Tag Archives: Single-Mother

News

FRC releases new study on marriage and economic well-being

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Mary found this little blurb on the Christian Post.

Excerpt:

Marriage plays a big role in the well-being of the U.S. economy, such that sound and stable marriages keep the economy healthy while divorce helps the economy regress, a new report suggests.

The findings released by the Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute show how intact married-couple families outperform other family types, including remarried families, divorced families, single-parent families, and cohabiting families, in all of the following economic segments: employment, income, net value, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare and child economic well-being.

Basically the stats show that the more intact the family remains, the less the difficulties and the inefficiencies the family encounters.

Married-couple families generate the most income with “the median household income twice that of divorced households and four times that of separated households,” reads the report.

Divorced families on the other hand experience a sharp decrease in income after the separation. Divorced women are affected the most as they are 2.83 times more prone to live in poverty than women who remain married.

MARRI Director Pat Fagan, Ph.D, said couples that remain stably married can provide a sound environment where children can be securely fostered while divorce triggers society’s reliance on government welfare programs – programs that currently cost tax payers around $112 billion per year.

Then I went looking for the research paper and found this press release.

Excerpt:

The economic well-being of the United States is strongly related to marriage, which is a choice about how we channel our sexuality. The implications of sexual choices are apparent when comparing family structures across basic economic measures such as employment, income, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare, and child economic well-being. In all of these the stable, intact married family outperforms other sexual partnering structures; hence the economy rises with the former and encounters more difficulties and inefficiencies as it diverges from it.

Family Structures and Economic Outcomes:

  • Employment and Income. Married-couple families generate the most income, on average. Young married men are more likely to be in the labor force, employed, and working a full-time job than their nonmarried counterparts. Cohabiting men have less stable employment histories than single and married men. Married families generally earn higher incomes than stepfamilies, cohabiting families, divorced families, separated families, and single-parent families. According to one study, married couples had a median household income twice that of divorced households and four times the household income of separated households.
  • Net Worth. Intact, married families have the greatest net worth. A family’s net worth is the value of all its assets minus any liabilities it holds. Married households’ net worth is attributable to more than simply having two adults in the household: a longer-term economic outlook, thrift, and greater head-of-household earning ability (the marriage premium) all contribute to greater household net worth.
  • Poverty and Welfare. Poverty rates are significantly higher among cohabiting families and single-parent families than among married families. Over one third of single mothers live in poverty. Nearly 60 percent of non-teenage single mothers rely on food stamps or cash welfare payments.
  • Child Economic Mobility and Well-Being. Children in married, two-parent families enjoy more economic well-being than children in any other family structure. Children in cohabiting families enjoy less economic well-being than children in married families, but more than children in single-parent families. The children of married parents also enjoy relatively strong upward mobility. By contrast, divorce is correlated with downward mobility. A non-intact family background increases by over 50 percent a boy’s odds of ending up in the lowest socioeconomic level.

Having a high net worth is necessary if you want to have an impact. With money, you can buy people apologetics books, sponsor debates, get more degrees, and contribute to Michele Bachmann, and send your children to the best universities so they can have an influence. Therefore, we need to be extra careful who we marry, extra diligent about preparing for our roles in marriage, and extra persistent in staying married. We need the money for important things.

The FRC is my second favorite think tank, right behind the Heritage Foundation.

News

New study finds that fathers and marriage reduce drug use in children

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

Teen substance abuse is once again on the rise, according to a national study of adolescent drug and alcohol use released this week. The annual release of the Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) showed an alarming increase in adolescent substance abuse since 2008.

According to the study (PDF), teen illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse have significantly increased in the past three years. Marijuana use among adolescents increased 22 percent from 2008 to 2010, with nearly 40 percent of teens using the drug within the past year. Ecstasy use is also on the rise, increasing from 6 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2010. Likewise, 25 percent of teens admit they’ve taken medication not prescribed by their doctor, and one in five has used a behind-the-counter pain reliever without the direction of a doctor. This new data is especially worrisome, as it suggests that teen drug use is climbing again after a relative decline over the past decade.

