I find it unfortunate we don't focus more on this problem. Children raised in single parent households are more likely to be on a criminal path and end up in prison. There's also significant mental health issues that arise from it [0]. It seems these days being concerned about the breakdown of the American family resulting in crime and mental health issues and the general lack of traditional family values puts you in the conservative category and then you get knee-jerk hostility.
Unfortunately I feel our society and current pop culture somehow feeds this problem, but I can't pinpoint how. Some say the welfare system doesn't help either [1]. But I'm not certain that's the full answer, and can also feed into yet more political hysteria.
I think you have to be careful not to conflate correlation and causation here. Criminals are also more likely to come from homes with high poverty, lower educational attainment, etc. It's entirely likely that those factors contribute to family breakdown so "broken homes" and criminality have the same causes, rather than one causing the other.
IMO the US is the epicentre of the cult of the individual which stresses personal pleasure and freedom over value creation in society. That's what causes it.
That doesn't jive on a historical basis when and where enlightenment era thinking and classical liberalism were much higher then they are today. Unless I am misreading your comment and you are simply talking about hedonism.
It's hedonism + individualism. We tell our children things like "you are unique, there is nobody else like you" and "just be yourself" and we ask them things like "who do you want to be when you grow up?". We raise our children to be identity driven.
Then they grow up, find a lover, and realize they need to give up parts of their individuality in order for the relationship to work.
Whaaaatt?? Give up my individuality? But I was raised to enshrine this above all else! Heck no, I'd rather divorce!
As a non-American watching U.S. culture from the outside, I generally agree that those two factors are important contributors to many problems. I would also add to hedonism and individualism the encouragement of a "just-world" myth, which comes as a corollary to the American Dream: you can achieve anything if you work hard for it—therefore, if you didn't achieve it, you didn't work hard enough.
This results in low self-worth of many people in bad circumstances, lack of compassion towards them from those who are better off, and sometimes active disdain from those who were lucky enough to climb out of poverty, as an overcompensation for their own past hardship.
Mom-only households are 43.9% for Blacks, 12.0% for Whites.
"In the words of Harvard’s Paul Peterson, “some programs actively discouraged marriage,” because “welfare assistance went to mothers so long as no male was boarding in the household… Marriage to an employed male, even one earning the minimum wage, placed at risk a mother’s economic well-being.” Infamous “man in the house” rules meant that welfare workers would randomly appear in homes to check and see if the mother was accurately reporting her family-status.
The benefits available were extremely generous. According to Peterson, it was “estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000 a year to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.” In today’s dollars, that’s over $90,000 per year in earnings.
That may be a reason why, in 1964, only 7% of American children were born out of wedlock, compared to 40% today. As Jason Riley has noted, “the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home—and paid them well.”
If we want this to improve, the simplest solution is to unlink being a single parent from getting extra welfare or preferential access to social housing. If we want to go even further, we could unlink welfare from having children at all, and just offer child tax credits instead and universal access to family planning.
I can't help but think the shutdowns and lockdowns are disproportionately hurting young single adults: the prime group of people who need a way to meet each other to in order to not be single.
It's saddening to think that online dating has been the only way to meet new people for millions of young single people over the past 12 months.
> Unfortunately I feel our society and current pop culture somehow feeds this problem, but I can't pinpoint how
Until the world opens back up and people are able to interact again, I don't see pop culture as the real problem.
And online dating is so horribly broken anyway. Anecdata, but I'm in that age group and just completely checked out of dating (and even general socialisation) because it's just impossible. Many of my friends have done the same.
I spent ten years in prison, talking to people and trying to understand, and can confirm that the vast majority of people there come from broken homes. A huge reason is that it makes children very susceptible to bad influences. Two parents can struggle to give children the attention they need. With just one parent, who is likely busy working or too high to really parent, kids find the attention they need from gangs and drug dealers.
"Unfortunately I feel our society and current pop culture somehow feeds this problem, but I can't pinpoint how."
Maybe the problem is that government began focusing on this with the War on Poverty?
Maybe this focus is how our society is "feeding this problem"?
Maybe by subsidizing single parent homes, we inadvertently create more single parent homes?
Maybe we consider data:
- How many black homes in the 1940s single parent vs 1970s?
- What were the black unemployment rates in the 1920s vs 1990s? Or 2010 vs 2019?
- See https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
Instead of renaming schools why don't we free students. For example, rather than throwing money at unions, help the students in Baltimore schools go to schools of their parent's choice such as religious or charter schools. Thirteen of 39 high schools in Baltimore have ZERO students proficient in math.
