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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

#191

Post by ConfusedDog »

giantg2 wrote: post #33
ConfusedDog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being single parent can also file for the deduction. Receiving supposal and child support after tax also encourages divorce, which also encourages the benefiting party not to go to work or do works that doesn't pay taxes. I'd say the current policy is more encouraging of divorce than two-parent household.

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…

Except if the benefiting party receiving spousal support and child support is after tax, so they don't report that as income. So, if they don't work, they qualify for unemployment benefits (at very least the Medicaid) - the government still pays. Speaking from my own experience. My ex is now trying to fight to get more child support because my son is on my healthcare plan my employer offers, she wants to put him on Medicaid like her and get the money instead. In other words, government still going to pay. I think her lawyer didn't agree with her because it's not the best interest for our kid and could be a waste of time. Although I think it's terribly for the higher earner in the divorce, I can't blame her for gaming the system. It is well set up for her to take advantage of this divorce situation. I even know there are women have multiple children from different men just so they can live luxuriously - none of child support is counted towards income when calculating other child support - the only risk is some men rather go to prison than paying lol.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#192

Post by RestlessMind »

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…

Having children is definitely going to be another "tragedy of commons". At an individual level, one has to sacrifice a lot in terms of time, money and effort to raise children. Some people love that (myself included), some people would love to do that but do not have resources for whatever reasons (student loans, crazy work culture, expensive housing etc). But a lot of people simply don't want to have children and all the costs associated with raising them.

And that "selfish" attitude worked over the past 2-3 generations - why go through the hassle of raising kids when the government will anyway provide you pension and assistance when you get old? The costs of kids are privately born but the benefits are socialized in terms of taxes and welfare programs. And now you are looking at South Korea with a 0.7 TFR, with other nations not far behind.

It will be interesting to see how South Korea and Japan deal with it. A range of outcomes are possible - a "Ship of Theseus" scenario with these cultures getting slowly replaced by immigrants, awesome future based on awesome robots, dystopian future based on overhyped AI tech, complete collapse of social programs as the young refuse to care for the previous generations who either preferred partying or were worked to bone by their corporate culture, or a soft landing where the society actually get its act together.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#193

Post by RestlessMind »

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

Serious answer - because it's not been tried on a major scale. Maybe it has worked for a handful of cases, but the models which were tried and worked to various extent at scale were: a) "village" - multigenerational joint families taking care of all the kids together, b) nuclear family - where moms stayed at home, c) nuclear family - where both parents are working and outsource child rearing to nannies and daycares.

If three-parent scenario is tried at a larger scale and if it works with small tweaks to our social contract, then why not?

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#194

Post by troyvit »

giantg2 wrote: post #135
troyvit wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the science fiction world called, "The Planet of People Who Look Before They Leap." There are awesome marriage schools, called couples counseling, and a lot of people do just that before getting married to help expose some of the gotchas that you don't realize before getting married (lots more farts basically). Should it be "policy?" Hell no, but it would probably help new families a lot for people to do it.

The policy shouldn't make it mandatory. It would be interesting to see what a free session would do.

Yeah that's an awesome idea.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#195

Post by slowmovintarget »

ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #161
Workaccount2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distraction is dredging up edge-cases to weigh down progress. Should every vehicle made be wheelchair accessible because some people have wheelchairs? Same logic here.

How do you know these are just fringe cases?

The numbers are aggregates and they give us the answers for the general case.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#196

Post by em-bee »

_greim_ wrote: post #179
digging wrote: post #89

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. 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 littl…

every student should spend a year in a foreign country. i spend a year in a US highschool and later volunteered for a student organization that helps students get internships in a foreign country. it's also possible to spend a term or a year to study abroad.

it would be good to make at least one of these opportunities available to more students.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#199

Post by bluefirebrand »

dragonwriter wrote: post #170
bluefirebrand wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like raising a kid requires exposing them to many different experiences growing up, and generally speaking fathers will provide different experiences mothers. Do I have evidence? No. Do you have any evidence that any other form of parenting is just as good?

The side seeking additional discrimination as a policy goal has the burden of evidence supporting the discrimination, not the side supporting the absence of discrimination. That's not just a good rule of thumb, its a Constitutional rule in the US (though the standard to meet varies depending on the kind of discrimination from a very low standard—the rational basis test—to a very high standard—strict scrutiny.)

Not sure how you got from "let's encourage fathers and mothers to stay together to raise children with better outcomes" to "seeking discrimination as a policy goal"

That's quite a stretch honestly.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#200

Post by brightball »

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…

There could be a lot of contributors to that. A child of a widow will deal with grief but hopefully move forward together as a family. Potentially even trying to honor their fathers memory in the process.

A child of a divorce is likely to deal with anger, instability from custody agreements, custody battles, emotional fights and manipulation between parents, new relationships on both sides and the changes that come with that including issues with step siblings.

Divorce comes with so many negatives for children. A “healthy” divorce is rare from what I’ve seen to this point in my life.

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