More thoughts on parenting and love
OOOOH, Emily Yoffe has brought the noise!
Yeah, she made the outrageous claim that kids do better in a household with two married parents, preferably their natural ones (but, sure, adopted ones can stand in just fine and so can responsible and caring stepparents--that's my commentary, I guess, since I don't think she really addresses it, but given the fact that her article is so focused on the economic benefits of two-parent households, it would make sense). I know, I know! She's so utterly Victorian! To even suggest that women might oughtn't (Too much time in Arkansas. Just deal with the double modal.) conceive of children with someone who ain't going to be around come time to buy diapers! It's so oppressive!
Or, I guess, that's what Broadsheet thinks. But, meh. They get a big meh and even a snort of contempt because they (where "they" equals Tracy Clark-Flory) present no actual evidence or data to counter anything Yoffe wrote. Nothing.
The thing that bothered me most about Yoffe's piece wasn't the thesis of it or her focus on the economic indicators, because those are important. But I thought she ignored one of the most brutal problems with kids born out of wedlock: Not only are these kids almost certainly going to grow up poorer and with less parental involvement (duh), they are vastly more likely to be victims of child abuse. Kids raised by two parents other than their own natural or adoptive parents are at increased risk of being abused, but that number increases higher for kids who have no father figure around at all, except maybe (and possibly worst of all) a string of boyfriends.
There are a lot of possible reasons for this, and you can peruse the Internet at your leisure to find hypotheses galore, although a lot of them have to do with economic stress and are thus related to the poverty argument, but there are other possibilities as well. It is a fact that most fatal child abuse is perpetrated by the biological mother and most sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by a male who is not the biological father.
There are a host of other worrisome statistics. Kids who grow up without their fathers are more likely--in some cases, vastly more likely--to engage in all kinds of risky behavior, end up dropping out of school, end up on drugs, in prison, etc. Most rapists grew up in fatherless households.
I have seen some research suggesting that two adoptive, committed parents of the same sex (yeah, I'm talking about the gays. Yesterday I mentioned the Latins. Today it's the gays.) are equally effective at preventing most of these bad outcomes (I'd say becoming a rapist is a bad outcome, wouldn't you?), leading some to suggest that perhaps it is the mere presence of two loving people who are absolutely committed to the child's best interests. However, the research is somewhat limited due to a) that type of family being relatively rare and b) the fact that most of the gay couples who adopt/give birth are well educated and of above-average income, confounding comparison with most children born out of wedlock. That being said, I will continue my support for gay adoptive parents--I don't know, but I have a gut feeling that the more loving and stable adoptive homes that exist for kids, the better off we all are.
It is of grave concern to me that feminism seems to care very little about what is good for kids (or men) because they are so focused on what is "good" for women. Feminism will continue to ignore the data that kids do much better in a stable home with two parents because it suggests that women should, oh, at least consider how their choices are going to affect others. And we can't have that. Or at least Tracy Clark-Flory can't. The commenters on that piece are a bit more reasonable about it. No one--not even me or Emily Yoffe--is suggesting that women should marry men who are clearly unable to act responsibly toward both the mother and child and obviously not abusive men or men who have violent rages and make the house feel unsafe and constantly stressful. Yoffe and I would venture to suggest, though, that perhaps women should GET ON THE FUCKING PILL before they allow themselves to get knocked up by these guys. But, of course, we shouldn't get all judgey and preachy at women (and men, sure) who are totally fucking their kids over because it's, like, a woman's right to do what she pleases.
Every time some new report comes out that links some behavior in the mother with some outcome in the kid, every damn feminist website screams, "OH MY GOD, THEY ALWAYS BLAME THE MOM." Well, sometimes, maybe it's the mom's fault, eh? It's less about blaming the woman, I think, than about finding out what's best for kids, but the constant focus on the woman, the woman, always the woman, means that we can't find out what risk factors there might be for childhood obesity, for example. Because if it's linked to working mothers, as it has been, the feminists will fucking shriek. Similarly, there will be a shrill outcry if it is suggested that wymmins are animals and share any qualities with other female animals, including, of course, the dreaded maternal instinct. We don't have instincts! We went to college!
I know, I know. I'm hopelessly conservative and out of date. But I warned you: I care fuck-all about "progress" if progress means throwing kids under the bus. I also famously hate the type of diseased individualism we have taken to celebrating in this country--hey, man, whatever you want to do as long as it makes you happy. Feh. As Kant said, doing your duty first makes you worthy of happiness and 'duty' implies the existence of some type of relationship.