We doom these children at $15k/head/yr.
Read some of Dr. Thomas Sowell's work. The data is there. It is data that changed him from a marxist as a young man to a believer in freedom and markets.
It's time we did more research on the economic effects of the ways children are raised...
For example, what impact does boarding school have on both the children and the families they come from? (boarding school allows both parents to work all week, allows children more time to socialize with their peers, allows parents to own smaller houses, etc.)
What impact do after school clubs have (so parents can both have a full time job). How about residential summer camps?
How about the impact of larger remote schools? In a school of 100 children, the range of activities that can be offered is limited. Yet if there were 100,000 children, then children could specialize on really rare topics, and still have enough people interested to fill a class.
It just seems there are so many potential ways to make family life & schooling work better for everyone, but without data it's a matter of every parent stumbling in the dark, because for most people child-raising isn't something they have done hundreds of times before.
Anyone who is partner-parenting has probably had that moment when they tell each other: ‘how could anyone do this alone?’
Available person-hours per child in a loving environment is highly connected to positive academic and emotional outcomes for children (some married couples still suffer from one partner being absent, even in the same house though). It’s no surprise that American school children are some of the most medicated for behavior modification.
Children respond to divorce worse than they do to the death of a parent.
Everyone is punished when more people around them in society is suffering. (except the extremely wealthy, who can afford gated communities with armed guards and who don’t have to ever interact with those below them on the income scale).
> Children respond to divorce worse than they do to the death of a parent.
How do they respond to bickering parents who hate each other but don't get divorced "for the children"
I have a friend who's wife seems to hate him. They've stayed together for 15+ years "for the children". My friend was lamenting that he had to try to teach his young adult kids (19-24) not to treat other people the same way mommy treats dad.
I find it interesting talking to adults who have never married and never had children because their concepts of time and finance are so utterly different. For example I ask them why they aren’t multimillionaires driving something like a Ferrari and they look at me like I’m crazy. If I had the time availability and financial freedom of a single person earning at the same rate I would easily be a multimillionaire, numerically speaking, off salary and savings alone due to lower expenses and greater saving/investment principal over time. Single people somehow always find that confusing.
I also find it interesting how older (30+) educated adults are somehow surprised by the time and money commitment involved with children. How could that possibly be a surprise... yet it generally is a complete devastating shock. Baffles the mind.
For the first year they are so helpless they literally can't fall asleep without you (unless you let them cry for hours). You basically have to keep an eye on them every waking moment if they're not in some kind of enclosure. Even simple things like taking a shower, let alone going to the store are logistical problems.
I have no idea how single parents do it
True. If you got two kids (I do) one can just look for both while the other one can have their shower/toilet/sleep whatever. Actually we are often taking turns sleeping.
Even larger communities. I don't think nuclear family is actual the natural state for our species. But recent invention.
Things start to scale much better once you get to bigger family units, with 3 or even 4 generations present. Grandparents, uncles, sisters and brothers of different ages. Looking after the kids. Or in tribal society whole tribe up to 100 people.
The first 1 or 2 years are extremely important in how the little human will later view the world: as a place where they will be cared for or a place where they can scream and scream but will be not be helped. (Taking the two extremes of the spectrum.)
There's a saying often attributed to both Aristotle and Ignatius Loyola (founder of the Jesuit order): Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.
Couples (generally) space children out a bit, so the second one often comes when the first is roughly two: so one parent can look after each. If a third comes along, the first would be 3-4 years old, and already somewhat maturer and hopefully able to handle some detachment from the parent(s).
AFAICT, the 'best practice' is for there to be a "secure attachment" that your child has to you as parent(s):
Throwaway account—I'm not GP and can't speak for them—but I'm in the same situation because I'm asexual/aromantic. I have no interest in getting married.
I would like to raise a child, but I also want what will be best for them, not me.
This is the natural outcome of promoting a promiscuous and hedonistic lifestyle. It's clear from the map that there is a very strong correlation between lower rates of single parent households and conservative cultures.
You obviously haven't seen much of the world. There are a lot more promiscuous countries than the US with lower rates of single parent households. If anything this shows that preaching conservative values such as abstinence is a complete waste of time.
In theory absitinance works; how could it not? But in practice people do not abstain. There's plenty of evidence that abstinence-only education programs are correlated with increased teen pregnancy.
