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November 9, 2012 at 4:44 am #775469
redblackParticipantrich:
I prefer two parent families over single parent families. There is much more stability.
prove it.
November 9, 2012 at 3:48 pm #775470
JoBParticipantmarriage is what every couple makes of it..
the divorce rate in this nation could lead one to believe that heterosexuals don’t much respect the marriages they say they are defending
and no.. i don’t think the divorce rates improve substantially for those who identify themselves as Christian…
If you want to respect marriage…
make something worthwhile of yours
November 9, 2012 at 4:19 pm #775471
DBPMemberredblack, I find this whole “prove it” trend amusing. Oh, I know where it comes from. When you’re going up against a hooper or an HMCRich, that “prove it” thing might be very effective. But when you’re up against me, it’s another story.
So before you say “prove it” to anyone on this Blog, I suggest you ask yourself whether this might not just be a topic that I have an interest in. Because once I pick up the gantlet, I don’t put it down for a while.
Now then, are you sure you wanna talk about the stats on single parenting? Or do you want to maybe modify your position on this?
BTW, what is your position on this, exactly?
My position is that two-parent households are more stable than one-parent households. Just like Rich said.
November 9, 2012 at 5:04 pm #775472
JoBParticipantDBP
i have given your last post some thought..
stability is one of the million dollar words that gets thrown around without definition..
so first i would ask what your definition is…
second.. when it is thrown around,
the assumption is that single parent homes are less stable
but i have to ask
is that lack of stability due to the fact that a lot of single parents reside in two person households that lack the “stability” of a marriage license…
and how much of a illusion the stability of marriage given current divorce rates?
or is that lack of stability due to poverty?
there are a lot of unacknowleged variables in this equation
November 9, 2012 at 6:07 pm #775473
WorldCitizenParticipantTwo parent households aren’t necessarily more stable than single parent households, but I believe they have the ability to be more stable easier than single parent households. Two people sharing child-rearing duties make it much easier to get the attention the child needs.
It’s a complicated issue that has quite a bit to do with monetary security I’m sure. Single parent households where the parent makes/has enough money to not be tied up with work so much as to be apart form the child will have an easier time than those who are struggling to pay the rent so to speak.
Some single parents have outside help and a good support system with friends and extended family. Some don’t. Some have chemical dependency problems. Some don’t. Some manage time well. Some don’t. There is no one answer that can encapsulate all the situations single parents find themselves in.
There are just as many, if not more, variables to deal with in multi-parent families as well. Just because a kid is raised by two parents (regardless of gender) doesn’t mean it’s a good environment. What if there is an abusive factor? Heavy chemical dependency? Medical bills beyond reason to pay?
The attractive thing about multi-parent households (to me) is there is a greater chance for a loving support system under one roof. Two men can provide this in a different way than a man and a woman, but not necessarily worse. Just a little different. Same with two women.
November 9, 2012 at 6:21 pm #775474
skeeterParticipantJoB #77:
“and no.. i don’t think the divorce rates improve substantially for those who identify themselves as Christian…”
JoB I found something we agree on! I’m a Catholic Christian. We pride ourselves on marriage being a covenant not only between husband and wife but also with God. Guess what? Our divorce rates are exactly the same as the rest of society in general. So you are 100% correct, at least with respect to Catholics.
November 9, 2012 at 7:05 pm #775475
kootchmanMemberTell me.. would Johnny or Suzy be on the face of it, be exposed to more opportunity if Mom knocked down 220 K and Dad knocked down 180K? . Who will get the tutors? The private schools? The “enrichment” trips, the vacations, the exposures, … or the single dad with a couple of kids who can’;t accept overtime because he has to be home when the kids are, or has to leave work for a case of the sniffles.. or make dental appointments ( oh, yea, dental insurance too) doesn’t blink an eye for the $1200 for the swim club or rowing club fees… et al… or the private music lessons, the $1500 for the entry level Gibson Hummingbird…. it’s got advantages for sure. And single dad.. he is known for not being able to travel for work, put in crunch hours… all the things that get ya higher up the ladder.
November 10, 2012 at 5:40 pm #775476
redblackParticipantDP: if that’s supposed to be some kind of threat, bring it on, man. i ain’t afeared a’ you, neither.
post your stats and stop talking about how you’re going to post your stats.
my position is that this is america, not leave it to beaver, as rich seems to believe. that there are a lot of abusive two-parent households out there. parents doing crack in front of their kids. sexual abuse. starvation. just beneath its shiny norman rockwell veneer, this country is ugly, nasty, and violent.
anyone who doesn’t recognize that is delusional.
so, having said that, do we still want to make blanket statements about two-parent and single-parent homes? homes where both parents work are still two-parent homes, but are they more stable than a home that has a single mom who takes her kids to day care? what about multi-generational familes?
lastly, i have a stat for you:
single moms are now the largest head-of-household demographic in america. (rummaging for that census data…) are you saying that families in america are inherently and mostly unstable?