Now, maybe I'm just engaging in pointless handwringing. God knows, that's what Tracy Clark-Flory would say, right? Maybe all of those differences between single-parent households and two-parent households can be explained simply by the poverty. I don't really see how you can ferret out the differences between differences caused solely by poverty and those related to the presence of parents, because in so many cases it is precisely the loss of the one parent that causes the poverty. So, is the loss of the parent causing the poverty, and then the poverty causes the other problems? Or is the absence of the parent causing all of it, proximally? And what are we to make of the fact that biological fathers who live with their children are, compared to single mothers and unrelated men, less likely to abuse their children? And, by the way, comparisons to Scandi-fuckin-navia don't really hold up; there are so many cultural differences between the US and Sweden that it's way too hard to control for all the variables. It is certainly possible that with their system that has come close, or so I hear, to eliminating child poverty in their countries also eliminate or nearly eliminate the social difficulties of single-parent households. Anyway, eliminating child poverty is a worthy goal even if it doesn't, but it's too hard to say.
Furthermore, comparisons with the animal world are not helpful here since there are no other animals that I can think of who require several years of care before they become independent of their parents. Also, no other animal young are expected to learn language, to learn to be civilized and ethical, etc. Human children take much more effort and care and time than any other animal young, so far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong--is there some rare bird in the Upper Orinoco that has young who now require 12 years of schooling before they are ready to the leave the nest?
I'm going to go ahead, since it's late and I'm tired, and go way out on a limb here. I have, as some of you know, a special interest in sociopathy. Of the sociopaths I have personally known, all of them came from fatherless homes (and some of them from motherless homes, too, i.e., they had been abandoned by both parents). It makes a certain amount of sense since, while there is probably a biological component for the antisocial personality disorders, it is thought that they can be prevented in early childhood through certain parenting techniques--parenting techniques that are often more doable in a two-parent household. I would suggest--and some others have, too--that single-parent households are more likely to push kids who already have the biological component to become sociopaths and that two-parent households have a higher likelihood of preventing it. Incidentally, the rapists mentioned above are more likely to be psychopaths than sociopaths, though they both lie at various places on the antisocial spectrum.
I was just thinking about this the other day, how in this country we put children in their own beds as soon as we can get them to sleep there. We have a host of experts telling us how to fight the baby's natural instinct to cry like hell when they are left to sleep by themselves; we have to send the message, of course, that in this life, kiddo, you're on your own. I think attachment parenting gets some stuff wrong, too, but how can we expect kids to grow up feeling part of a deeply loving relationship, feeling that other people's feelings matter, feeling connected to other people when we ignore the kid's needs from infancy. Not all the kid's needs, yeah, just the need to feel safe with his parents while he sleeps. I figure that as human emotions and relationships have evolved, sleeping was probably a dangerous time. A lot of predators are nocturnal, and a baby left alone in a crib all night would have been easy prey. It seems at least plausible to me that we evolved to prefer sleeping with our loved ones (and this is still how it's done in many places) because it was safer. (We had our kid sleep in his own bed in our room--our bed when he was very young was too damned fluffy to be safe for an infant--but we got up with him every time he cried. He now sleeps in his own bed in his own room without any trouble, but if he wakes up in the middle of the night and needs us, we let him sleep with us. To me it is more important that he know that we are always there with him and for him than to promote a very false independence. He's 3, man, he is not independent, although he does go potty all by himself. woot!) It isn't just the sleeping thing. I know parents who don't think twice about keeping their baby essentially confined all day long--in cribs, playpens, high chairs, car seats--forcing the baby to conform to the adult's schedule and needs and utterly ignoring the need the baby has to play, move, rest, eat when hungry, etc. Not to mention that the kid is basically alone most of these times, experiencing the world without the touch, voice, smell of a loved one. Working parents have come out and admitted in national magazines that they don't enjoy and cannot force themselves to enjoy playing with their kids, so they work instead and hire out the play, as if the kids won't get the message. But to kids, "love" isn't a word or a feeling--it's an action. They don't think you love them because you say it, because the word itself doesn't mean much to a 2-year-old. They learn what it means by associating it with actions and with time spent (the currency of love is time). A child whose parents are there, making that child their first (not only, but first) time and energy commitment, obviously enjoying the time spent and actively joining the child in their engagement with the world--that child knows it is loved and is lovable, and that child conversely learns to do love to others. "Do love" is an odd construction, I know, but we adults have come to think of "love" as just a feeling, not an action. I accepted that without thinking about it until I met T who doesn't like to say "I love you" but is always sure to act in such a way that he doesn't need to; he gives me the time and energy that are love. We give that to each other, and we give that to our son.
Love is an action. The currency of love is time. Do your duty by your spouse and kids. Take responsibility--yeah, of course, fathers that goes for you, too, but fathers have less reproductive choice here, having no birth control pill and no say in the abortion question--for the life you create.
I'm too tired to proofread this now, and tomorrow is my darling son's birthday, not to mention the community Easter egg hunt, and I have a ladybug-shaped cake to frost (coconut cake, and man, it is some fabulous cake--Martha Stewart's recipe, even!) and presents to wrap and gather and blah blah. Ha. It's 4:00 a.m. Awesome. So, if there are places I should have edited, grant me a modicum of latitude, I beg of you.