They do in practice. You'll have to explain the lower rates of single family households in the traditionally conservative regions (e.g. Northern Africa and Western Asia). Naturally, because of the strong promotion for a promiscuous and hedonistic lifestyle, and how Christianity has failed in the West, the study you cite does not prove otherwise, as it was only done on a US population.
Edit: a more interesting study would break down the teen pregnancy population in the US by religion or ethnic background to look at the different rates instead of grouping everyone together. The US is not a monoculture.
What you attribute to abstinence, may very well not be abstinence. The traditionally conservative regions you tell me have different values besides abstinence as well.
For example, in Africa and Asia it is much more common that children live with their parents and grandparents for example. This is included in their definition of "single-parent household":
> In this report, single-parent households have a sole adult living with at least one biological, step or foster child under age 18.
Also, it would not explain the difference between Europe and the US. In Europe there are few places where abstinence-only is the norm. While in the US this is much more common. And yet the US has a higher rate of children living in a single-parent household.
> The traditionally conservative regions you tell me have different values besides abstinence as well.
When we look at the dominant religion in those regions I was referring to, we see that Islam places strict guidelines on sexual relationships. So there is a strong causal relationship there. Furthermore, to your point, Islam does promote strong family relationships which can also strongly reduce the problem of single family households. Those two factors are not contradictory.
> Also, it would not explain the difference between Europe and the US
Looking at the map, the vast majority of Europe is still in the orange shade, compared to the heavily blue shade of the countries I'm referring to.
Re-read my post. I said that Islam restricts sexual relationships (abstinence) in addition to promoting family relationships.
Furthermore, there's the fallacy of looking at how Christianity failed in the West, then people generalizing that abstinence doesn't work as I described in my other post.
Polygamy does not mean single parent household. It is required by Islamic law that the father provide equal time to his wives. We've had none of the issues associated with modern single family households in Islamic history. The father is always present and performed his duties.
Edit: those economist articles are committing one of the most basic fallacies: correlation vs. causation. South Sudan has so many issues that it's ridiculous to blame them on polygamy.
Sounds to me a like a classic consequence of "pro-life until born". If you don't know how to pay for health insurance and college of a prospective kid, how are you supposed to have more of them?
Economically speaking, I think it's interesting (for various definitions of interesting) how little value the U.S. as a society puts on future educated citizens, and by now this form of shortsightedness is really starting to show.
Because, if you really zoom out, everything you invest into kids will come back 30 years later. Most other western societies (and even "evil" China) have realized that investing into childcare, education, youth programs, financial support for parents and and kids' healthcare is really the ultimate societal index fund.
Compare that to the US, where children are seen as a personal luxury that you have to afford.
If you look at the numbers, the US seems to be doing a lot better than the rest of the world since 68% of children live in two-parent households versus 51% in the rest of the world.
"While U.S. children are more likely than children elsewhere to live in single-parent households, they’re much less likely to live in extended families. In the U.S., 8% of children live with relatives such as aunts and grandparents, compared with 38% of children globally."
How does this count when parents get new partners they live with? Is that extended? The new partner didn't adopt the child so isn't technically a parent.
The discrepancy could be explained by how tax benefits and welfare work between countries.
In some countries it pays for a young family to pretend to be a single-parent household to get welfare benefits.
In others it is the exact opposite.
Also depending on the financial situation it might change incentives. For example in many countries middle class people benefit more from marriage and benefits associated with it than lower class people.
These stats focus on fatherless homes, which are dire:
#1. 85% of youth who are currently in prison grew up in a fatherless home. (Texas Department of Corrections)
#2. 7 out of every 10 youth that are housed in state-operated correctional facilities, including detention and residential treatment, come from a fatherless home. (U.S. Department of Justice)
#3. 39% of students in the United States, from the first grade to their senior year of high school, do not have a father at home. Children without a father are 4 times more likely to be living in poverty than children with a father. (National Public Radio)
#4. Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out from school before graduating than children who have a father in their lives. (National Public Radio)
Sidenote - A central tenet of Marxism is the dismantling of the “nuclear family structure.”
Not sure why you're being downvoted, we can't have a discussion about the topic of single parent homes without asking where %50 of the parents are, what incentives make that route seem more economical, and what the effects of missing one might be.
Discrediting the nuclear family unit as the tool of patriarchy is absolutely a central tenet of anti-oppression education programs. I would be surprised if anyone who had exposure to that kind of curriculum would find that controversial.
If that is controversial, perhaps we need better frameworks and tools that enable people to discuss it.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement
by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that
collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree
that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
I don't see anything nefarious or particularly "Marxist" about this. A conservative or Christian would surely agree that greater community and cultural bonds and involvement in the welfare of youth is morally just and in alignment with traditional American values.
