How Father Absence Shapes Male Violence Worldwide

"Camilo grew up surrounded by adults, yet without a stable father. His mother moved from one relationship to another, each new man arriving with promises of permanence and leaving with silence. By the time Camilo reached adolescence, he had called five different men "father," and none of them stayed. What formed inside him was not only grief, but confusion about what authority, protection, and masculinity were supposed to look like."

"He is one of the men I met while working in a restorative justice program in Colombia, where individuals convicted of serious offenses are invited to confront the human meaning of the harm they caused. His story emerged not as an excuse for violence, but as a reflection shaped through accountability. In that space, the psychological architecture described in Dangerous Minds became visible, revealing how early abandonment organizes loyalty, power, and later harm (Castell Britton, 2025)."

"Father absence is often discussed in emotional terms, yet its deeper psychological impact lies in the loss of structure. A stable father figure contributes to the internalization of limits, responsibility, and emotional containment. When that figure is absent or unreliable, boys struggle to develop an internal framework for authority and self-regulation. This does not automatically produce violence, but it increases susceptibility to environments that promise structure quickly."

Camilo experienced repeated paternal abandonment that produced grief and confusion about authority, protection, and masculinity. Restorative justice encounters revealed how early abandonment shapes loyalty, power, and later harm without excusing violence. Father absence commonly appears as instability, intermittent presence, and repeated abandonment rather than a single rupture. Such inconsistency undermines emotional security and raises adolescent susceptibility to external influences. The deeper impact of father absence is the loss of structure: a stable father figure supports internalized limits, responsibility, and emotional containment. Absence or unreliability hampers development of authority and self-regulation, increasing attraction to coercive structures.

Read at Psychology Today