Unfortunately, adolescent substance abuse is not reserved to the halls of high schools or prom after-parties. The nationally projectable study found an increase in alcohol use among young teens and even pre-adolescents. Almost two in three teens who admit to drinking alcohol said they had consumed their first full drink at age 15. Shockingly, 25 percent of the same group said they had first imbibed at 12 years old or younger.

[…]Whether teens have regular contact with their parents, especially with their fathers, can have significant impact on illicit drug and alcohol use. For instance, a child growing up in a divorced family is four times more likely to try illicit drugs by the time he or she is 14 than the same child raised in an intact, married family. Children who live with both parents and have close relationships with their fathers are less likely to smoke, drink alcohol, or use marijuana regardless of many other socioeconomic factors.

Religious practice also seems to have a positive effect on teens’ engagement in risky behavior. Adolescents who express personal religious beliefs and whose families regularly practice their faith are at lower risk for substance abuse. Fewer than one in 10 teens from an intact, religious family report ever using hard drugs, while more than one in five adolescents from non-intact, non-religious homes have abused illicit substances.

(I removed the links from the excerpt, but every assertion they make is linked to research)

I found this very interesting, especially since I was recently responding to a post that William Lane Craig posted on Facebook. Bill wanted to know why so many people seem to be incapable of considering both sides of a debate and judging who won the debate based on the arguments and evidence presented. This is relevant because in his two most recent debates, the atheists either presented no arguments or they did not attempt to refute his arguments or rebuttals. Bill’s question made me think of all the other factors that cause people to be unable to consider the case for Christianity on the merits, in a debate situation.

I replied to Bill that there were social forces that were breaking down children’s ability to consider both sides of questions so they could make their own decisions, instead of doing what their teachers and peers tell them to do, and this was especially bad as families break down and fathers are ejected from the home by women who chose to have sex with or marry men who are not qualified to be fathers, because they are not capable of being moral/spiritual leaders.

I wrote:

To answer Bill’s original question in the post, I think you have to point out what the public school system is doing to students. The public schools are not encouraging students to learn both sides of current issues so that they can debate them. They have a definite point of view that they are pushing, from the authority of the red pen.

For example, do you think that most public school teachers give equal time to proponents of vouchers or other school choice alternatives? Heck no. They have to be in favor of bigger government and higher taxes – that’s how they get paid. And you can see the same thing in debates about sexual ethics, moral relativism, moral equivalence, evolution, global warming, anti-capitalism, and so on.

They have an agenda. And when you have an agenda, you don’t present issues as having two sides that have to be judged on the merits. Instead, the public schools typically present one side with emotional stories or slogans, and the other side is derided with insults or made out to be a bogey-man. That’s the reason why the atheistic students cannot assess who won the debate. They have been trained in the schools to think one side is correct without ever have to assess the other side.

My favorite economist (Thomas Sowell) puts it well in this column:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226865/de-programming-students/thomas-sowell

I think it’s high time for Christian apologists to realize that it takes more than the kalam argument to defeat an atheist. You have to think of the dimension of family, and the schools, and even the laws and policies that incentivize certain behaviors that, one adopted into a lifestyle, make Christianity unpalatable because of its ethical demands.

Consider the impact on having a FATHER in the home on religious belief:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-026-f

And further consider that fatherlessness is correlated with atheism:
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/vanhove_vitzreview_jan08.asp

Now – the question to ask is – what policies promote having a father in the home. Well, no-fault divorce and welfare programs certainly do not promote having a father in the home, for example. So the reason why so many people cannot judge a debate may not be as simple as saying “Bill Craig is a bad debater”. Bill Craig is an excellent debater. But if there are other circumstances at work due to bad policies that make children incapable of even considering the other side, then what can Bill Craig do? Well, Bill Craig could write about policy, I suppose, although we have other scholars for that. But we should all be thinking about it.