I agree with your last statement 100%. Why in the world would it be necessary to disrupt the nuclear family to have greater community and cultural bonds?
Some of the founders of BLM are self-proclaimed Marxists. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say there is some sort of a connection between Marxism and being anti-family.
You are misplacing the disruption on the nuclear family, when it is actually saying to disrupt the requirement on nuclear families.
This refers to ways our society benefits 2-parent households and makes things harder for single parents. They suggest addressing this by providing more support and community for each other, not by tearing down nuclear families.
As an analogy, installing wheelchair ramps doesn't prevent people from climbing stairs, it just makes building more accessible.
It isn't society making it easier for two parents to raise a child vs one parent. It's having double the number of people raising that child.
I see no way to read that as BLM supports the nuclear family. So the largest social justice movement in the US doesn't support two parent families. That seems pretty significant
It doesn't seem that disruptive to me, but trying to portray it as a Marxist anti-family statement is still a stretch. It appears to advocate "disruption" of the nuclear family model through greater community involvement rather than "disruption" through dismantling it. It's still not an anti nuclear-family statement per se, it's just against having the nuclear family unit being the only relevant influence in societal upbringing.
Which in a rural white community would literally be a Sunday church sermon.
It is bad. How in the world would having both your parents living at home somehow limit connection and relationship with other familiy members and the community?
Tech industry in general is suffering the same fate. If your views run counter to what’s trending and work in tech you’re putting your job at risk if you communicate them.
I'm perhaps a little sensitive to this and may have overstated things. The comment in particular I was thinking of has indeed been down voted now.
I do see it in maybe a less overt way in a lot of comments on HN. There are comments in this discussion blaming a lack of social programs in the US for the problem. Things like that. There's nothing wrong with believing that, but the counter arguments don't get much visibility around here.
Citing 3 facts and then adding a sidenote about how Marxism wants this is indirectly implying that Marxism is a noteworthy cause.
I don't believe Marxism is a primary cause.
While I don't really know anything about Marxism, I doubt it baselessly advocates for the removal of family structures without something to replace it like community engagement
It's annoying to hear people preach about the woes of Marxism, because, and this is a biased US perspective, a very small proportion of left leaning individuals would ever describe themselves as Marxist. People doing so would be seen as holding extreme opinions. Hearing fearmongering about communists comes off as a red flag that someone's out of touch with reality and fearful of the amorphous blog that is "the left". It comes off as an implicit strawman. Attacking Marxism as means to undermine the credibility of the left is eye-rollingly tiresome to hear. And yeah, of course, comes with plausible deniability. Nothing good will come of that comment but an unpleasant debate of predictably mainstream left folks arguing semantically that marxism doesn't matter, a fringe actual marxist doing their own thing, and a conservative viewpoint playing off both to say "look there's marxist" or "well I saw this extreme opinion on twitter so no".
That's great, but also, nobody cares about the opinions of "the litearti". Actual political structures are pretty clear. Marxism is not a popular ideology in America by any definition.
I think you are uninformed in contemporary critical theory and other popular movements, most of which are absolutely influenced by Marxism, if they aren’t strictly Marxists or Marxians themselves.
*While U.S. children are more likely than children elsewhere to live in single-parent households, they’re much less likely to live in extended families. In the U.S., 8% of children live with relatives such as aunts and grandparents, compared with 38% of children globally.*
The UK, with a similar lack of living with extended family and a similar culture, has a 21% single parent rate compared to the 23% found in the US.
While the nuclear family most common for most of recorded history, since reading Sex at Dawn and a few related books, I've come to believe that for most of human history -- that is, hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture -- we lived in communities where all adults helped raise all children.
There are many criticisms of this book. (I don't know what to make of the debate, just wanted to bring up that many high profile scholars have criticized it harshly.)
Belief isn’t necessary, there is a lot of research on the structure of families.
The nuclear family model of parent and children living separate from extended family is most assuredly not the common model throughout recorded history.
I’m saying the nuclear family is a distinctly modern concept that didn’t exist for most of recorded history even in the US, they didn’t make a point about single parenting.
Unfortunately I feel our society and current pop culture somehow feeds this problem, but I can't pinpoint how. Some say the welfare system doesn't help either [1]. But I'm not certain that's the full answer, and can also feed into yet more political hysteria.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-real-r...
[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/family-breakdown-and-americas-wel...