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It goes without saying that the the best possible outcome for the well being of a child is to be born and raised by their loving, financially secure, biological parents in a safe environment. However, I think many people are making the mistake of assuming that "Marriage" represents all those things. However, marriage, in and off itself, without those other things, produces no proven benefit in child well being over single parent child rearing.
It never really made sense to me when people say that the problem in the black community is single parent families......as if many of the problems in the community would go away if people simply formed marriages. The issue to me is not children born out of wedlock. The issue is really children born outside of love. In other words, children should only result from two people who truly love each other. Marriage is the byproduct of two people who love each other. Marriage should not be about lust. Marriage should not be about money and material things. Marriage should not be about sticking together or getting married because you made a kid. The ultimate environment for a child's well being is NOT two parents who are married, but rather, two parents who are in love, whether they are married or not. Everything else will fall into place.
That having been said, there has been a study that has concluded that high conflict marriages are no more better for child well-being than single parent households. I mean, to me this is a no brainer. One loving parent is better than two bad parents. Yet, the assumption seems to be that marriage, in and off itself, creates a superior environment for child well being. This simply is not true. People are not getting married, often, to the mother of their child or children because they are not in love with them. If they marry the parent due to the child it will have a strong possibility of becoming a high conflict marriage, which can be as bad, and in some cases worse, than a single parent home.
I don't, therefore, understand the obsession with marriage as opposed to being obsessed about love. I don't think males of any race have a more or less propensity to have sex outside of love. Eventually children born outside of love will end up in a single parent home or a high conflict marriage (usually ends in divorce), neither of which is better than the other in terms of child well-being. I think people like to use the single parent home statistics for blacks to deflect away from societies role in the disproportionate problems in the black community.
Here is a snippet from the conclusions of the study.
Should parents stay together for the sake of the children? Children tend to fare better with both married parents, but mean differences in child well-being mask important variation. Despite caveats concerning potential underestimates of conflict, we find that children from high conflict married-parent families do more poorly in the domains of schooling and substance use, and are at greater risk of early family formation and dissolution, relative to children from low conflict married-parent families. In half of our outcomes, high conflict, stepfather, and single-mother families are statistically indistinguishable in their associations with young adult well-being. These findings hold once account is taken of key mechanisms posited to link family type and child outcomes. They are consistent with recent research on marriage and the well-being of adults, showing that although marriage confers benefits to adults on average, those in poor quality marriages are no better off than the single and, indeed, may fare worse on some measures (Hawkins & Booth, 2005; Williams & Umberson, 2004). We conclude with the perhaps obvious point that marriage is not a blanket prescription for the well-being of children, any more than it is for the well-being of adults. Recent policy initiatives to promote marriage need to take account of how variation within marriage relates to child well-being.
That having been said, there has been a study that has concluded that high conflict marriages are no more better for child well-being than single parent households. I mean, to me this is a no brainer. One loving parent is better than two bad parents.
I believe that you are generally right, which is why the stats on 2 parents vs single parents are even more striking if the 2 parent stats are dragged downward by toxic marriages.
You brought up this topic in regards to black families...blacks families have significantly more single parents...so therefore it is also virtually guaranteed that they have smaller numbers of two parents in love as you say...because there are so relatively few ratio-wise black married couples with kids to begin with...no?
Less adult supervision and role modeling is a bad thing...not having those adults be loving/bad role models is also a bad thing.
Children in intact 2 parent families have kids that are less likely to commit suicide, less likely to become a single mother or deadbeat dad, less likely to drop out of high school, more likely to get a college degree, less likely to wind up in poverty as an adult, less likely to wind up in prison, etc...
I suppose if you were able to adjust these numbers to remove the toxic marriages the loving marriages would even be massively higher than the single parent homes.
Quote:
But Hetherington, who like Roiphe embraces changing family structures, also was honest enough to admit that divorce tends to double a child’s risk of a serious negative outcome. Specifically, she found that “twenty-five percent of youths from divorced families in comparison to 10 percent from non-divorced families did have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems.” Other research suggests that the children of never-married single parents tend to do somewhat worse than children of divorced single parents....
...children from intact families are also more likely to rise up the income ladder if they were raised in a low-income family, and less likely to fall into poverty if they were raised in a wealthy family. For instance, according to Pew’s analysis, 54 percent of today’s young adults who grew up in an intact two-parent home in the top-third of household income have remained in the top-third as adults, compared with just 37 percent of today’s young adults who grew up in a wealthy (top-third) but divorced family.
Children from broken homes are almost five times more likely to develop emotional problems than those living with both parents, a report has found.
Young people whose mother and father split up are also three times as likely to become aggressive or badly behaved, according to the comprehensive survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics.
Teenagers belonging to single-parent household are less likely to attain a bachelor's degress than those from two-parent households, a new study finds.
The study I referenced compared three households. The married with both biological parent household, the married with step father household and the single parent household. It concluded that high conflict married biological parent household was no better for a child's well being than a step father household or single parent household.
People who know how to love and give love.....tend to get and stay married. In other words, marriage is a symptom of love and well being......not the creator of love and well being. Marriage is not biological. Its a social construct. Love is biological. Loving people, hence, whether married or not, likely will manifest well being in their children.
Marriage, in and off itself, does not create resources or love. Marriage is a legal arrangement. Two unemployed and unloving parents does not create well being in a child. A negative plus a negative does not produce a positive. Two negative parents is worse than one negative parent. Its double the negativity. Marriage combines. If it is combining positive than it will be positive for the children. If it is combing negatives then it will be negative for the children.