Oh, finally, don't get all up in my face with cohabitation being as good as marriage. In America, at least, cohabitations are much more likely to break up than marriages are. In their first 5 years, 20% of marriages will break up, but 40% of cohabitations will; in the next 5 years, the numbers jump to 40% for marriages and 60% for cohabitations. So, in terms of commitment and stability, they aren't equivalent to marriage.
Comments
the problem with articles like this. first and foremost, is one that runs through any kind of media article that tries to use scientific evidence taken out of context as part of its thesis.
kids being poor is not CAUSED by being born out of wedlock. kids being abused is not CAUSED by being born out of wedlock. there is a correlation, but that is not the same thing as cause. according to this logic, as more and more kids are born out of wedlock, more and more kids will grow up poor and be abused. that's an idiotic conclusion.
quebec and iceland are perfect examples. more kids are born out of wedlock in quebec and iceland than are born to married parents. are these places poorer than most? no. do these places experience higher rates of abuse? highly doubtful. the key in places like these is that having kids out of wedlock is NOT TIED to poverty as it is in parts of the US. there are also social programs here to help all kinds of parenting situations: $5 a day daycare, ample maternity and paternity leave (legislated), universal healthcare (free), extremely cheap educational programs for getting educated and/or retrained.
poverty causes poverty. people living in poverty experience higher rates of abuse (and of disease, of early mortality, of car accidents, of heart disease, of diabetes, of murder, of being incarcerated). instead of looking at the most simple-minded equations (as the writer seems to be doing): i.e., non-marriage causes poverty! why not focus on the problems that POVERTY causes?
do i think kids function ideally in a two parent home to parents who are married to each other? absolutely! from a sheer logistical point of view, it makes sense (as you say). but i also believe that my water heater should never malfunction, that bea arthur should be on the television every time i turn it on, that rod stewart should never record another album in our lifetime. it doesn't always work out, what i think is best. i deal.
"blaming" single mothers for having kids out of wedlock is sexist, unfair and a simple answer to a very complex problem.
i didn't articulate that as clear as i'd have liked.
let me just add this: if we took this proposition to the extreme, say, and made having a baby something only married heterosexuals are legally allowed to do, would that do away with poverty? would that do away with abuse? would there suddenly exist a world without some kids being at the low end of the learning curve? of course not.
instead of implying inane and illogical arguments (like single mothers cause poverty and learning disabilities), why don't "journalists" ask more productive questions like: how can we as a society ensure that ALL kids have equal access to education, healthcare, support, etc, whether their parents are married, single, gay, poor, or some combination thereof?
But the problem with that, or with comparisons to Quebec and Iceland, is that there is a reality here--in America, the country the article was talking about, and the one I was talking about, too--that single parents and their kids are going to be more poor, they are going to face much greater problems. This is the current reality and has been for some time and will continue to be as our society is facing a recession and ever-greater economic stratification. Is this a just and morally decent reality? Of course not. But this is the reality that most women who bear children out of wedlock are going to face, and more of their kids than kids raised in two-parent homes--even after you adjust for poverty, incidentally--are going to suffer. Is the single parenting causing the suffering? Most of the time, in America, it's too hard to separate the issue from the other issues involved, although there are convincing arguments that the high correlation of fatherless households to sexual abuse of children is related more to the father thing than to the poverty involved, since the mother's boyfriends are often the ones who initiate the abuse. Biological fathers do sometimes, of course, but it's much more rare. Furthermore, convincing arguments have been made by psychologists that the interaction between a girl and her father which is deep love but asexual (unless you're a Freudian, but even still it does not involve intercourse or "being sexy") raises girls' self-respect and sense of self-worth because they know that men can and do value them for reasons other than their appearance and sex appeal. I think, personally, in the age of the raunchy MySpace page and Girls Gone Wild, maybe girls could use a bit more of that, eh? Perhaps you don't agree, but I look around and think how sad girls (and women my age, often, too) seem to me. Sure, sure, they call it "empowerment" and "confidence" but real empowerment and confidence don't come from a wet T-shirt contest or having your self-worth dependent on men's judgment of whether or not you're "hot." Again, this cannot be reasonably correlated to poverty but can be reasonably connected to the absence of a father figure. God, saying "father figure" always reminds me of that George Michael song, and that's really a different connotation than I want.
