In The Other Wes Moore, what ways did growing up without a father impact both men?

The author Wes Moore's father was a broadcast journalist who died when Wes was only little. This had the effect of depriving him of some much-needed discipline in his life. Without a father figure in his life, Wes went off the rails, getting involved in all kinds of trouble with his friends on the means streets of the Bronx. It was primarily because she wanted to restore some discipline to Wes's life that his mother Joy sent him to Valley Forge military academy. There she hoped he would learn how to be a man and take responsibility for himself.
The other Wes Moore never knew his father, Bernard. A violent, abusive drunk with a chronic inability to hold down a steady job, Bernard abandoned Wes's mother Mary when she was pregnant. When Wes was eight months old, Bernard showed up on Mary's doorstep, loudly demanding to see his son. But Mary wouldn't let him in, and that was the last time Bernard made any attempt to reach out to his son.
The lack of a father figure has had a devastating impact on Wes's life. Without a father, he's had to look up to his older brother Tony for guidance. But as Tony's a drug dealer, he's not best placed to fulfill that role. And so there's a terrible sense of inevitability about the way that Wes falls into a life of crime himself, which culminates in his conviction for first-degree felony murder.