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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

#171

Post by abeppu »

I find it interesting/surprising that the word "divorce" never appears in this article. My understanding was that the divorce rate also was lower for college-educated people. I'm also surprised by lack of mentions of family planning -- are single parents without college educations actively choosing to be parents or tripping into it?

But overall, this seems circuitous. The author acknowledges that inequality is both a cause and effect interacting with marriage, and cites several ways that kids are better off in two-parent families -- but the description of those comparisons makes no mention of controlling for these other factors. So one can have a lot of skepticism that a poor two-parent household, where both parents need to work long hours or multiple jobs to cover rent, where housing is less stable, where surprising costs (a broken-down car etc) turn into catastrophic disruptions, will turn out healthy successful kids. But the finding that kids do better in two parent families already selects out a number of metrics -- educational attainment, future earnings, lower rate of getting in trouble at school or with law enforcement - all of which are desirable irrespective of family structure. Those seem like better goals, which we are already pursuing just relatively ineffectively.

You want more kids to go to college? Make college cheaper, make colleges spend more money on instruction and less on administration and coaches.

Want kids to have fewer behavioral issues at school? Well, stuff that could make their home life more stable whether their parents are married or not may include safe, affordable, stable housing, and IDK, schools that don't have to do active shooter drills b/c of the real threat of being invaded by a well-armed crazy person might be nice.

Want kids to grow up to earn more? I think Piketty's focus on the share of growth that goes to capital versus labor is important. Generational wage stagnation in real terms is still critical.

Want kids to get in trouble with the law less? In my city, the police did a mass arrest of hundreds of kids skateboarding recently. No one's top concern about crime here is "too many kids are skateboarding". Maybe law enforcement should focus more on e.g. corrupt local officials, employers with systemic wage theft, landlords dangerously skipping repairs and maintenance, etc etc rather than kids on skateboards?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#172

Post by digging »

vorpalhex wrote: post #132
digging wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is that a response to this discussion?

> It feels extremely unusual to me to specifically call out a mother/father relationship if they weren't intending to exclude queer relationships When most relationships are hetero, just calling out hetero pairing as a proxy is.. perfectly fair. That's not some kind of secret exclusionary dogwhistle just to use common language. If parents are almost always a man and a woman and you say "kids with a mom and a dad"...…

Hard disagree. Saying "two parents" is faster and easier than saying "a mom and a dad". Listeners can fill in the gaps with their own biases; the speaker doesn't need to.

Anyway, I'm not the one failing to communicate usefully here. Did you actually read the original comment? It has no meaningful content. It is just a more verbose way of saying less than the title of the article -- unless you read it literally, in which case it's an explicitly homophobic way of restating the title.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#173

Post by jdasdf »

NeoTar wrote: post #145
dagw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

By looking at other similar countries that havent gone that far.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#174

Post by mortureb »

lokar wrote: post #169
mortureb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But women not being submissive has led to devastating effects on the children. Maybe that’s something we need to work on reimplementing.

Affordable high quality child care

That’s a red herring. A person overlooking 5-15 kids is never going to be able to offer the care a one on one relationship with a mother can. Maybe a nanny might be an analogous alternative but the state will never be able to pay for that.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#175

Post by angmarsbane »

bluescrn wrote: post #16
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

Given the rising costs of housing/living, it's going to take 3-4 working adults to fund a home before long. A 1-2 income household will become ever more of a luxury.

One thing I’ve wondered if why we can’t carve out social housing for families. There are reasonably priced 55+ communities in prime commuting locations, why can’t we have the same for families?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#176

Post by peteradio »

fasthands9 wrote: post #68

I can't read the whole article but remember learning in the past that children of widows have outcomes more similar to two-parent households than divorced parent households. This would seem to suggest the divorce is more of a signal of family/status than something which is driving bad outcomes. At the same time, I do think people have gone a bit too far in their want to not give anyone shame. Yes - some shame is not…

Shame could be the active ingredient in poorer outcomes of children of divorce, I'm not sure casting it more broadly will help the general picture.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#177

Post by dragonwriter »

codexb wrote: post #155
dragonwriter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 child…

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

No, it is neutral on divorce, because the support is unconditional.

> More than half of all children will be raised in divorced households.

Will be... when? And where's the evidence? The entire increase in single-mother families from the 1970s to 2019 was driven by the increase in parents who never married, not an increase in divorce-with-children. [0]

> The idea that 50% of fathers are abusing the children is absurd.

No one said that all divorce was due to abuse, but its interesting that aside from your invented numbers and inventing the claim of universality, you also changed divorce involving abuse of the other partner or a child to being exclusively about fathers and exclusively about abusing children.

[0] https://ifstudies.org/blog/children-first-why-family-structu....

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#178

Post by foogazi »

giantg2 wrote: post #53
matthewfelgate wrote: post #23

The 1970s called; they'd like their arguments back! Arguing that children with married parents fare better, thus promoting two-parent families, is akin to suggesting that since blue cars have fewer accidents, everyone should drive a blue car. Pressuring dissatisfied couples to stay together or marry benefits no one. The article fails to provide actionable recommendations on promoting marriage.

"Forcing unhappy people to stay together or get married doesn't help anyone." I largely agree, but the idea of promoting two parent households isn't antithetical to your statement. You could have programs that are meant to ensure that couples get married for the right reasons, with the right skills, etc. It's likely a marriage prep/ed course would result in fewer divorces, just as drivers ed results in better drivers…

> You could have programs that are meant to ensure that couples get married

Is marriage required or just a two parent household ?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#179

Post by _greim_ »

digging wrote: post #89
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. More importantly, young people need a reason not to move hundreds or thousands of miles away from their stable household. Investing in community resources, local economies, and infrastructure that promotes health and opportunity are all necessary.

I've thought about this a lot. My personal theory is that when young leave their home communities to seek opportunity elsewhere, that experience changes them. Afterward, to the extent they return, they rejuvenate their community. To the extent they don't, the community stagnates. The reality in the US is mostly the latter. This also created a self-perpetuating cycle, since who wants to go back to their stagnant little corner of the world after getting a taste of cosmopolitan life?

So all that said, I imagine a hugely beneficial policy would be one where young people who leave for college would get assistance paying off student debt if and to the extent they return to their community afterward.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#180

Post by mcphage »

anon291 wrote: post #66
_greim_ wrote: post #46

The problem with two-parent is you're a single misstep away from one-parent. Multi-generational and communal households would be more resilient, and easier to accommodate via tax incentives and housing policy.

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…

> Moreover, it's not necessary to force everyone in the same house. My parents and inlaws are within 20 minutes.

I'm in a similar position, and it's been a lifesaver. When our first child was ~6 months old, my wife had a gallstone attack at 11:30 at night, and my parents were able to be there in minutes, so we could get to the ER without waking our daughter up and bringing to her to a hospital in the middle of the night. I don't even want to think about how much harder that would have been without nearby parents—and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

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