsround found that 76 percent of children would turn to their mothers “if something went wrong.” Only 11 percent would turn to their fathers. The survey also showed that more boys look up to soccer players as role models (25 percent) than look up to their fathers (14 percent).

The survey sampled 1,000 children ages 6 to 12.

Many other scientific studies show what common logic or a deep conversation with a fatherless boy or girl already reveals: Children without involved fathers suffer. These children are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to become welfare-dependent, more likely to live in poverty and more likely to become violent criminals.

How did we reach the point where one in four children thinks of his or her father as outside the immediate family?

The soccer statistic leads to one clue: the media. While the god-making, profit-skimming machinery of mass media glorifies to the point of deification a young athletic male who is capable of doing one thing well, the masculine leading father has been sidelined and, in many cases, cut from the team altogether.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has emphasized the fact that fatherhood is “the core institution of our society.” But that core is disintegrating. In many households, it is no longer there at all.

Try this experiment at home: Keep a pen and scrap paper next to your television remote. If and when you watch a prime-time show, summarize the role of the father, if there is one. Before you compile even a full week’s findings, you might find yourself very surprised and a little disheartened.

The Western intellectual establishment and mainstream media corporations have hypothesized and pop-culturized the essential father right out of the Western family. Society has now “advanced” to a state where a masculine, loving, leading father is not only hard to find, but also considered archaic and even evil by experts in psychology, sociology, mass media and government. The best he can do on network television is perform the antics of a doddering clown.

Gerald Flurry has emphasized the imperative importance of fatherhood more than any voice crying out today. In a civilization where only 11 out of 100 children would think of turning to their fathers when they need help, his booklet Conspiracy Against Fatherhood becomes essential reading. This booklet reveals the causes of fragmenting fatherhood, going far deeper than the mass media’s role.

For more on fatherhood, also read “The Best Man I Ever Knew” and “Daddy’s Girl.”