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Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

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Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#81
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure everything stems from this. Marriage was not just for the wealthy and nobles in the Middle Ages, or in the 1800s or in subsaharan Africa, etc. If it’s a matter of relative wealth disparity, there have been plenty of eras (probably the majority of recorded human history) in which the kings and nobles had a similar wealth gap to their poorest married subjects as we see today between the 1% and the 99%. I’m…

You can’t survive or support a family with a single income these days.. It’s required for both partners to work.

Exactly.

Manufacturing jobs used to exist.

Manufacturing jobs used to exist in high numbers.

Manufacturing jobs that didn’t require a high school education existed in high numbers.

Manufacturing jobs that paid well and provided a pension and didn’t require high education existed in high numbers.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#82
post #63

America is moving the other way because all the wealth and power has been sucked up by the 0.1% and a large majority are too tired, stressed, and poor. Everything stems from this. Too much wealth tied up in the health insurance scam to switch to single payer, so people stay bound to their employment, and they can't afford time off or visits to the doctor because nothing is completely covered anymore. Too much wealth…

You don't buy a marriage. If you try you are doing it wrong. Finances are a component of marriage, not the driver.

Finance used to be the driver of marriage, and now that it is less so there are fewer marriages.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the children of Black parents? If that's really the case, I see no problem of cancellation here as it would further accentuate the point of systematic disadvantages of people of color.

For those who are curious about this, I would recommend that you graph violent crimes and the prevalence of unwed mothers, and then re-do the graph for each race which one is interested in.

Sure, but what's the way out? What is the solution for both the white and blac population? We can just accept the data as they are or, as a society, try to do something that improves the situation.

In this case, it would make sense to ask why black fathers are much less interested in being a father than their white counterparts. Is it culture? Is it social issues? Once we discover the cause, we can try to do something, at least education-wise.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#84
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? So the wealth inequality right? How do you think the wealthy got wealthy without selfishness? You seem to be implying that it isn't the inequality, but that all those poor people should stop being selfish. If only those poor people would stop being selfish, the wealth inequality wouldn't be a problem. LOL.

Wealth follows a Pareto distribution, and there are many Pareto distributions of things that are not caused by selfishness. https://www.thelangelfirm.com/debt-collection-defense-blog/2... If selfishness isn't a good general explanation for Pareto distributions, is there a reason that it's particularly explanatory for wealth distribution?

They are choosing to further enrich themselves past what any single person can consume, instead of helping those around them, the definition of selfishness.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#85
post #38

It appears that marriage and money are inextricably bound. After all, Melissa Kearney is an economist. And of course the success of children is related to the wealth and education of their parents. The article mentions money many times: > Kearney notes that families headed by a single mother are five times more likely to live in poverty than families headed by a married couple. > Most single mothers start from behind…

As with nearly all of social science, we can’t really run the controlled experiments necessary to determine if this is a causal relationship. Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything.

> Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything.

There's a grain of truth and a grain of falsity to this statement. It's true that indiscriminately "throwing" money doesn't necessarily fix monetary problems. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the problem can be solved without addressing the economic conditions that seem to have created it. Certainly, lecturing people about "family values", which has been happening for many decades, hasn't fixed anything.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#86
post #6

> Kearney says she's not advocating that children live in a household filled with marital tension or where parents are unhappy or mistreating each other. Then what is the proposed solution? Pointing out the problem is the easy part. But if you want more people to be married, and if they're currently choosing not to get married, then you need to either force them to get married against their will (institutionalized sh…

The solution is to grow people in pods and raise them in barracks-creches. Our legacy biology will only continue to diverge from our environment over time.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything does not stem from wealth inequality. Almost-everything wrong in US culture stems from selfishness. Which would include things you talked about. But it also includes people making selfish choices that bring about the end of their marriages (affairs, career, addictions).

Some things stem from wealth inequality.

Wealth inequality means less well-paying jobs for the lower class.

Specifically, less high paying manufacturing (labor) jobs.

There’s lot of studies that show that marriage rates have decreased because of…

- the decrease in union power

- globalization (offshoring)

- technological innovation

Read them here:

American Economic Institute - https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20180010

Brookings Institute - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-marriage-gap-the-impa...

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#88

"Kearney says she wants to grab the attention of both conservatives who say they care about children's well-being and progressives reluctant to talk about family structures, because the link between single parenting, inequality and mobility in America is too strong to deny." She doesn't need to grab the attention of conservatives because her findings already support their pre-existing beliefs, like it says earlier in…

I suspect her findings that the gender of the married parents is irrelevant, the thing that matters is whether or not they are married is the part that conservatives are unwilling to accept.

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#89

America is moving the other way because all the wealth and power has been sucked up by the 0.1% and a large majority are too tired, stressed, and poor. Everything stems from this. Too much wealth tied up in the health insurance scam to switch to single payer, so people stay bound to their employment, and they can't afford time off or visits to the doctor because nothing is completely covered anymore. Too much wealth…

I’m not sure everything stems from this. Marriage was not just for the wealthy and nobles in the Middle Ages, or in the 1800s or in subsaharan Africa, etc. If it’s a matter of relative wealth disparity, there have been plenty of eras (probably the majority of recorded human history) in which the kings and nobles had a similar wealth gap to their poorest married subjects as we see today between the 1% and the 99%. I’m…

Well…

The reason for marriage collapse is lack of well paying manufacturing jobs.

The American Economic Institute - https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20180010

Brookings Institute study - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-marriage-gap-the-impa...

Re: Children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way

#90
A substacker I follow claimed that Kearney's thesis ignores a confounder, that unhappily married couples are more likely both to split up and to have kids with worse outcomes. The fairer comparison would be between unhappily married two-parent homes, and single-parent homes. Haven't read the book so can't say if this is true.

https://afeteworsethandeath.substack.com/p/recent-pieces-bad...

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