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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

#151

Post by _greim_ »

aidenn0 wrote: post #130
anon291 wrote: post #66

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. Moreover, it's not necessary to force everyone in the same house. My parents and inlaws are within 20 minutes. It's great and since they are both married and happy, there's little family stress and the kids get ample time with both grandparents. God forbid, if anything were to happen…

> 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 think the point is more that multi-generational households would occur naturally, but as you alluded modern society gets in the way. I have a similar situation as you. It's interesting to imagine what policies would have incentivized us to settle down nearer our parents. Like, what would have made that a palatable option?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#152

Post by dragonwriter »

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

More than two caregivers in the form of same-household extended family has been a norm in many cultures and is probably in many cases better than the nuclear family as a norm (its, a minimum, less in danger of collapse to a single misfortune), though its a worse fit for a capitalist economy that relies on labor being a fluid (as is marriage itself, once women entered the workforce on equal terms rather than being excluded or treated as accessories of men.)

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#153

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

300bps wrote: post #111
lokar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is that better the two mothers? Do you have evidence?

Principle of Belief Conservation. For any proposition, P: 1. Taking a certain cognitive stance toward P (for example, believing it, rejecting it or withholding judgement) would require rejecting or doubting a vast number of your current beliefs, 2. You have no independent positive reason to reject or doubt all those other beliefs, and 3. You have no compelling reason to take up that cognitive stance toward P. Then it…

The principle of quickly googling any logical principle that suits you, and then claiming, roughly, that it is applicable here, and that if you disagree, you are effectively denying that 1+1=2.

HN at its best.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#154

Post by lokar »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #117
lokar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not the one saying that the government should intervene in how people form families.

If you disagree with that, and disagree with the initial assumptions, don't you think it would be easiest to post evidence of your own rather than demanding evidence from those you disagree with? Or do you refuse to post your evidence until other people post theirs, like some kind of standoff?

IMO, the burden for strong evidence is on the people trying to interfere in my private affairs.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#155

Post by codexb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #143
codexb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

> UBI

UBI still incentivizes divorce. It offers unconditional financial support to single mothers.

> Abuse

We're talking about no-fault divorces. Divorce, with cause, has always been legal -- abuse, neglect, abandonment, sterility, addiction -- there have always been ways to deal with these issues.

More than half of all children will be raised in divorced households. The idea that 50% of fathers are abusing the children is absurd. There is a very clear lack of awareness on how severe each of these issues are. Yes, abuse by parents

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#156

Post by lokar »

digging wrote: post #77
jvanderbot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very surprised if GP thought that only father/mother combos are the best and instead was just agreeing with TFA.

It feels extremely unusual to me to specifically call out a mother/father relationship if they weren't intending to exclude queer relationships. A note for all readers: don't say "nothing better than a [straight relationship]" if that's not what you mean.

I think we should avoid assuming intentions. If they want to follow up they can, otherwise we should assume the best.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#157

Post by NeoTar »

sokoloff wrote: post #139
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You don't have enough children, all of you, the fertility rate is below replacement and it is not a blip or a fluke. How is the population still growing by almost 1% per year then? https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/population

Because there is a population 'bulge' of younger people who haven't yet had children.

For a very simplified model, imagine at t=0 there were only 'x' people all of whom were twenty-years-old.

Run time forward to t=20 - some of the twenty-year-olds will have died, so the surviving population will be maybe 0.95x, but also some will have had kids, let's say the fertility rate is 1.0 children per woman, so the group as a whole will have had roughly 0.25x children. This means the population has grown to 1.2x despite lower than replacement fertility.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#158

Post by ryanwaggoner »

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…

Humanity will be just fine. There are eight billion of us and growing, and while fertility dropping is increasingly a localized economic issue, it hardly threatens our species survival. Even when population peaks (projected in a few decades), there will be billions of us for centuries to come. And it’s impossible for you or anyone else to predict how civilization and culture will change or grow over such timeframes. Imagine someone in 1623 wringing their hands over humanity’s downfall based on whatever was happening in their tiny corner of time and space.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#159

Post by lokar »

User23 wrote: post #71
lokar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is that better the two mothers? Do you have evidence?

If you’re asking for strict double blind randomized trials then no of course not that research would be totally unethical. On the other hand we have a growing mountain of evidence that boys without fathers have comparably worse outcomes and so far as I know there’s no serious dispute. Also, frankly, the suggestion that fathers are optional or even unnecessary is quite sexist. Just because we’re generally inured to an…

All of the studies I have seen are about boys with only a single parent (mother).

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#160

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

mortureb wrote: post #129
digging wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use scientific words to make unscientific claims about the "natural" state of human families.

Even uncontacted tribes coalesce around two forms of family. Extended or polygamous. There is a natural state.

The state of nature exists only as an idea. Primitive peoples are just as alienated from their supposed state of nature as we are.
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