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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

#141

Post by Atheros »

chadash wrote: post #54
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #4

"Their book suggests that many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability." Marriage is not a magical thing that fixes economic problems, even if you want to keep turning the clock back and make certain acts outside of marriage illegal. The only thing that fixes economic problems is…

> Marriage is not a magical thing that fixes economic problems, even if you want to keep turning the clock back and make certain acts outside of marriage illegal. The only thing that fixes economic problems is money. Speaking as a parent, I’m not sure this is true. If I didn’t have my wife, then I would need to take twice as many sick days for my kids, which would be very tough on my career. I wouldn’t have an extra…

He talked about not having a marriage and you misread it as not having a partner. That's a pretty severe misunderstanding and I'm very curious what caused it.

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

#142

Post by denton-scratch »

em-bee wrote: post #125
denton-scratch wrote: post #107

Marriage is a legal construct; it can provide a level of security (and fairness) that isn't otherwise accessible. But as the laws change, the benefits change too. I think men marry in the hope of binding their partner; fat chance. Marriage gives the partner a claim on a big chunk of the man's assets, so it incentivizes women to divorce their husbands. The great majority of divorces are initiated by the wife. I'm not…

what happened in those 15 years? i don't think that your partner married you with the goal of taking your assets. if that was the case i doubt the marriages would have lasted 15 years.

No, you're quite right; I wasn't taken for a sucker. I think they ended because of the legal implications of marriage; I think the relationships would have survived, if there hadn't been contracts.

In fact, they've both survived; I'm now friends with both exes. But the contracts caused us all a lot of damage.

[Edit] I'm all for people having the same rights regardless of who their partner is. I'm fine with "equal marriage" in that sense; at the same time, I want to say "Don't do it!" It's like saying everyone should have the same right to walk into the path of an express train.

It's good for some people, apparently; it looks to me that a subset of religious-minded people have relationships that marriage contracts don't screw up.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

denton-scratch wrote: post #142
em-bee wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what happened in those 15 years? i don't think that your partner married you with the goal of taking your assets. if that was the case i doubt the marriages would have lasted 15 years.

No, you're quite right; I wasn't taken for a sucker. I think they ended because of the legal implications of marriage; I think the relationships would have survived, if there hadn't been contracts. In fact, they've both survived; I'm now friends with both exes. But the contracts caused us all a lot of damage. [Edit] I'm all for people having the same rights regardless of who their partner is. I'm fine with "equal mar…

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by foogazi »

Is there any survivorship bias in looking at children of married couples?

Whatever causes a non-marriage outcome for households didn’t happen to them: addiction, unemployment, disease, violence, etc

Bad things didn’t happen = success

The challenge for society is resiliency in avoiding bad outcomes in the face of bad situations

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

#145

Post by foogazi »

mannyv wrote: post #134
kibwen wrote: 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…

You don't need a solution when you point out a problem. I've found this attitude in a lot of people. I think it's designed to shut down ideas that they don't like. At least that tends to happen. Describing a problem builds awareness. It's the first step to a solution. Insisting on a solution is just another way of ignoring a problem.

Agree - a problem without a solution is still a problem

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

#146

Post by foogazi »

liquidpele wrote: post #57
Mayzie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be fair, this is mostly a consequence of women entering the workforce. Not that that’s bad, but it’s an unintended consequence that companies were then able to convince workers to work for less because people could survive on it still.

This assumes they competed for the same jobs, is that true ?

Why didn’t women entering the workforce lead to growth and more jobs being created ?

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

#147

Post by Balgair »

beej71 wrote: post #128
Retric wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, both parents in a stable long lasting relationship are capable of a stable long lasting relationship. Americans being bad at this doesn’t mean long term relationships are the sole difference, though they likely do provide some benefits it’s not the total difference in populations. "I don't know exactly what it is about marriage, but it is a very practical matter," says Kearney, chafing at all the criticism. "I…

I'd like to see a control on this. Is there a group of people who thought they were married, but by bureaucratic snafu actually weren't? Did they have different outcomes than people who were really married?

Widows/ers would also be a good control.

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

#148

Post by jamespo »

Retric wrote: post #118
em-bee wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divorce is significantly more common for bipolar, paranoid, and schizophrenic people for example is that really a significant factor? i'd think that the number of people suffering from mental issues is a minority, and even if in their group are more divorces, those should only be a fraction of the total number of divorces.

Yes, because either parent could have menial issues. Especially when you include things like gambling addiction which are also linked to divorce. ~2.8% of the population has bipolar disorder. The odds that one partner at the start of a relationship is bipolar should be ~5.6%. 1% of the population is schizophrenic so ~2% of the population. We aren’t quite up to 7.6% of relationships just from those 2 groups because th…

Maybe nonstable are less likely to have relationships / kids

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

#150

Post by toomuchtodo »

ryandrake wrote: post #140
WillAdams wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's it in a nutshell. Divorce is also more common for selfish and self-centered people, and I would argue that those traits do not make for good parents. (which is not to say that a good person should remain married to such a spouse --- arguably the only thing worse than a good divorce is a bad marriage) Ages ago, I worked at a school for boys, and one could pretty much map negative trats of the parents to…

> Ages ago, I worked at a school for boys, and one could pretty much map negative trats of the parents to corresponding unsocial behaviours on the part of the child. My parents were both teachers, and it was a very commonly held belief among teachers that you could predict a kid's academic outcome reasonably well by simply learning about their parent(s) behaviors and home life. Kids' academic achievement has little t…

I strongly agree with this, but it is an inconvenient truth because everyone wants to search out good policy in the domain space to improve outcomes. That is unfortunately extremely challenging, as you can't fix broken parents. You end up having to design systems to clean up the mess after kids turn into adults, because there are limited mechanisms to encourage better behavior from suboptimal parents.

(did a sustained stint as a volunteer guardian ad litem [1] and occasionally provide advice to others performing the work)

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/guardian_ad_litem

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