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Two-parent households should be a policy goal

theatlantic.com

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Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#141

Post by baq »

helen___keller wrote: post #113
baq wrote: post #92

People don't want to have children because: 1) they can't afford it, or 2) they don't have a reasonable apartment/home (same thing as 1. really) 3) they don't want to give up their lifestyle 4) they're genuinely afraid the future is dystopian and dark (which is rather interesting since I can't imagine a future more dystopian than one without children) So if you want to fix the society to want to have children again y…

I just want to add that some people simply don’t want to have children. This is important to note because “should I have children” is kind of a novel question, especially for women, in the context of human history. If you go back a century or three, women (especially from a middle class or upper class family) were expected to wed. And wives were expected to bear and care for children. Choice was not particularly invo…

Good point though I anecdotally can say that some these women decide that they'd like a child later in life when it's biologically very late (euphemism here).

Also back then a lot (heard numbers like 25%) of women didn't have children. Not sure what this changes about the equation given that it probably wasn't their choice either, but it sounds like a lot.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#142

Post by helen___keller »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #107
helen___keller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It took most of human history to build the old culture with immense social pressure to marry and have children, immense social pressure for men to provide and women to care for children, and intense taboos around divorce, births out of wedlock, even around non-marriage into old age That world is gone, and probably for the better in many ways. The world needs to find different cultural norms around children su…

> The world needs to find different cultural norms around children such that we can have a stable population and happy children. Unfortunately, the world is dead. It can play around with cultural norms as if they are toys for whatever time it has left, but the diagnosis is terminal. You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. Children who grow u…

The pessimism is unwarranted. As you glibly point out, we have survivorship bias in discussing the history of those who survived and reproduced. So shall it be one hundred or thousand years from now, discussing the rise of whatever culture or cult succeeds in keeping their sub populations fertility rate above the replacement rate.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#143

Post by dragonwriter »

codexb wrote: post #99
ajmurmann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are concerned about poverty, maybe we could just give them money? I understand the fairly small child tax credit had a huge positive impact on child poverty.

And further incentivize divorce? It's a dual-headed problem. Much of what has fueled the breakdown of family structure are policies that incentivize women to become single mothers. Children being raised by single mothers is not a good outcome. We need to stop pretending that it is.

> And further incentivize divorce?

One way to give them more money and not incentivize single parenthood (which is the issue, not divorce, and treating them as equivalent has always been wrong and is increasingly so as marriage rates drops) is to go to UBI instead of means-tested aid, or, if using means testing, use a means-testing formula which doesn't punish two-parent families.

> Children being raised by single mothers is not a good outcome.

Its a lot better than children being raised by two parents together, one of which is abusing them and/or the other parent, which any change which does more to avoid incentivizing divorce or single-parenthood more than eliminating any two-parent penalty would incentivize, especially for the poor.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#144

Post by ryanklee »

bbor wrote: post #9

Serious question: why not three parent? Does every stable relationship involve sexual aspects? Seems like an article stating an obvious fact but missing the bigger picture

Because 3 is a poor psychological, practical, and emotianal fit for most people. Probably kids, as well.

Alloparenting is great, but 3 parents running the same household would be a nightmare in most cases.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#145

Post by NeoTar »

dagw wrote: post #101
baq wrote: post #92

People don't want to have children because: 1) they can't afford it, or 2) they don't have a reasonable apartment/home (same thing as 1. really) 3) they don't want to give up their lifestyle 4) they're genuinely afraid the future is dystopian and dark (which is rather interesting since I can't imagine a future more dystopian than one without children) So if you want to fix the society to want to have children again y…

So if you want to fix the society to want to have children again you have to make it 1) affordable, 2) less inconvenient, Sweden has done about as much as any country reasonably can do address those two, and it hasn't had much effect on improving the birth rate.

How do you know what the birth-rate would be without those policies?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#146

Post by ryanwaggoner »

codexb wrote: post #99
ajmurmann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are concerned about poverty, maybe we could just give them money? I understand the fairly small child tax credit had a huge positive impact on child poverty.

And further incentivize divorce? It's a dual-headed problem. Much of what has fueled the breakdown of family structure are policies that incentivize women to become single mothers. Children being raised by single mothers is not a good outcome. We need to stop pretending that it is.

Given that most women do worse financially after divorce, I’m curious about these incentives for women to become single mothers that you’re talking about.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#147

Post by tkahnoski »

nemo44x wrote: post #90
tkahnoski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more to the point, lean heavily into "it takes a village to raise a child".

What that means is that it takes parents and extended family and the close-knit community you'd find from a church and from schools, for example. Millions of people do this today. It's odd to see people think this is a revelation or something.

I'd agree and my comment is more of a critique on the evolution of American society leading away from community building. Whether it be subtle things like suburban homes with giant privacy fences or larger topics like the affordability of housing to be able stay in the community you grew up in.

I'd much rather see policies towards solving these problems versus one that has the government getting in the middle of my marriage or parenting.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#148

Post by aidenn0 »

anon291 wrote: post #138
aidenn0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A multi generational household occurs naturally when grandma and grandpa had a stable two parent households and now mom and dad do too. Huh? My sister and I both live more than a thousand miles away from our stable, married parents that we are on good terms with. We went where our work took us and then met and married people in that area. My sister lives several hundred miles away from her in-laws, and my in-laws (…

I suppose I should revise my comment to mean that I don't think living together is a necessity. Just in close proximity. Moreover I know many who do live close to parents and seem estranged due to broken families/mom and dad can't stand to be in the same room, etc

I was able to infer that from your original comment, but the point is that neither my sister nor I can reach my parents in a single day of driving[1], and my wife can't reach her in-laws in a single day of driving. My in-laws are very close now, but at this point we are caring for them more than they are caring for our kids.

1: I'm considering a full day of driving as 12 hours here. Different people tend to disagree with this number in either direction.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#149

Post by mbg721 »

sxp wrote: post #17
bbor wrote: post #9

Serious question: why not three parent? Does every stable relationship involve sexual aspects? Seems like an article stating an obvious fact but missing the bigger picture

In non-nuclear families, the third "parent" is normally an uncle, aunt, or grandparent that can provide additional financial support and babysitting options for the two parents. This is common in many countries where multiple generations of extended families live in the same house or neighborhood.

Even without a multigenerational household, there are plenty of American families that rely on grandparents for regular support/babysitting. I don't know how we would have managed our kids without a standing one-night-a-week date night.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#150

Post by giantg2 »

User23 wrote: post #58
giantg2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless someone is severely disabled, spousal support is a horrible thing. Even worse are the states that make it compulsory after a certain number of years. Child support makes sense in theory, but is butchered in practice. The judgements often have little to do with how much it actually costs to support the child and is more about a percentage of income. Let's not forget, the state is the third party in a divorce. T…

The state also gets a 10% rake off the top, which is why child support judgments are so enthusiastically enforced.

Is that the court fee or something else?
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