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U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

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Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#91

Post by autoexec »

anon291 wrote: post #62
autoexec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confused. Just because there is an advantage in one area that does not make something optimal. Moms and dads are great. What actually matters tho is that children are exposed to men and women who love and support them so that they can learn from them and from the dynamics of their relationships.

Okay. So you don't believe having both male and female parents is an advantage over having same sex on s anymore? I'm not talking about optimal. I'm talking about better than the alternative. All else being equal, should we prefer to place a child in sate custody with a mother and father or to same sex parents. By your statement on it being advantageous above, I'd say we should prefer mom and dad. But now you're cont…

> Okay. So you don't believe having both male and female parents is an advantage over having same sex on s anymore?

Living with both a mother and father can certainly have its perks. The main one being easy accessibility to a role model of both sexes. There are plenty of other situations that would provide that same advantage though.

Families come in all kinds of configurations, especially when you get into multi-family/generational living situations, none of which is inherently better or worse for the child by sole virtue of the sex of the those involved.

Child A living with a mother and father isn't guaranteed to be better off than Child B living with two fathers. Just like Child B isn't guaranteed to be worse off than Child C who lives with a mother and a grandmother and a grandfather even through there are benefits to having more people in the home caring for and watching over the child. If you didn't grow up in a household with both your parents and grandparents you didn't have that advantage, but you weren't disadvantaged because of that either.

It's like saying that having two kids, one a boy and one a girl is "best". It absolutely has its advantages sure, but that doesn't make it best or mean that anything other than that is "worse".

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#92

Post by mensetmanusman »

t-writescode wrote: post #65
mensetmanusman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is evolution surprising?

What does the physical act of having the form of sex that can produce a child have to do, at all, with what happens after that child is conceived? Evolution only operates on "ability to live long enough and put oneself in a circumstance that enables making a baby."

They are strongly linked in a social organism sense to maximize gene transfer to the future.

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#94

Post by rayiner »

em-bee wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that divorce can be “healthier” for kids than unhappy parents is self-serving rationalization. Divorce is I’m extremely emotionally and financially disruptive to kids. As an asian married into a white family, the unhappy marriages on my side of the family seem way better for the kids than the unstable relationships on my wife’s side of the family. (But the parents are probably happier divorced/remarried. Tha…

could it be that asian devotion for kids is stronger such that even if the marriage is unhappy they will do their best to make sure the kids are ok? western couples are less likely to do that which means that kids there will suffer more especially if their parents are openly fighting, and divorce helps them settle because happier parents makes for happier kids.

That’s possible. But the financial impact of divorce is extreme. It’s passing a financial handicap onto the next generation. My wife still remembers having to give up sports and dance because splitting up the household meant the money wasn’t there anymore.

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#95

Post by za3faran »

kibwen wrote: post #32
svggrfgovgf wrote: post #24

Not surprising. A part of the cultural war in the US (in 1992) was that it was fine, even encouraged, for a woman to be a single parent. The controversy started between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown (a fictional character that decided to become a single mother). The MSM at the time was extremely supportive of Murphy Brown's position. Here's an editorial by the Brookings Institution from 2012 about the controversy. http…

I find the argument here to be so incomplete that it verges on silly. Raising a child is difficult, and nobody goes into it wanting to go it alone. The question is not "is single parenthood bad", it's "is single parenthood worse than the alternative of forcing parents to stay together despite a toxic, loveless, or unfaithful marriage". Of course, ideally, people just shouldn't be having kids if they're not absolutely…

> than the alternative of forcing parents to stay together despite a toxic, loveless, or unfaithful marriage

So is the implication that the US has much higher rates of those marriages? If so, why? Look for the root cause.

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#96

Post by defrost »

za3faran wrote: post #95
kibwen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the argument here to be so incomplete that it verges on silly. Raising a child is difficult, and nobody goes into it wanting to go it alone. The question is not "is single parenthood bad", it's "is single parenthood worse than the alternative of forcing parents to stay together despite a toxic, loveless, or unfaithful marriage". Of course, ideally, people just shouldn't be having kids if they're not absolutely…

> than the alternative of forcing parents to stay together despite a toxic, loveless, or unfaithful marriage So is the implication that the US has much higher rates of those marriages? If so, why? Look for the root cause.

