I held my breath when details of the 14-year-old alleged Georgia school shooter’s home life began unfolding in the news. I was not surprised when I learned his parents were divorcing — a red flag for boys. And Colt Gray struggled under the pressure. He’d recently changed schools and lived with his dad while his mom had custody of his two siblings.
More than 400 school shootings have occurred since the Columbine massacre in Colorado in 1999. The rate has risen precipitously since 2018, excluding 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic shut schools down.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter who killed 20 children and six adults, after first shooting his mother in the head, also came from a broken home. So did the Centennial, Colorado, school shooter, and the young man who walked into a Georgia elementary school with 500 rounds of ammunition. Although the parents of 15-year-old Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley still lived together, reports indicated the marriage was troubled; his mother was having an affair.
Accordingly to an international academic study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in 2018, “separation from a parent during childhood is strongly associated with elevated risk for later violent criminality” in contrast to children “who lived continuously with both parents.” The study surveyed a whopping cohort of 1.3 million individuals up to age 15, specifically excluding children with deceased parents. Males accounted for 90 percent of violent offenders.
A 2023 nationwide analysis conducted by the Institute for Family Studies found that “strong families are associated with less crime.” In cities, the crime rate was 48 percent higher in areas with a high number of single-parent households than in “those with low levels of single parenthood.” A decade earlier, Brad Wilcox, University of Virginia professor and author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, determined that nearly every school shooting in 2013 “involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.”
In other words, the correlation between family structure and violent sons appears consistent over time.
No-Fault Divorce’s Role
After five decades, the scientific evidence on the devastating consequences of no-fault divorce and fatherless households is well-settled. Boys who grow up in single-mother households have twice the chance of ending up juvenile delinquents. Children in general have increased rates of poverty, depression, and anxiety, substance abuse, and generational divorce. Educational attainment decreases. Research also shows an association between parental divorce and an increased risk of suicide. Indeed, the boys who orchestrated the Sandy Hook and both Colorado shootings killed themselves after harming others.
Statistically, children simply fare better on every level of wellness in two-parent married households.
Obviously, most boys (and troubled girls) don’t become killers or attempt suicide. Still, the adverse emotional trauma of a broken home extends well into adulthood. Just listen to these adult children of divorce.
The literature demonstrates that most marriages are low-conflict with good chances for reconciliation. So why are so many divorcing parents willing to take the risk with their children’s futures? What better legacy to leave children and grandchildren than an intact family? (One point of reference: In 48 states, innocent spouses are routinely divorced against their will under no-fault divorce, and thus have no say whatsoever on whether the family splits up.)
Divorce Reform
I’ve been advocating for divorce reform for more than a decade. During the last year, certain conservative leaders have expressed interest in eliminating no-fault divorce, which I believe is unconstitutional. Attacks on us have been unrelenting. Even modest legislation I helped craft in Georgia that would have retained no-fault and merely helped struggling parents to resolve conflicts and communicate better was shut down twice several years ago.
A so-called “good divorce” won’t necessarily safeguard children either — another cure-all put forth by detractors. Although there is modest evidence that a good divorce is better than a contentious one, remaining married is the gold standard for child wellbeing. By all accounts, the Sandy Hook boy’s parents had a highly amicable split.
School shootings won’t be eliminated by gun control or laws that require sturdier locks for gun cabinets either. Nor will convicting parents along with their children. (The Michigan shooter’s parents were convicted of manslaughter earlier this year, and the Georgia shooter’s father has been charged.)
We must address the cause contributing most heavily to the despair of our children — the break-up of their families. To do that, feuding politicians and divisive Americans must lay down their own verbal weapons and work together courageously for the benefit of our nation’s children.
Beverly Willett is co-founder of the Coalition for Divorce Reform and a former lawyer. She is the author of “Disassembly Required: A Memoir of Midlife Resurrection.”
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