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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

#291

Post by bsder »

jkhdigital wrote: post #73
lapcat wrote: 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.

As people have pointed out, contrasting widowers is a good control group.

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

#292

Post by Racing0461 »

laurencerowe wrote: post #240
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe. Are there any theories about why this might be? The article doesn't seem to follow this up.

I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage. Europe generally taxes incomes individually and offers parental leave to help when one of the parents is out of the workforce with a baby. In the US there's just the pooling of tax allowances. For dual income households in very high cost of living areas though you need to balance the b…

> I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage.

the gain from married to Married filing separately is insignificant.

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

#293

Post by Racing0461 »

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…

I think at the very least we should end all welfare causing perverse inventives in the family and see where the system settles.

But im afraid pandora's box has been opened and i don't see a way to fix this that doesn't involve alot of people losing rights/individualism (which im opposed too).

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

#294

Post by MandieD »

rayiner wrote: post #263
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty much collectivism vs individualism. The West has mostly leaned towards individualism (aka “it's a free country”) while the East Asia under the influence of Confucianism is most collective. Collectivism has its downsides. It can be suffocating. Society also doesn’t always take into consideration an individual’s limitations when it comes to meeting societal obligations - a moot point in more individualistic…

> Collectivism has its downsides. Collectivism also has upsides. I’m fascinated by Mormons because they seem to me to be the most Asian white people. Mormon men have a life expectancy almost 10 years longer than other white men. They have among the highest social mobility in the country. They, along with Jews, top the charts in measures of mental well being. And this is all happening within the context of America. Th…

Strong, socially-enforced taboos against alcohol and tobacco consumption are probably a major driver of the longevity difference.

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

#295

Post by withinboredom »

dijit wrote: post #190
jncfhnb wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are effects of marriage, it seems fairly obvious that they are due to the explicit commitment that the two people have made to each other, not the government’s tickbox. Are you actually confused by this concept?

Let's tone down the aggressive comments please. One large barrier to breakup is how much damage a breakup will do and how much effort it entails. If a break up is very easy then small insults will lead to break up. A marriage contract is.. a legal contract; thereby it can be a barrier to a break up. I have considered breaking up with my girlfriend before yet the effort of splitting our things and ensuring that she ha…

In the US, only marriages are registered with the government. So you can’t really count long-term relationships or even common-law marriages.

That’s probably why that’s all they’re looking at. It’s the only thing that can be measured as a proxy for stable relationships.

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

#296

Post by withinboredom »

corethree wrote: post #187
danielschonfeld wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is answered in the interview. She is saying that a household with a stable long lasting relationship is what’s driving these better outcomes. She’s also saying that in America marriage (unfortunately) seems to be the only way to keep people together for a long while (long enough for a child to not experience a parade of parents by the time they are 15 according to the article). In my personal opinion. I…

Yes hyper individuality is part of it. The other part of it is gender equality. For most of human civilization genders were not equal so both sexes evolved traits that are also unequal. The most glaring trait responsible for lack of marriage is female hypergamy. Previously women being of generally unequal/lower status then men and overall a smaller pool of candidates (no online dating) would be forced to be more egal…

There are a metric shit ton of assumptions in here that I’m not sure are true. The truth of the matter is that women tend to work together and men… not so much. Once you see the whole picture, I can see how you can see the world through such a perverse lens.

Sadly, I’m about to hop off the train, but if someone replies that they are interested, I’ll provide a writup that will surprise you.

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

#297

Post by ergl »

As someone from Europe, I can't understand the inability of mainstream US culture and media to disentangle marriage from long term stable relationships. Take this paragraph from the article:

> More women are deciding to have children and also remain single. Almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019, a dramatic increase since 1960, when only 5% of births were to unmarried mothers. And it's not because of divorce; today's unpartnered mothers are also more likely to have never been married.

They go from "single" to "unmarried" back to "unpartnered" without batting an eye. The statistics they cite are about marriage yet they are generalized to all single women. It doesn't make sense.

At least the author of the book is aware of this:

> In the U.S., she says, unmarried adults who decide to live together do it for a much shorter duration than in Europe. [...] "If you just look in the data, marriage is what delivers kids a stable, long-term, two-parent household in this country."

In my opinion looking into what's driving that difference between couples in the US and Europe would be worth a discussion on its own.

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

#298

Post by saiya-jin »

hx8 wrote: post #257
saiya-jin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you ask such an autistic question (given that I am responding to a adult person and not some small kid who doesn't have a clue about actual life), don't expect much, it clearly signalizes that you are either taking a piss or are so immature there is no point even discussing it. Its a bit like asking why do you like color blue, mature adults don't ask that and for kids you can say anything or nothing, same res…

As an adult that is seen as mature by my peers who happens to not understand marriage your post comes off as lacking empathy and also not doing a lot to explain why someone would choose marriage. The reasons I extracted for why someone would want to choose marriage. * "Why not" * Changes the relationship for the better * The relationship has longer cancellation procedure.

You have no idea how you are actually viewed by your peers, here for example you are far from it, pretty consistently, trying hard to find reasons to prove your own personal opinions, while ignoring others. A bit pointless debate at this point, since your own second asterix is more than enough for the topic discussed.

But to each their own.

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

#299

Post by laurencerowe »

Racing0461 wrote: post #292
laurencerowe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage. Europe generally taxes incomes individually and offers parental leave to help when one of the parents is out of the workforce with a baby. In the US there's just the pooling of tax allowances. For dual income households in very high cost of living areas though you need to balance the b…

> I suspect this is a result of the tax system in the US which is structured in a way that strongly incentivises parents into marriage. the gain from married to Married filing separately is insignificant.

The gain is from married filing jointly while one partner is not working. At $100k it roughly halves the income tax you pay.

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

#300

Post by picadores »

ecshafer wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #231

We should do more social studies research into US subcultures that have significantly different marriage norms than the mainstream US. Mormons and Asians both have strong taboos against divorce, and also have strong rates of upward mobility (i.e. much higher odds of kids from low income households ending up as high earning adults). There is some research supporting the link, but not nearly enough: https://www.brookin…

This is one of the reasons that I think Kant's ideas on Deontology (also Confucian philosophy around relationships) is the correct one for a functioning society. There is a framework of "Right" and "Wrong" that exists outside of "Good" and "Bad". Doing what is beneficial for society, and what is expected of society is right, regardless of the Good nature of it. If society expects you to fight in a war, and you kill s…

Its wrong to disturb societal harmony, by example: putting the guild of map printers out of work with a digital map from sattelites available on all devices.
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