Is it better to have a lousy father or to be fatherless:
I say lousy, if by lousy you mean unemployed, distant, detached, overworked, unavailable, lazy, unintelligent, boring, uneducated, and other non-criminal versions of a bad dad.
However, if pops is a drug dealer, murderer, rapist, etc... Be satisfied with being alive and not knowing the sperm donor.