I’ve written before about how liberal women choose big government policies that will provide them with financial security regardless of who they choose to have sex with or marry. Liberal women like big government because it relieves of the responsibility to be prudent when choosing men. Tomorrow I am actually going to be explaining, with research, how liberal women actually resent the idea that they would have to conform to choice of sex partner/husband to any traditional male roles or to any courting rules. So long as liberal women continue to vote for big government and choose men based on superficialities like physical appearance, clothes, air of confidence and tone of voice, we are screwed as a society.

Men conform themselves to women’s expectations. If the ability to be a protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader are not the criteria that women use to choose men, then men will change into what women want. Women are the deciders. Men adapt to women’s expectations. That is why it is so important for women to put down the women’s magazines and pick up the research showing the importance of fathers, and specifically, the importance of fathers who have rationally-grounded, well-evidenced KNOWLEDGE about moral and spiritual matters. So long as women view men who have knowledge as “too strict” and “no fun”, children will be damaged.

Speaking of Facebook, if you want to be my friend on Facebook, my Facebook page is here and you can follow the blog here.

News

Obama administration believes that traditional marriage is unconstitutional

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Justice Department has announced that it will no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because the president and Attorney General Eric Holder now believe the law is unconstitutional.

“After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), 1 U.S.C. § 7, as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment,” Holder wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Wednesday.

Section 3 of DOMA is the portion of the law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Obama and Holder now support the claims of the law’s opponents that the traditional definition of marriage violates the Constitution.

Holder explained that he and Obama felt that the government could not defend the traditional definition of marriage as a rational distinction in federal court, saying that any morality-based defense of DOMA would amount to “animus” and “stereotype-based thinking” that the Constitution prohibits.

“The [legislative] record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against,” Holder wrote.

In other words, because Congress enacted DOMA for moral reasons, the Obama administration will not defend it, because it thinks those moral reasons amount to “animus” towards homosexuals.

Holder said that Obama had decided that the traditional definition of marriage could not be defended from charges that it is not discriminatory, given what Holder said was a “history” of anti-homosexual discrimination.

“After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny,” Holder said.

“The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional,” he added.

Congress, as the author of DOMA, can still defend the law in federal court.

It’s so strange to me that so many of the people who voted for Obama aspire to marriage and claim to love children. But they support the Democrat party that undermines marriage in so many ways. From subsidies for single mothers, to no-fault divorce, to opposition to shared-parenting laws, to supporting recreational pre-marital sex, to supporting same-sex marriage… Obama and the Democrats are opposed to traditional marriage. They do not believe in a lifelong commitment of one man and one woman, and a stable environment in which to raise children. They believe in feminism. They believe in big government. They believe in easy no-fault divorce. They believe in single motherhood and sole custody of children for the mother. They believe in sex education. They believe in subsidized abortion. They believe in normalizing the homosexual lifestyle (with the higher rates of promiscuity and domestic violence it entails). They believe in making people feel better about living in selfish, risky and costly ways.

Why do these people who vote Democrat expect children to grow up with a mother and a father? Why do they expect men to commit to marriage? After you have undermined every reason for men to choose to marry and become fathers, you don’t then turn around and expect people to marry, do you?

If you are a democrat, then don’t expect that you will be married. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect to grow up with a father and a mother. If you are a Democrat, then don’t expect your parents to stay married. If life is about recreation and selfishness and having someone else pay for your risky, irresponsible behavior – this is the Democrat platform – then don’t expect to marry. Marriage isn’t free, and it doesn’t happen without the right conditions. If you are a Democrat, you destroyed marriage. Everything the Democrats stand for is anti-marriage. Democrats are anti-marriage. If you vote Democrat, then you are anti-marriage. You are causing the decline of marriage. And you are hurting children who need a mother and father.

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