I don't think anyone said "single mothers cause X"--if I did, that isn't what I meant. And I'm not sure I agree with you that it's sexist to argue that women, who have a huge variety of reproductive choices before them, should take some responsibility for making them. Indeed, I have often thought it was sexist to constantly claim, as some feminists seem to do, that women are above reproach no matter what idiotic, selfish, and abusive things they do. We judge men who walk away from their kids pretty harshly--why can't women face the same judgment? Are we too weak to stand up to it and take responsibility for ourselves and the choices we've made and the lives we affect? Are we incapable of the moral reasoning necessary to see what consequences might arise from our actions? Or are women just above reproach while men are clearly not? I think I'm a pretty strong woman, and I take responsibility for it when I make bad, careless, thoughtless decisions; I do not need protection from judgment. That is NOT to say that I haven't made stupid choices and hurt people and all of that--that's to say that I take responsibility for that, too, and will willingly face my judgment, most of which I give to myself. You may have realized I have a very dictatorial moral judge in me, and she doesn't let me off the hook.
Anyway, I don't think that making it illegal for anyone but married heterosexuals to have kids is the logical extreme. For one thing, it's problematic, since it's obviously unenforceable (so, if the parents get divorced, do we have to kill the kid?). For another thing, as far as I can tell, committed adoptive parents and even responsible, committed stepparents (like my own stepfather) do the trick--maybe not for Emily Yoffe, but she didn't really deal with that since she was mostly talking about babies born out of wedlock, which isn't precisely the same issue as that of single parenting more generally.
Also, from what I've read about Scandinavia (I have no idea about Quebec, but perhaps you can enlighten me), most of the kids who are born out of wedlock are born to parents who are cohabiting, and cohabitation seems to work better for them than it does work for us here. So, I'm not sure the two situations are functionally equivalent even without the complicating factor of poverty. In those cases, the kids are still living with their two biological parents--they just aren't married. I wouldn't give a damn about the marriage part if Americans who cohabit stayed together better. I don't really care very much about divorces between childless adults, either.
But as I think I said, of course we have to correct the poverty part of the equation so that when children are born out of wedlock, they have a decent chance of making it. That is something we have to do as a nation, though, via legislation and gradual social change. On the other hand, faced with the very real danger of poverty right now, in today's America, a woman can choose not to have sex, can choose to use any of a variety of methods of birth control reliably, and can choose to have an abortion should an accident happen (and, yes, I am fully aware that not all women have equal access to such things, but that is a much more easily solved problem than the overturning of our entire socioeconomic system--we're not going to become fucking Iceland overnight or probably even in our lifetimes, ya know). Those are choices that allow women--right now--to avoid the very likely outcome of poverty and risk for her child. Meanwhile, in all the time she saves by not raising a kid by herself, she can join up with some of her sisters and go lobby Congress for changes that will effectively reduce the burden on single mothers and their children. The actual number of people who want children to suffer because their parents made stupid decisions is extremely low, so convincing arguments can be made there and some elements are totally winnable.
But I think--indeed, I am convinced--that people in this country will be WAY more likely to approve such measures if they think that people are using them responsibly and appropriately (that's one reason WIC is so unobjectionable--it's very hard to abuse and has very high accountability). And if women are open to no reproach or judgment, and any argument that women need to take some more responsibility for this since it is their womb, after all, meets only huge resistance and shrill but totally unsupported response from "feminists," then I don't think a lot of people believe that they deserve special support. You want rights, you have to have some responsibilities. And what are the responsibilities of a woman, then? We've heard a lot about the reproductive rights of women; what are their (our) reproductive responsibilities? To prevent unwanted children--and then some women who should have all the tools at their disposal to do that, fail. (and yeah, there are also accidents, I know). To take the measures that are going to best protect and serve their children, which is in the interests of the child and society as a whole. Why is it wrong to hold women to those responsibilities?
Nah, this bugs the crap out of me, and I'm getting all riled up. Personally--and I'm not calling you a sexist--I find it so irritating and condescending to suggest that women don't have to have responsibilities to go along with their rights. Men have less reproductive freedom yet more responsibilities, i.e., if the child is born, they are ordered to pay child support, at a minimum, even if they would have chosen abortion. That isn't equality. That is sexist. As a woman, I much prefer when people have the same expectations of me that they would have of a man.
As far as men having the choice to either abstain from sex with someone whose child they do not want or to use a condom, yes, I agree, they should be held to that same standard. All of us should be preventing unwanted pregnancies however we can--as the bumper sticker says, "A world of wanted children would make a world of difference." But there is no male pill or IUD equivalent, and condoms are somewhat less reliable (especially since, like the pill, they are so often misused, or so I hear--I don't know how you misuse a condom, really, since it's fairly simple to operate) than many forms of female birth control. And, as feminists argue so eloquently, abstinence is often (usually?) unrealistic. So, then, I think men have fewer choices, and while they should always be held responsible for the choices they do make, they do ultimately have less control over the situation. Ah, not to mention, and this is a big one for me. Most women have basically regular periods, so they should fucking know when their bodies are most likely to conceive and be more prudent in their activities (euphemism alert!) around those times. Men usually can't know that (or only subliminally know it) about a woman's body, so again it is up to the chick. Is that unfair? I don't know--I guess. We're the ones with the ova and uteri, and I don't see any reason to call it unfair--it's just one of those things in life. As a tradeoff, we have better clothes and we don't get snapped with towels in the locker room. It's like saying it's unfair that Bea Arthur isn't on TV 24/7. It might be unfair, but it's kind of just life.
