November 6, 2002: Class Notes

Class Notes Profiles:

Dads count big for kids
Roland C. Warren ’83 leads effort to reduce fatherless homes

Helping local kids
Josh Morris ’99 pushing climbing to new heights in northern Thailand2

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Dads count big for kids
Roland C. Warren ’83 leads effort to reduce fatherless homes

Tonight one of every three children in the U.S. will go to sleep in a home without a father. Those kids, on average, are significantly more likely to experience poverty, commit violent crimes, be suspended from school or drop out, and become victims of child abuse or neglect. Roland Warren ’83 is trying to change those troubling statistics. Warren, who took over as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative last year, understands well what it means to grow up without a dad — his parents divorced when he was a youngster.

When first asked to be president of NFI, a nonprofit organization that encourages a society-wide reversal of the absent-father trend, he said “Not now.” Warren, a psychology major at Princeton who earned an M.B.A. at the Wharton School, worked as a financial consultant at Goldman Sachs in Philadelphia. But he soon realized that “you can always make a buck, but you can’t always make a difference.”

The percentage of children growing up without a father in the home has increased, notes Warren. Today, 24 million kids live in fatherless homes. As a proportion of the population, out-of-wedlock births are a bigger problem in the black community than they are in the white community, says Warren. Seven out of 10 black kids are born to a single mother. But whites are still responsible for the majority of out-of-wedlock births, he says.

Divorce, of course, also contributes to fatherlessness, he says. “Kids crave structure and nurturing, and divorce makes it more difficult to deliver both.”

Data that foreshadowed about the impact of father absence on kids have been around for years, says Warren. But “people didn’t want to talk about it.”

Based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, NFI works to encourage all kinds of dads: those incarcerated or in the military, fathers who are divorced, noncustodial never-married fathers, and even married dads who just want to become better parents. The organization promotes awareness through public service announcements; provides curricula and training to community-based fatherhood programs; and develops and distributes books, videos, and other resources for fathers.

NFI’s program for dads in prison — most of whom grew up without fathers — gives inmates an opportunity to talk openly about their own issues of rejection and neglect, which most men find difficult to discuss, says Warren.

He should know. “There’s still pain,” he says, even four years after his father’s death. Growing up in Toledo, Ohio, Warren and his three siblings “knew where my father was,” says Warren, but there was limited contact beyond special occasions. Warren eventually realized that “if I was going to move forward, I was going to have to forgive my dad.”

Some men respond to their own fathers’ absence by becoming highly involved in their children’s lives, says Warren. “That’s the route I took.” Warren married Yvette M. Lopez-Warren ’85, a family physician in Abington, Pennsylvania, and they have two boys, Jamin, 20, and Justin, 17. But there’s another path, he says: to pretend that your absence doesn’t affect your kids and to become indifferent to staying involved in their lives.

“In the end,” he says, “NFI’s work is about connecting the hearts of fathers to their kids.”

By K.F.G.

For more information: rwarren@fatherhood.org; www.fatherhood.org

After a year teaching English in northern Thailand through Princeton-in-Asia, Josh Morris ’99 discovered that he would rather climb rocks than do anything else. At the same time, he has figured out a way to help support a new life for local kids in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.
Following the end of his PIA fellowship in 2000, he worked with local expatriates and Thais to drill bolts for 42 new climbing routes into a seldom-climbed series of limestone caves and outcroppings 30 kilometers from Chiang Mai called Crazy Horse Buttress. He also managed an artificial climbing wall at the touristy night bazaar in downtown Chiang Mai. At the bazaar, Morris first hatched the idea of connecting local kids with his new climbing tour company, Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures, which will begin taking clients to Crazy Horse Buttress this winter.

“These young flower vendors were always monkeying around on the wall,” says Morris, who majored in art history and has been climbing since he was a teenager. “Finally, I threw a harness on this five-year-old girl, Gaeow, and let her climb for real. She was a natural.”

Many of the kids like Gaeow work all day and late into the night, selling flowers and other goods on the street to earn money for their families. The job leaves no time for school or much of a life for the kids, many of whom come from hill tribes around Chiang Mai.

Building on the interest of Gaeow and others, Morris plans to offer free clinics to local youngsters and take on the most skilled as paid apprentices. The apprentices will work reasonable afternoon and weekend hours — and, he hopes, be able to abandon late-night vending and attend school.

Eventually, Morris says, these children would become full-time guides. A few might compete on the growing Asian rock-climbing circuit or farther afield, says Morris. “They’ll develop a skill, learn English, and be exposed to travelers in a different way than selling things on the street.”

By Oakley Brooks ’99
Oakley Brooks lives in Portland, Oregon.