Where are the fathers?

I get that question every time I write about women and children in peril.

I write about the broken families of homeless women, their daughters and the grandbabies sleeping in cars, on the streets and trying to get into shelters in alarming numbers throughout our region.

And the readers ask: "Where are the fathers?"

I write about women who are working hard at good jobs, then racing to their day-care centers to pick up their kids - all of them single, all of them praying that the government doesn't go through with a threat to cut the child-care subsidy that keeps it all together.