Polemics

It’s worse to be raised by a single mother than a married couple, even if you’re not poor

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Here’s one of my favorite sociologists W. Bradford Wilcox writing about single motherhood in the left-leaning Slate.

Excerpt:

Take two contemporary social problems: teenage pregnancy and the incarceration of young males. Research by Sara McLanahan at Princeton University suggests that boys are significantly more likely to end up in jail or prison by the time they turn 30 if they are raised by a single mother. Specifically, McLanahan and a colleague found that boys raised in a single-parent household were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated, compared with boys raised in an intact, married home, even after controlling for differences in parental income, education, race, and ethnicity. Research on young men suggests they are less likely to engage in delinquent or illegal behavior when they have the affection, attention, and monitoring of their own mother and father.

But daughters depend on dads as well. One study by Bruce Ellis of the University of Arizona found that about one-third of girls whose fathers left the home before they turned 6 ended up pregnant as teenagers, compared with just 5 percent of girls whose fathers were there throughout their childhood. This dramatic divide was narrowed a bit when Ellis controlled for parents’ socioeconomic background—but only by a few percentage points. The research on this topic suggests that girls raised by single mothers are less likely to be supervised, more likely to engage in early sex, and to end up pregnant compared with girls raised by their own married parents.

It’s true that poorer families are more likely to be headed by single mothers. But even factoring out class shows a clear difference. Research by the Economic Mobility Project at Pew suggests that 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.

Why is this? Single mothers, even from wealthier families, have less time. They are less likely to be able to monitor their kids. They do not have a partner who can relieve them when they are tired or frustrated or angry with their kids. This isn’t just a question of taking kids to the array of pampered extracurricular activities that many affluent, two-parent families turn to; it’s about the ways in which two sets of hands, ears, and eyes generally make parenting easier.

I think that people who think that it is hatred and bigotry to say that there should be rules around marriage and sex understand the reasons for these moral boundaries. We are trying to protect the children, and so we have boundaries about who can have sex and who can get married. Children need a mother and a father, and we need to promote and celebrate that as marriage, and not anything else. We should be rewarding people for getting married and staying married.

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News

Be your child’s parent first, and not just their friend

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

A generation of children are growing up badly behaved because their parents are too afraid to discipline them, a leading clinical psychologist and broadcaster has warned.

The rise of the so-called ‘friend-parent’ – who tries to be their child’s equal rather than their boss – means youngsters are approaching adolescence ill-equipped for the read world, according to Professor Tanya Byron.

Professor Byron, who featured on the BBC series House of Tiny Tearaways, said she is treating children at her clinic with behavioural problems as a direct result of such parenting tactics.

She said: ‘Children as young as six are brought to my clinics by parents who are anxious that any time they try to set a boundary, the child becomes distressed.

‘In this age of the “friend-parent”, such children are then swaddled, protected and essentially regressed for fear of upsetting them.’

She said parents are so preoccupied with getting their children on their side that they are waiting on them hand and foot – denying them important life skills.

[…]She warned that without boundaries and chores, a child’s development could be impaired.

Here’s something about the importance of having a stay-at-home mother who is engaged in educating the children and forming their character:

Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman said the ‘friend-parent’ phenomenon could be explained by the fact that women are choosing to start families when they are older.

He said: ‘There is the feeling that by saying “no” to your children or being in charge somehow damages your relationship with them.

‘Parents today, in particular mothers, are much older than ever before. They are also likely to be working as well.

‘The result is children are seeing their parents for less hours a day, so if the children start displaying challenging behaviour because they haven’t had the attention they need, they feel guilty and let it go, rather than disciplining them for it and risk them getting upset.’

Definitely the permissiveness of working mothers and the marginalization of fathers in the home is a huge factor in explaining why children are so immature.

This article makes me think about the way that I am always trying to lead other Christians and get them to read more, learn more and carry out better plans so that they are more effective as Christians. I like to push them in a particular direction, give them rewards for progress, and set boundaries to keep them on the path. If they are going off the path, then I feel justified in disciplining them by removing privileges or rewards and giving them the silent treatment, etc. Some people call that bullying – but it’s really just leading. And that’s what parents do – they are tough about leading their children to grow stronger.

It is very important that parents have a vision for what they want their children to achieve, and then take the time to set up and explain boundaries for, using evidence so that the boundaries are not viewed as arbitrary. Parents should be leading the children using structured activities  so that the right views are formed and confirmed by experience. Spending time with children is important so that they know that you care about them. That will not happen by accident, it takes study to know how to be convincing, and it takes planning to engineering activities that will give someone the experiences they need to see what the things that we want them to believe are true.

Mentoring

The Elusive Wapiti updates his “Marry a Zealot” post

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The Elusive Wapiti updates his marital advice for young Christian men.

He begins like tis:

Ten months ago, I published the second installment in the ‘Advice to My Sons’ series, titled “Marry a Zealot“, in which I exhort them and others to become fervent Believers–and seek out other Believers as mates–to best insure them against the ravages of divorce should they marry.

The point of that post was to highlight the additional protection that serious religious conviction, as indicated by active religious attendance, provides them against divorce, an important consideration for men in the post-Christian West nowadays. By way of contrast, a secondary point of that post was to show that mere self-identification or occasional participation in religious services exposed a fellow of the marrying kind to greater risk of marital disruption than if he and/or his wife had no religious affiliation at all.

Since the link to the pdf that supported that post has since disappeared, I did some spadework to recover the data that supports this advice.  I was able to locate it here, on page 9 of the scholarly article Bad News about the Good News–The Construction of the Christian-Failure Narrative, Journal of Religion & Society, volume 14.  The article drew the data shown in the following tables from the General Social Survey, 1980-2009.

His main concern is how religious belief correlates with divorce.

Here shows the evidence then says this:

When one takes one’s faith seriously enough to put it into action, as measured in this case by attending church at least once per week, this behavior appears to yield anti-divorce benefits.  Yet I am thoroughly unimpressed with a 38% divorce rate for Evangelicals, a group whose noisy claims to family values are belied by their itchy dissolutive trigger fingers. Moreover, the picture for active black Protestants remains dark and grim; their marriages garner no protection whatsoever from church attendance.  The data for Roman Catholics is much more encouraging, and it seems that the RCC has been more effective than Protestant denominations at countering the scourge of divorce. Perhaps the theological rigidity and hierarchical structure associated with Marianism makes it less vulnerable to socio-political contagions like feminism and divorce, while the, ahem, diversity, of Protestantism makes it more prone to worldly influences.

I think that it is a good idea in general for young men to not leave marriage at the level of feelings. I have posted before a list of questions to find out if a woman is a zealot. I think that young Christian men should read Wapiti’s post and then my post and then act accordingly.