When it comes to not wanting to compare the US to Scandinavia, I see nothing wrong in comparing one country's results to another's. Certainly there are many variables in society to take into account so you can't exactly replicate one nation's successes in a completely different country. But unless we look to different countries to see what they're doing we're just re-inventing the wheel, or worse - experimenting based on no prior evidence, each time we adjust social policy.
I do agree that people should use birth-control until they are both completely sure they want to be parents. It's much too serious a decision to enter into lightly, and it's not one that should be thrust upon people by accident.
Great post.
i think that wombat queen articulated why i feel that there is a sexist streak running through this entire argument: if mothers raise a child alone, they are doing something wrong. if they stay at home and don't work, they are doing something wrong. if they work full time and hire a nanny, they are doing something wrong. every problem gets tied back to a mother who screwed something up. "blaming" poverty and learning disabilities on a single mother who may not have HAD a choice in the matter (her husband turned out to be a lout, her husband died, she hasn't met the right guy, etc.) just seems wrong. everyone should take responsibilities for their actions, but sometimes things happen which are not under the control of one person.
now, sometimes women choose to be single mothers, sure. but i guess my overall point was this: children born to single, unwed mothers have increased from 6% in 1960 to over 35% in 2005. has our "intelligence" decreased? has poverty increased? it's not an accurate argument to say "the children of women born out of wedlock have higher rates of learning disabilities therefore having a single mother causes learning disabilities." that is just not how logic works in this, though it's what the media does to scientific evidence because journalists want easy pat answers to write about.
more than this: with so many women having babies on their own, it is, in my view, morally wrong for writers to assert that they (single mothers) somehow are causing their babies "problems." this isn't some tiny fraction of our population: over 1/3 of all births in the US! instead of looking at the big picture, of saying: ok this is our reality, 1/3 of births are to single mothers: now what can we do to make sure that kids born to single mothers are NOT disadvantaged? instead of THAT question, it turns into this "moral" issue. now it's not "god doesn't approve of you" but "scientists say you are doing something wrong" (when they are NOT, in fact, saying that). why does morality have to come in here and get injected into this argument? what does morality (even if it's this pseudo-scientific morality) have to do with making our society better for all kids, no matter what their background happens to be?
it's like this argument: the richer you are, the fewer health problems you have and the longer you will live. it's a common fact that runs through every society. richer people live longer. and not only this: middle class people live longer than lower class (socio-economically, of course) but even upper middle class people live shorter lives than the very rich. now. what does that mean? according to this argument, the logical thing to do might be: let's make all people rich! if all people were rich, we'd avoid this problem and we'd all live a long time. that is this akin to this moral argument above.
but that's not the right question to ask: instead, scientists and sociologists are asking: what is it that the very rich DO so that they live longer? is it their diet? their access to healthcare? lower stress levels? more exercise? (it's all of that). but instead of arguing that making everyone rich would solve problem, they are trying to create a society in which income isn't a FACTOR in longevity by understanding what health advantages come from being rich. we can't live in a society where everyone is rich. it's not possible. so instead of making impossible arguments (or even implying them: e.g., single mothers shouldn't have babies), why not try and ask the RIGHT questions that are helpful and not just divisive, simplistic, and self-serving?
Compare it to the statistics on Aboringes and crime, child abuse and poverty in Australia. Aborigines are over-represented in all of those cases. Yet no-one would claim that the reason for their poverty, criminality or the child abuse was the fact that they were born Aboriginal. Aborigines are not intrinsically more likely to commit crime, to be unemployed or to be abused than another other group in Australia. In most cases other variables have to be looked at to explain why this is happening such as poverty, generational unemployment, poor education in remote regions, etc. The same has to be done with single-parenthood issues.
As has been pointed out already in the comments above the negative effects of single-parent families are often because of associated social factors such as poverty. In a multi-variate world the first thing you need to look at is the variables involved before making any sweeping statements. As GinBaby pointed out in her original post it would be useful to separate problems caused by poverty first so you could determine if it's the poverty alone that is causing the issues. I've only found one reference that talks about crime, single-parent households and socio-economic differences . It states that they found no difference in juvenile crime rates among children raised in one or two parent households across the same socio-economic bracket. In other words, it's the income bracket you're born in that makes you a criminal, not how the number of parents raising you.