My point with this is that the problem in the black community IS NOT A DEARTH IN MARRIAGE. The right likes to point to the rate of single black households as the root of modern problems in the black community. That is not true. The dearth in married household is a SYMPTOM of something impacting black individuals to the degree that reduces their propensity to get married. Also, even if not married, it does not mean that they are not being loved and cared for in such a way that their well being is preserved.
Sometimes its not the fact that children are being raised in a single parent home that makes the child go bad. Instead, its the fact that the single parent was selfish, abusing and showed little love. No one wants to marry a person like that.....or stay married to them. If they do manage to find someone, its assured to be a high conflict relationship that is bad for the children.
Why are you hating on marriage? At some point, people who get married have love for each other. We are not talking about a business arrangement and a contract.
For a family to function optimally, you need marriage and love. It is not impossible to function without marriage and love, but you decrease the percentages and make the task more difficult.
Who included in a marriage? One man and one woman.
The problem in the black community is a lack of responsible men.
Despite what the APA says, and Gillette says - good masculine men are absolutely needed for a healthy society. Take that away, and there will be increasing chaos over time.
Per the article: "It's important to note that this study doesn't "prove" any causal link between cohabitation and family instability."
Remember Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? They had more money than they knew what to do with, raised 6 kids together without getting married, and the ink was barely dry on their marriage license before they got divorced. Theirs is not an uncommon scenario (save the filthy rich part, of course). I think part of the problem and the cause of the high divorce rate is the American insistence on love, particularly the chemical high stage of the relationship before the relationship matures and becomes stable. Love, love, love. Love is overrated. You know what's ignored? Common interests, trust, and respect. Countries where marriages ore arranged have far lower rates of divorce. I venture to say these qualities in marriage are more important than money. But in the US, it is much harder to stay married than European countries. We have little support to help strengthen our relationships or raise our children with the things they need. No health care, no subsidized childcare, no vacation, crappy public transportation, poor educational system, etc. . . . My hat is off to those who succeed despite these obstacles.
The study I referenced compared three households. The married with both biological parent household, the married with step father household and the single parent household. It concluded that high conflict married biological parent household was no better for a child's well being than a step father household or single parent household.
People who know how to love and give love.....tend to get and stay married. In other words, marriage is a symptom of love and well being......not the creator of love and well being. Marriage is not biological. Its a social construct. Love is biological. Loving people, hence, whether married or not, likely will manifest well being in their children.
Yes, it is a social construct. However, it was a social construct created over thousands of years as a means to give the next generation a better chance at success. Long before there was research around people noticed that children raised by an adult female AND an adult male were more likely to make it to adulthood and grow up to become a contributing adult to the group, rather than a detriment. Humans have an instinctual need to be like Emperor penguins, swans, vultures, or beavers mating for life, not like lions, hyenas, octipi, or Komodo dragons who have other arrangements because life long mating has been one of the things that allowed our species to thrive despite our fragile, furless bodies. So while marriage itself is a social construct it has a biological basis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
Marriage, in and off itself, does not create resources or love. Marriage is a legal arrangement. Two unemployed and unloving parents does not create well being in a child. A negative plus a negative does not produce a positive. Two negative parents is worse than one negative parent. Its double the negativity. Marriage combines. If it is combining positive than it will be positive for the children. If it is combing negatives then it will be negative for the children.
Actually, it does, and it does in part because it is a legal arrangement. For the bulk of our marriage I had low or no income and to this day the originator of most of my financial resources has been my husband. As a trade off, because he did not have to worry about things like arranging childcare, dinner, shopping, household upkeep and all kinds of other little mundane things needed to live, he could concentrate on his career. Sharing a home is always cheaper than living by oneself and research has repeatedly shown married couples are generally likely to have more assets, both liquid and non-liquid, than non-married couples who have everything in common with them except that piece of paper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
My point with this is that the problem in the black community IS NOT A DEARTH IN MARRIAGE. The right likes to point to the rate of single black households as the root of modern problems in the black community. That is not true. The dearth in married household is a SYMPTOM of something impacting black individuals to the degree that reduces their propensity to get married. Also, even if not married, it does not mean that they are not being loved and cared for in such a way that their well being is preserved.
Sometimes its not the fact that children are being raised in a single parent home that makes the child go bad. Instead, its the fact that the single parent was selfish, abusing and showed little love. No one wants to marry a person like that.....or stay married to them. If they do manage to find someone, its assured to be a high conflict relationship that is bad for the children.
Oh, but it is. Yes, I do agree the factors that have created the dearth of marriage are what needs to be addressed but for the boys growing up without a stable adult male in their homes, that marriage dearth is a HUGE problem. As an educator I can tell you from personal experience that the biggest discipline problems in schools are boys with single mothers, seconded by boys with stepfathers - this is more indicative of a student with behavior problems in school, especially fights and being disrespectful of teachers/staff, than any other factor, including race. The same is true for failures/dropouts. Black children in intact, biological families get in trouble or fail no more than white children in intact, biological families. Children need committedfathers in their home as much as they need mothers. Fathers are not expendable and the legal process of marriage is more likely to assure that happens. And one other little gem that matters psychologically to the children themselves, it is harder for a man to deny, legally and socially, that a child is his if the child was conceived while he was married to the mother.
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