I grew up without a dad and it's a damn miracle I even got to college, let alone graduated it. Took a fucking epiphany to get myself in gear because I'd be going nowhere fast otherwise.

Went to a poorer school growing up so mine wasn't the only situation. One guy I knew is almost 30 and last I checked (which granted was over 6 or 7 years ago) became a soyboy working a dead-end job at some comic shop creeping on girls. Another was a year behind me and is still bussing tables at the bar his mom works at. Another got taken out of his mom's custody (pill popping cluster-B crazy) and put with his grandmother. He's, doing ooookay. Makes decent money working with Amazon atm but there was a lot of aimlessness in the years between.

Kind of amazed I didn't get into hard drugs and wind up dead, now that I think about it. I have a half-sister and she wasn't so lucky, she got into alcohol and crippled herself for life drunk-driving. That was about 20 years ago now so she's doing pretty great! I think we're both outliers in the single-mom situation though.

The broken-home issue is a big killer and it's the one common factor between so many problems that's just completely ignored.

I grew up without a dad and it's a damn miracle I even got to college, let alone graduated it. Took a fucking epiphany to get myself in gear because I'd be going nowhere fast otherwise.

Went to a poorer school growing up so mine wasn't the only situation. One guy I knew is almost 30 and last I checked (which granted was over 6 or 7 years ago) became a soyboy working a dead-end job at some comic shop creeping on girls. Another was a year behind me and is still bussing tables at the bar his mom works at. Another got taken out of his mom's custody (pill popping cluster-B crazy) and put with his grandmother. He's, doing ooookay. Makes decent money working with Amazon atm but there was a lot of aimlessness in the years between.

Kind of amazed I didn't get into hard drugs and wind up dead, now that I think about it. I have a half-sister and she wasn't so lucky, she got into alcohol and crippled herself for life drunk-driving. That was about 20 years ago now so she's doing pretty great! I think we're both outliers in the single-mom situation though.

The broken-home problem in America is a big killer and it's the one common factor between so many problems that's just completely ignored.