Absentee Fathers Quotes

“My research continues to amaze and baffle me. As human beings, we are geniuses. What we didn’t get from the home, we find ways of getting elsewhere. It’s evident, then, when one looks at the stats we don’t have a teenage pregnancy problem and we don’t have a street gang problem. I will even suggest that we don’t have a drug and alcohol problem, nor do we have a crime problem rather, these are only the symptoms that we are experiencing, and the real problem is broken homes that result in broken lives.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“The gangs filled a void in society, and the void was the absence of family life. The gang became a family. For some of those guys in the gang that was the only family they knew, because when their mothers had them they were too busy having children for other men. Some of them never knew their daddies. Their daddies never look back after they got their mothers pregnant, and those guys just grew up and they couldn’t relate to nobody.
When they had their problems, who could they have talked to? Nobody would listen, so they gravitated together and form a gang. George Mackey, the former representative for the historic Fox Hill community in The Bahamas.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“You're a grown man now, Nathan. I'm sorry for any problems you have, but part of being an adult is to stop blaming your parents for whatever shortcomings you have. That's pretty basic.”
― Noah Van Sciver, The Lizard Laughed

“I’m there for my son 24/7, because I don’t want him to take the road we took. I believe if I had a father around, I would’ve learned plenty things. There was no father there to tell me look here son, this is the wrong way to go. When we were coming up, we learned through trial and error. Anthony ‘Ada’ Allen, one of the former leaders and founders of the Rebellion Raiders street gang.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“The psychological absence of fathers can be nearly as devastating as physical absence. When fathers are alive but not a predictable presence actively participating in their daughter's lives the relationship becomes a permanent "maybe.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“I came from as low as one could come, with no mother and no father. So in return I build a family for myself and these fella’s were a part of my family. So I had to look out for them, as if I was looking out for my children. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“Father absence has been implicated in anorexia nervosa, in which daughters may exhibit literal father hunger by starving themselves.”
― Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life

“The Rebellions were the first gang in The Bahamas, to come up with a popular logo/brand in the wearing of Raiders clothing. However, other neighborhoods gave birth to their own gangs using popular sporting team images as their official colors and name. You had the Hoyas Bull Dogs out of Kemp Road; the Coconut Grove area took on the name Nike, which became their clothing of choice. Miami Street took on the name Hurricanes, and wore Miami Hurricanes clothing. However, when you look at it closely, because of the lack of involved fathers, a lot of us were simply lacking an image and a positive identity of ourselves.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“I didn’t have any father to reach out to me. The persons who tried to steer me in the right direction, were the persons on the street and I still went the wrong way. Franco ‘Co’ Bethel, former gang leader and right hand man to Scrooge.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“90% of us came from single-parent homes who were in the gang. There was just a small 10% who had a mother and a father in the home. For a lot of us, we did not had that father or authority figure who could have intervened on our behalf. Where we could have said, ‘You know, daddy, Johnny tried to rob me or Johnny just slapped me’, and our father could have either taken us to the police station, or went to school with us to address the issue. So we had to defend for ourselves. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“Before I was born my father disowned me. You know those ones who get the females pregnant, and then say the baby is not theirs? He rejected me, told my mother that I am not his child, so I never had a relationship with my father. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“The older guys in the neighborhood were our father figures. Even though they were doing foolishness we looked up to them, and they looked out for us. When we would be out playing and it was getting dark, they would tell us now don’t be out here too late, because you know that freaks does come out at night. Anthony ‘Ada’ Allen, one of the former leaders and founders of the Rebellion Raiders”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“The majority of us were from single parent family homes. You could have counted the fellas on your fingers that had a mummy and a daddy at home. Anthony ‘Ada’ Allen, one of the former leaders and founders of the Rebellion Raiders”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of the word ‘rebellion’ is ‘an act or a show of defiance toward an authority or established convention. Extensions of the expression include to fly in the face of danger and to fly in the face of providence, both of which carry a sense of reckless or impetuous disregard for safety.’
Because we did not grow up with our fathers, we became reckless with our lives and disregarded the lives of others as well. Therefore, the problem is not the gangs, so to speak; rather, it’s the conditions that create them. It is the dismantling of our homes and marriages that create the right conditions for gangs to flourish. If homes could be put back together or prevented from falling apart, then these symptoms could be, root cause eradicated.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“When I look at it carefully, by examining the interviews and the various social scientists’ studies, it becomes easy for me to see that we all were just rebelling. Regardless of the area we grew up in or the gang we were affiliated with, or which part of the Western world we found ourselves in, we all were rebelling. We were rebelling and crying out for our fathers. We were rebelling against the home conditions that existed in our communities. We needed our fathers, but above all we wanted to be loved and accepted by them. Since we couldn’t find it at home and in our respective communities, we created it for ourselves.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“From the age of nine, I was on the streets. This came about because I was being rude with my parents and I was moving things without their permission, like money. So my stepfather didn’t like what I was doing and he didn’t like me, so he eventually put me out on the streets. My mother was always sick, and my father—I never met him. While I was on the streets, I used to sleep in old abandoned vehicles. Galen ‘Ninja’ Nordelus former leader of the Public Terrorist Rebellions through Milton Street”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“Many  of  us  might  have  grown  up  in  a  house  that lacked  love,  or  even  without  parental  supervision. The  parents  left  you  on  your  own  and  because  of that  you  missed  out  on  the  true  form  of  LOVE.  The love  you  never  received  as  a  child,  a  daughter,  or you  didn’t  get  it  from  your  father;  he  might  have been  absent  your  entire  upbringing.”
― Chimnese Davids, Redeeming Soul

“I am sorry that I was never there for you, you know? Weak men can become fathers too.”
― Noah Van Sciver, The Lizard Laughed