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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

#231

Post by brightball »

tkahnoski wrote: post #210
brightball wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

It's self-selecting. If the relationship was not in a healthy state to begin with, divorce doesn't fix that dysfunction. It's full admission the relationship between two people isn't something both parties can come together and resolve. The fact that there are any "healthy" divorces amazes me. We can easily see the population of divorced families, it's much harder for us to shine a light on "should be divorced but ar…

The difference will always be that in a divorce, at least one parent left voluntarily and for a widow that was not the case.

For the kids, they’ll feel this for the rest of their lives regardless of any other circumstances.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#232

Post by dublinben »

RestlessMind wrote: post #185
morkalork wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFH solves this too. RTO policies are anti-family. Hell, unchecked corporate work culture is part of why Japan and Korea's birth rates are so low. Can't be out having babies if you're at the office at all hours.

I think WFH-RTO dimension is orthogonal to unchecked corporate culture. You can have a great work-life balance with RTO (I saw it at Google first-hand in 2010's) and you can have a shitty dawn-to-dusk grinder with WFH (saw it many times since Covid.

Tech companies wouldn't be offering their employees who are too busy to start families the perk of egg freezing if they offered "great work-life balance." They would be offering more flexible part-time work, so that employees could both have children and continue working, instead of putting off having children.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#233

Post by dang »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #65
lokar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

If you continue to post ideological flamebait to HN, we will ban you. We've already warned you more than once ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35920403), and you've continued to do it (not just this comment but e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37461210). Seriously not cool.

I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments, but we need you to stop this. It's not what the site is for, and destroys what it is for. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#234

Post by bradlys »

I think the biggest contributor we can do is change culture to where women are not looking for significant financial benefit when marrying a man.

As it stands, men already don’t look at women for their financial prospects like women do towards men. If we can change this aspect of our culture, I think this will give to one of the largest rises in two parent households.

I don’t expect it to ever change though.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#235

Post by codexb »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #146
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.

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.

I'm talking specifically about the US. I don't know how divorces are treated in other countries.

In the US, many states have family court systems with statutory and/or systemic biases against fathers. Mothers are typically given majority custody of the children and deference when it comes to making decisions about the children.

Single mothers often qualify for government assistance that they wouldn't qualify for as a married woman. Tax credits and deductions are awarded to the parent with majority custody (which is typically women).

Fathers typically contribute more to the financial assets of the marriage, yet are typically lucky to receive 50% of marital assets in a divorce. Men typically have higher long-term earnings than women in the US (for reasons that aren't discriminatory), and courts typically award the lower earning spouse some percentage of the higher-earning spouses future income in a divorce (even when there aren't children).

When it comes to paying for costs related to raising children (school tuition, sports, fees, medical costs), the higher earning spouse is typically ordered to pay a higher proportion of the costs (like 60-70%).

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#236

Post by iteratethis »

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 think the truly new thing is that people can "want" children, opposed to this being a must (due to religion, lack of rights, it being a personal pension system, lack of contraception).

When people are free to WANT children and decide on how many, it's going to be 0, 1 or 2. Which might average out to 1.5 - 1.8 in most countries, far below replacement level.

There's nothing you can do financially to truly move the needle. Even people with no immediate financial challenges tend to not have more than 2 children.

Why not? Because a 3rd, 4th, .... adds no value whilst it does add immense logistical nightmares.

When you love children, 2 will keep you plenty busy. When you have 4 you'll have an issue with your car and home. You'll be spending most of your time driving them around to their schools, sports, hobbies, whatever.

It's not an economic issue, as tempting as it is to think that. When given the choice to want children, most still want them, just not many.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#237

Post by iteratethis »

Dig1t wrote: post #38

>The scholar to whom the question was directed looked annoyed and struggled to formulate an answer. The panelists shifted in their seats. The moderator stepped in, quickly pointing out that poverty makes it harder for people to form stable marriages. She promptly called on someone else. If we valued free speech more, we might be able to have more open, honest conversations in the public realm here. In a society where…

I couldn't agree more.

Progressive discourse has turned so ideological that perfectly normal mainstream conversations make people anxious.

People shiver to even discuss the idea/benefits of a heterosexual marriage. As if its some rogue legacy structure. As if single parent situations are some higher moral good to strive for.

A portion of men, especially the lower classes, are facing severe issues. But this can hardly be addressed as the very idea of men in need of social justice does not fit the "all men are oppressors" narrative.

These politics achieve worse outcomes, not better ones, and they alienate vast groups of people.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#238

Post by iteratethis »

helen___keller wrote: post #55
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #10

I don't think that's been sociologically plausible for many decades. Some things are easy to tear down and nearly impossible to build back up. In some circles, the mere suggestion that this should be a policy goal is insulting, as it hints that single-parent homes are inferior. Our government isn't really allowed to prefer one over the other, even if it would result in less misery. Furthermore, the tools that governm…

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…

You're saying goodbye to the old way too soon, and I'm not talking about the bad parts.

I'm talking about the roles. Even in the most advanced progressive societies women continue to select for male providers (marry up) whilst they continue to do more care-related tasks.

In other words, gendered roles continue to exist. None of which should be shocking because the idea that it's 100% a construct and men and women are entirely egalitarian is an academic fantasy not rooted in anything.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#239

Post by scoofy »

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 honestly blame exurbia. I “left home” to just be able to walk to buy groceries. I doubt I would have left if my lifestyle choices were available at home.

Monoculture is efficient only for the group building the infrastructure.

Re: Two-parent households should be a policy goal

#240

Post by mortureb »

marssaxman wrote: post #187
mortureb wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Some mothers have 5-15 kids!

Most, and I mean 93%+ of Americans don’t and that’s just for the lower bound of 5 kids. It’s 0.002% at 15.
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