I think it's quite telling that while there are many media sources talking about single-parenthood, poverty and juvenile crime I could only find one that spoke about poverty alone being the cause of that crime. I guess it's easier to blame single-parents for their children's faults than poverty caused by society. Then society has a handy scapegoat, the journalists get to sell more papers to an angry populace, and no-one has to address the central issue of poverty.
I wish money would solve all the issues a child of a single parent faces, but it doesnt. The more people involved in raising a child the better off that child is and money in the grand scheme of things really isnt that important.
I agree that there are many factors that need to be looked at when it comes to single-parent families and all of those issues should be addressed. The current strategy of vilifying single mothers does nothing to fix the problem, though. It doesn't look at the issues creating single-parent families, it doesn't deal with the additional problems they face, and it doesn't explore ways to improve the lives of children growing up in these families. And that has been my point all along: my objection to the media's 'blame the victim' mentality and why it pushes my buttons as a feminist.
I honestly think this is a situation where we need to treat the symptoms as much as the cause. The cause of the rise of single-parent families as I see it is the increased choice people have when it comes to their relationships. Taking that choice away will only take us back to prior policies where divorce was as close to illegal as you could get and babies were forcibly removed from single mothers. This would only increase suffering, not decrease it. Educating people to make better choices would be a good step, but even then it wouldn't prevent all relationship breakdowns. So that is why I argue a dual approach of treating the common negative effects of single-parent families (such as poverty, lack of supervision, etc.) while educating people to prevent the problem as much as possible.
While we don't necessarily agree on the issue at hand I'd like to thank you for your comments, Indiana. They have been very interesting and certainly add fresh insight into the debate.
Making better choices is one of the keys to solving the problem, especially the choice of who you plan on sharing your life with. I read an article several weeks ago on a fellow vox neighbors blog talking about the issue of divorce. One of the people in the article referred to divorce as a benefit of marriage, to me that says more about our society then id like, when we start thinking of divorce as a benefit, we have a major problem.
Oooh, sorry I've been missing this. At this *moment* I do not have time to read all the comments thoroughly, but I skimmed them and want to make a couple of points, and hopefully I will find more time to read more carefully and respond more thoroughly later.
1. As I said, mcco12, I did not say that "single mothers cause poverty." Nobody did. Also, as I pointed out, this isn't about all single mothers or single parents and certainly not those who could not have seen the single parenthood coming (i.e., those who were married or otherwise committed to the other parent and then, for whatever reason, the other parent is no longer in the picture). That is a different phenomenon than willfully bringing a child into a society in which there is a very high probability that the child will grow up in very harsh conditions. As I said, do we need to change our social and economic conditions to make the risk of poverty for such children lower? Yes, of course. But my problem here is more of a pragmatic one: Right now, and especially since most out of wedlock births are to non-college-educated women, the reality is that those children have a very high probability of growing up extremely poor and with lower education themselves. Right now, considering the implications for children, I have to say that this is a moral issue. We have contempt for fathers who bring kids in the world before they are ready to be fathers and support those kids, right? We don't hesitate to tell them they should have been more proactive with the birth control if they weren't prepared to support a child. Well, if you are already living in poverty, the odds are low that you are prepared to support a child, whether you're a man or a woman. So, if it's socially acceptable to chastise a man for not keeping it in his pants, why not a woman? I realize the media gives attention to those on the far right who do blame "single mothers," but for the most part, the left never thinks it's OK to "blame" the mom--only the dad. Personally, though, I don't have a problem assigning moral blame to parents of both sexes who willfully bring a child into a world in which that child is not going to get the things it needs--health care, a stable home, etc. But as I said, the woman has more opportunities to avoid pregnancy and unwanted childbirth. And the statistics about child abuse, particularly fatal abuse, are shocking and not at all "pseudoscientific." I have little doubt that the abuse is related to the stress and hopelessness of poverty, but, again, until we as a society can come together and do something about poverty, we have to have dialogue about the very serious ramifications for children and the moral choices of their parents. Like I said, I'm not going to let kids get thrown under the bus, when they are the ONLY ones here who had no choice at all, get abused, grow up in poverty, when the matter comes down to, yes, JUDGING adults for not properly using birth control and/or abstaining from sex when that is appropriate.
I think one of the things that bothers me so much in all of this is how little we value our children in this society. On the one hand, there are some parents who go way overboard making everything "about the kids" by spoiling them and pushing them to excel in everything. But those people aren't valuing their kids; they are using them to live vicariously. On the other hand, we have the out-and-out kid haters who still believe kids have no real right to be in public spaces, mucking up the enjoyment of adults with their loudness and energy and poopy diapers. And then we have the majority of people who don't outright hate kids, but don't seem to give a shit about the severe problem of child abuse that we have in this country, who don't care enough about kids to prevent them from growing up in the various sorts of hell that parents manage to make for them--the poverty, the neglect, the unsafe and unstable homes (and, no, not all single parent homes are unstable--far from it--but those where poverty and single parenthood combine very often are), who care more about the "rights" of the adults involved, even when those adults have proven to be so irresponsible that they are incapable of judging when birth control is necessary. Bear in mind, too, that most out of wedlock births in this country are to mothers who are already undereducated, underemployed, and in the lower economic classes; giving birth to a child isn't what created that condition, but the sad fact is that once there's another mouth to feed, the odds of that situation improving much diminish rapidly.