> is the implication that the US has much higher rates of

The strict implication is that the US has higher rates of people leaving relationships that result in children.

Perhaps:

* Marriage rates are lower, with more children out of wedlock, AND|OR

* US citizens are more prone to leave a bad relationship, whereas other places see more people staying despite a bad relationship, AND|OR

* US early relationships have a higher rate of one spouse being incarcerated than other countries, AND|OR

* { etc. ponder longer and add more reasons }

Things are rarely as simple as the first thought that occurs.

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#97

Post by Supply5411 »

defrost wrote: post #90
Supply5411 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the production of life in a loving relationship between a man and a woman is the best way to produce life.

"Life" ? Quantitatively false: According to the team, there are almost 20 quadrillion ants on Earth right now. That’s a 20 followed by 15 zeroes, which is a number that’s hard to really get your head around. https://newatlas.com/science/how-many-ants-total-earth In terms of tonnage and sheer numbers there are many many more ants than humans - clearly their method of producing life "wins". As a quick heads up, they do…

Human life, I thought it was pretty obvious that we were talking about humans, since men and women can't produce ants.

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#99

Post by defrost »

brnaftr361 wrote: post #80
defrost wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Roman Empire is commonly considered to be the four centuries of post-Republican state of ancient Rome (27 BC) until more or less the adoption of Christianity as the state church in 380 AD and the "fall" of the Western Roman Empire during the following 80 years or so. Your "latter Christianized Roman Empire" was the dag end of a rotting corpse .. you might be thinking of the Byzantine Empire (aka Eastern Roman Emp…

I wasn't really thinking of any particular era, I have some vague familiarity with the concept of pater familias and famiglia as a "body of slaves". This, I reckon, aligns with the Christian family modal that I'm most familiar with, perhaps with less extreme connotations of ownership depending on who you ask. My presumption is that the later Roman empire, despite its collapse, did inform the later customs of Europe,…

> My presumption is that the later Roman empire, despite its collapse, did inform the later customs of Europe, particularly in religion if only due to incidental diffusion. And by that dint also affected the custom of marriage, divorce and perhaps more importantly the status and autonomy of women,

Why later?

Roman Law was the foundation of modern Western Law and it dates back to Republican Rome with a lot of fleshing out during peak classic Empire Rome.

Both Greek (pre Rome) and Roman attitudes toward women have persisted to this day; in Greek stories Telemachus tells Penelope to shut up, and Philomena has her tongue ripped out by Tereus so she cannot speak of her rape .. these are the templates for the active, loaded silencing of women today in public life.

On that theme you might enjoy Mary Beard's Women in Power lecture (part of a series).

[ Dame Winifred Mary Beard, DBE, FSA, FBA, FRSL, English scholar of Ancient Rome ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beard_(classicist)

[ text ] https://archive.md/mAoSZ

[ video ] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGDJIlUCjA0

Re: U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households (2019)

#100

Post by gregjor »

em-bee wrote: post #67
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that divorce can be “healthier” for kids than unhappy parents is self-serving rationalization. Divorce is I’m extremely emotionally and financially disruptive to kids. As an asian married into a white family, the unhappy marriages on my side of the family seem way better for the kids than the unstable relationships on my wife’s side of the family. (But the parents are probably happier divorced/remarried. Tha…

could it be that asian devotion for kids is stronger such that even if the marriage is unhappy they will do their best to make sure the kids are ok? western couples are less likely to do that which means that kids there will suffer more especially if their parents are openly fighting, and divorce helps them settle because happier parents makes for happier kids.

“Asian” and “western” describe huge and varied populations with little in common. One refers to a geographic designation, the other to a shared set of cultural norms and economic development.

What evidence do you have that “Asian” parents (whomever that refers to) show more devotion to their children? Or that “western” couples show less care?

Extended family situations, kids living with grandparents or aunts and uncles, seems more common in poorer places (mentioned in the article), so it’s likely lots of kids grow up with relatives but not with married parents.

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