Why there are very few Father's Day cards sent from prison

Having spent many Father's Days incarcerated and having gone through a major heart surgery in relation to my adopted father, I can relate to this very well. I can also say that somehow perhaps unconsciously, I have buried the question about my biological father and chalked it up to who really cares. But as I raise my son as a "stay at home Dad." I look into my boys eyes and say,"No matter how bad it gets son. I love you and am here for you." I go into "correctional facilities" every week and sit with men who wish they could have gone back and made different choices in order to raise their sons and daughters. Rarely will a man open up and share much about his feelings about his father. This is reflected in the relatively few Father's day cards passed out in proportion to Mother's day cards inside prison walls.
As you see in this video, you can feel the very real pain that is buried and repressed. This is an all to real and true story told over and over in the lives of incarcerated men and juveniles. In The Fresh Prince, Will is fortunate to have his Uncle Phil step in and show him what it is to be a man. Most young men who are incarcerated did not have such a person. Statistics according to studies from The Department of Juvenile Justice cite numbers as high as 80 percent of incarcerated males come from fatherless homes and 70 percent of their sons will follow them to prison.
"Young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families...those boys whose fathers were absent from the household had double the odds of being incarcerated -- even when other factors such as race, income, parent education and urban residence were held constant." (Cynthia Harper of the University of Pennsylvania and Sara S. McLanahan of Princeton University cited in "Father Absence and Youth Incarceration." Journal of Research on Adolescence 14 (September 2004): 369-397.)

The importance of men as fathers cannot be overstated. Thankfully there are many men who answer the call to serve their families and "man up." God has a heart for the fatherless as He is the perfect Father. I thank God for the many men who go into the prisons and share the agape love of our heavenly Father.