I think, frankly, that your position that this is all illogical and pseudoscientific has more to do with, as I once stated, why I don't want to make science the national religion of our country. We have a tendency to hype the science whose results we like and to ignore or dismiss the science that we don't. You don't like the fact that the choice by an adult to bring a child into a world into which it has a high likelihood of growing up in poverty with little access to health care, with a good chance of being abused, and so forth puts the blame for that choice on the adult and so you dismiss it. It doesn't make it less real.
Again, I would point out that a) no one is saying single parenthood causes poverty--poverty has a lot of freakin causes, but having a child you cannot support doesn't make it any easier to get out of poverty and usually assures that you will be worse off than you were before, and as your economic fate goes, so goes that of your child, b) yes, of course, we need to do a lot of work on our social systems to make sure kids don't suffer because of the choices their parents made, but again, it's easier and more ethical at this time to prevent the birth of children we cannot care for than to change everything in one fell swoop, and c) no one--not even the Christian fundies--blame only the mother, as evidenced by the PSAs and Christian groups that encourage fathers to be active fathers and our general social disapproval of "deadbeat dads." You will note we have no such term for moms, even moms who abandon their babies at Safe Havens.
And hi, EWQ! As far as Scandinavia, I didn't mean we couldn't learn from them; certainly, in many ways, we can and should. I meant that it isn't an apt comparison to say, "In Sweden or Quebec, there are all these single mothers and they don't have these problems" with the implied conclusion that, therefore, out of wedlock parenthood does not have these implications in our own society. It is undoubtedly true that if we had the social welfare systems of Scandinavia and the better rate of committed cohabitation, out of wedlock births would cease to be a "national catastrophe." While single parenthood does not *cause* poverty in the general sense, if you have one parent trying to support a kid with no social welfare system, no universal health care, and little or no input from the other parent, the likelihood of child poverty and the other problems listed above becomes extremely high; that is not the case in Scandinavia, and so I don't think out of wedlock births and single parenting have the same moral value and impact. If we had the socioeconomic systems of Scandinavia, I seriously doubt we'd be having this discussion right now, because what I care about is kids being given a chance at a good life and not being made to suffer because of the choices of their parents.
As a parting shot, I would like to note that one of the constant problems the social right has with the left is our apparent unwillingness to assign moral responsibility to people for making bad choices, particularly if it is a woman who made that bad choice. There is a tendency on the left to bend over backwards to avoid holding people morally culpable for, say, willfully bringing a child into a life of extreme poverty, and some of us who are culturally somewhat conservative find it rather disgusting. Adults who want freedom to make choices have to be held accountable for those choices, morally and legally, whatever their gender.
It's an interesting concept, the moral culpability of having children. Speaking as a leftie I really worry about a society that has a perpetual underclass which is discouraged from breeding simply because they are on the poorest rung of the socio-economic ladder. From a societal point of view I see it as vital to ensure everyone can afford to have and raise children since it is such a driving force for most of us. On the other hand I definitely think people should take responsibility for their own circumstances. As I've mentioned countless times EWK and I are putting off kids because we literally cannot afford them right now (we've done the maths and it's not possible). But I guess all it takes is one failed pill and we have to deal with what we're dealt!
I must say that the reason I can put off kids is because I know that my poverty won't last forever. If I were facing this income for the rest of my life I'd probably have kids straight away. I mean why not? If it's the choice between never having kids and dealing with poverty I'd actually be willing to put up with the poverty. Because for some people having children is as close to a non-negotiable option as you can get. I don't really see that as selfish. It's a biological imperative that has been with us right back to year dot. I probably wouldn't have as many kids as I'd like otherwise, but I'd want to have at least one!
It's funny because here we have to deal with the opposite problem as well. With our current fertility crisis women are treated as being selfish if they put off having kids because of economic reasons. Stupid isn't it? So because we can't afford to have children until I'm over 35 in the eyes of many Australians I am being selfish and deserve never to have children. At the same time young single mothers are being demonised for bringing kids they can't afford into this world. Somehow the Australian public wants the population replenished only by 25 year olds who have been married 10 years and own their own homes. Preferably with private health insurance. Then they scream that there's a population crisis!
