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I know this might be a revolutionary thought to some people: Some people actually earn more money on their own than the average two-parent household.
Kids are better off in homes where love and respect is present. Unfortunately more often than not, marriage is the antithesis of love and respect.
Key word being SOME. And it's not just about income. Single parents typically have to rely on outside daycares to a greater degree than two parent families. The evidence of the benefits of two-parent married households is overwhelming, but feel free to post data to the contrary.
I can't argue with the OP. That's not to say people should be shunned to hidden away for having a child on their own, but neither should it be the socially accepted norm. Unless the government stops providing all support it really not a personal issue anyway, it's everyone's issue. Having kids you can't afford is what causes poverty.
I know this might be a revolutionary thought to some people: Some people actually earn more money on their own than the average two-parent household.
Kids are better off in homes where love and respect is present. Unfortunately more often than not, marriage is the antithesis of love and respect.
Another revolutionary thought: statistics are about general populations, not the individual. Just because some individuals make more than the average two-parent household, doesn't mean anything. Of course kids are better off in homes where love and respect are present.
As to marriage being the antithesis of love and respect, I'm sorry that's your experience. In my experience, people get divorced when they stop loving and respecting their spouse. In general, a child is much better off being born into a two-parent household for a variety of reasons: generally income is better; two people can deal with the stresses of children better than one, if two people are married they can share the dual burdens of earning a living and raising a family; and married people generally have more stable lives than unmarried individuals.
The point of the article is valid and makes perfect sense: children born into single-parent families are at a huge disadvantage, and society suffers when a large number of children are growing up with only one parent to supervise them and pay for their upbringing.
Think about it! If you were giving up a child for adoption, wouldn't you want it to go to a loving married couple rather than a single individual with exactly the same income?
I can't argue with the OP. That's not to say people should be shunned to hidden away for having a child on their own, but neither should it be the socially accepted norm. Unless the government stops providing all support it really not a personal issue anyway, it's everyone's issue. Having kids you can't afford is what causes poverty.
Well you just proved my point. NOT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD THEM is the problem. Married people can't always afford kids. And plenty of single people can.
Another revolutionary thought: statistics are about general populations, not the individual. Just because some individuals make more than the average two-parent household, doesn't mean anything. Of course kids are better off in homes where love and respect are present.
As to marriage being the antithesis of love and respect, I'm sorry that's your experience. In my experience, people get divorced when they stop loving and respecting their spouse. In general, a child is much better off being born into a two-parent household for a variety of reasons: generally income is better; two people can deal with the stresses of children better than one, if two people are married they can share the dual burdens of earning a living and raising a family; and married people generally have more stable lives than unmarried individuals.
The point of the article is valid and makes perfect sense: children born into single-parent families are at a huge disadvantage, and society suffers when a large number of children are growing up with only one parent to supervise them and pay for their upbringing.
Think about it! If you were giving up a child for adoption, wouldn't you want it to go to a loving married couple rather than a single individual with exactly the same income?
No, if I were giving up a child, I would want them to go to a loving guardian who was capable of caring for them better than I. That would not have anything to do with gender, marital status, sexual orientation, or race.
Oh please being married has nothing to do with whether or not parents are good parents. A single adult can make an excellent parent, as can a gay couple or a hetero couple or even a poly couple. So stop trying to force your biblical morality on the rest of us. We don't need it.
Why have we allowed our country to get to this point? We have come to a point to where people think it is okay that this crisis is happening. It's disappointing and frustrating more than anything. We MUST put a STOP to this trend that seems to be gaining strength. If we don't, we will be reaching a point where the majority of children do not grow up in two parent married households, which not so long was the norm for everybody, of all income, classes and ethic groups.
Let's go back to the days when people didn't have children out of wedlock
Back.... about.... maybe you know when that was
[/indent]My Grandparents told me that when they were in high school (back in the 1950s) it was considered TOTALLY unacceptable for unmarried mothers to have babies. If you were in high school and got pregnant and weren't married, you were forced to drop out of school and live with a family relative for the duration of your pregnancy and put your baby up for adoption. If you got pregnant, you were on your own, there was no support group for teen moms, no welfare or food stamps like there is today, and the stigma, the dirty stares and whispers was unquestionably difficult enough to go through.
Back then, only 10% of black babies were born to unmarried moms, around 1% of white children and only 10-15% among teenager mothers. Today, over 70% of black babies are illegitimate, nearly 30% of white babies, over 50% of Hispanic, and around 10% of Asian babies and 80% of births to teenager mothers are illegitimate.
From 1940 to 1957 the teen birth rate increased 78% to a record high.
No disrespect to your grandparents, but they're wrong. Couples did tend to get married after the pregnancy back then, so perhaps that accounts for the low rate of unwed moms. It would be nice to see a link for those numbers. There was no food stamps, but there was welfare and other assistance programs. Most of the women, (but not the men) had to drop out of school; that part is true, and was still true when I was in HS in the 60s.
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