Ahhh, you've got to laugh at times don't you? :-)
Yeah, this raises some really good points. As she touches on in the original article--and I've read some other things about this as well, but it's somewhat foreign to me--there seems to be a feeling among this socioeconomic group (mostly lower class and undereducated African-American) that having a baby will make them more of a woman and, hell, since their men all end up in prison anyway (an exaggeration, but a truly shocking percentage of lower-class, undereducated African-American men end up in the corrections system) they may as well go ahead and have the kids. And I certainly agree with you that there is a biological element to this as well as a cultural element where having a kid is something more than just another random choice. At the same time, if you're an undereducated, underemployed person in the inner city where the schools are shit and there are very few opportunities to improve your own life, let alone that of your children, I don't know that it's quite OK to bring a kid into that--what kind of chance does that kid reasonably have to get an education or all the rest of the things? Obviously, we need to do some fixin of our education system--and not only in the inner cities--but until that time, why would you want that for a kid you said you loved? I think here again there's just some kind of difference between me (and you) and these people who do this because to us it's obvious that you don't.
Incidentally, there is poverty, and then there is poverty. As I've made *ahem* repeated mention of, we're poor, yet we still had a kid, and we may well have another, which will keep us poor for some time. We are not in the kind of poverty from which there is no escape. We're educated and highly employable; we both have jobs that just don't happen to pay a whole lot; we own our house; we have a safety net in the form of my parents who would do anything rather than let my son suffer; we also love and support each other. So, it's one thing to bring a kid into being this kind of poor--the same kind of poverty I grew up in, the kind where there is actually still hope--and to bring a kid into a hopeless situation.
But I also wonder...I realize that I my level of education somewhat sets me up for this, but I never felt a great urge to have kids at all. I didn't want kids, quite adamantly, for most of my life. It wasn't until I was already with this terrific fella I married that I wanted children with him. For me, it wasn't "having a kid" but "having a kid with" that spoke to me. I wonder where exactly this difference comes from. Biologically, I doubt I am significantly different from other women, but I just wouldn't have had kids if I hadn't met the T. So, what does it take to get to that stage where there is a real recognition that a child is the product of two parents and, ideally, makes a family? How has the notion of "family" broken down so much that there is widespread lack of caring, from both sexes, about it? I don't know about in Aus, but I think there is here. Men feel pretty free to walk away from their obligations to their families, and some women frankly encourage them to. How can we keep the central idea that a family is a healthy, enriching thing while still updating it to deal with some of the newer social realities? As I said, I don't have a problem in theory with parents who are only cohabiting rather than being married or with gay parents--the problem I have with it is in practice, in America, cohabiting parents just aren't very likely to stay together, and kids don't really thrive when adults are just sort of casually waltzing in and out of their lives. How can we provide girls and boys with stable role models--it sounds cliche, but the model of their parents is where kids learn how to respect and love others and how to be loved by others and how to trust. These are not things we should just idly toss away.
Furthermore, and again I have no idea about the status of this issue in Aussie society, but how do we make society safe for kids? Not just the poverty, but the risk of abuse and the risk of being neglected. Right now, regardless (as far as I can tell) of economic class, kids who live in single-parent homes are at high risk for abuse and neglect; what do we do to prevent that? I think it would help a lot if we had some familial support systems, i.e., if people still were close enough to their parents to get help there--I would at least like to think that a grandparent would be willing and able to step in and prevent potentially abusive situations, or at least provide some support for the single parent that maybe reduces the stress load and maybe reduces the risk to the kids that way. But we're so removed from that now, so what do we do? Child Protective Services is, wow, anything but protective. I think they mean well, but it's not working, and I think the problems with it in most places run deeper than mere underfunding, although that is also a problem. But what can we do as a society to prevent it?
If we on the left want to preserve the rights of parents, then we need to pay some attention, not just to the poverty (which, anyway, the Dems are totally unprepared to deal with, though they make a lot of noise about it--the Democrats are becoming just as big-businessy as the Rs) but to the social factors that are creating this widespread abuse and neglect of our children. No good can come of this. Not only is it a gross violation of the rights of our children, but this does not bode well for the future of society when so many kids are disconnected from family, abused, neglected, without a decent model of a what a loving, respectful relationship looks like. Granted that does not *always* have to come from two parents at home, but it's the sort of natural place to start with it.
I don't really understand why being over 35 when you become a parent makes you selfish. I can kind of understand the reasoning if someone said that about a 50-year-old first time parent, because not only are you setting your kid up for increased risks of birth defects and premature birth and all that, you're also setting the kid up to be forced to do elder care at a time when they are probably just going to be starting their own lives, wanting kids of their own and starting careers, and that's rough. I wouldn't go so far as to say you *shouldn't* but I think it would be wise to set things up carefully so as not to be a complete and total lifesuck on your kids when they're just getting going.
Damn. Now I'm all depressed.
I can't help but wonder if maybe that isn't how some people get into this mess in the first place...
Cheers!