November 10, 2012 at 6:02 pm #775477
redblackParticipantkootch: you’re talking about income and advantage. while all of those privileges that rich kids enjoy are nice, that doesn’t necessarily equate to stability.
for example, a swimming club is nice because it lets the parents dump that activity onto someone else. but wouldn’t it be better if the single dad can take his kids swimming himself? isn’t that, in fact, more stable in terms of building a strong, cohesive family?
and in terms of income, married gay couples, as a demographic, are more successful than heteros.
When it comes to individual income, gay and straight men may earn roughly the same amount, but married or partnered gay men personally take home nearly $8,000 more, on average, than their straight counterparts. Additionally, the average household income of a married or partnered gay man is $116,000 versus $94,500 for a straight married or partnered man.
but you’re right about one thing (although you kind of backed into it):
a single parent who earns good money while not having to work 60 hours a week for it will have more leisure time, and he’ll have nights and weekends free to spend with his family.
November 10, 2012 at 6:06 pm #775478
DBPMemberr/b, no one is saying that one-parent families are horrible, are they? No. So why are you jumping to that conclusion?
I’m just saying what everyone already knows – almost everyone anyway – which is just that one-parent families as a rule have a much harder time of it than two-parent families.
Which is so obvious that you don’t even need statistics to prove it. All you have to do is look around you and look at all the extra stresses that a single parent has on her. Stress that comes from:
â–º Having much less income
â–º Having to pay for a babysitter or having to take the kids everywhere with you
â–º Having to deal with discipline issues alone
â–º Having to deal with school issues alone
â–º More dependent on outsiders for help
And we’re not even talking teen mothers here. But if we were, then you’d have to times everything by two. Teen mothers have to deal with all the money and babysitting stuff plus grow up at the same time.
So, again, no statistics needed. Just basic observational skills.
But if you want statistics . . .
November 10, 2012 at 6:13 pm #775479
redblackParticipantDP: i’m saying that comparing the two in an attempt to make a half-assed point about gay couples and family is kind of a pointless exercise.
yes, two-parent households are easier. but that doesn’t necessarily make them more stable.
stability is a matter of a parent’s or parents’ ability to provide a safe, loving, and close-knit household that emphasizes education, honesty, hard work, etc. and those things aren’t always dependent on income.
November 10, 2012 at 6:15 pm #775480
DBPMemberBefore I post this, I want everyone reading this to know that I’m not blaming anyone for anything here. I’m not making any grand arguments for anything.
I’m simply looking at the numbers in order to understand the situation as it as . . .
Here’s a good place to start:
http://www.singleparentsuccess.org/stats.html
Note that all the stats on this sheet are separately sourced and cited. And note, too, that this information is not from some evangelical Christian outfit. It’s from a group called the “Single Parent Success Foundation.” So what does that tell you?
Anyway . . . let’s start with Item 4 on the list:
In 1995, nearly six of 10 children living with mothers only were near the poverty line. About 45 percent of children raised by divorced mothers and 69 percent by never-married mothers lived in or near poverty, which was $13,003 for a family of three in 1998.
Census Brief CENBR/97-1, Bureau of the Census http://www.census.gov, September 1997
So there you go. Poverty. Single-parent families are more likely to be poor.
The page doesn’t compare with poverty rates for two-parent families, but I’m pretty sure the povery rate for them is less than 6 out of 10.
November 10, 2012 at 6:27 pm #775481
DBPMemberper redblack:
stability is a matter of a parent’s or parents’ ability to provide a safe, loving, and close-knit household that emphasizes education, honesty, hard work, etc. and those things aren’t always dependent on income.
r/b, why should we accept your inferred definition of stability over Rich’s.
Or mine.
Or anyone else’s?
Frankly, I would have inferred a somewhat broader meaning of the word stability than you did, but in any case, why didn’t you just ask Rich to define what he meant by “stability” instead of challenging him to “prove it”?
But anyway, let’s accept your definition for now. “Ability to provide a safe loving home . . . “
Here are more extracts from the Web page cited above:
75% of children/adolescents in chemical dependency hospitals are from single-parent families. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
More than one half of all youths incarcerated for criminal acts lived in one-parent families when they were children.(Children’s Defense Fund)
63% of suicides are individuals from single parent families (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin – Investigative Aid)
So tell me, how do those figures square with your definition of a stable home?
Again, I’m not casting aspersions on single parents; I’m just looking at the phenomenon of single parenting in terms of it’s social consequences. It’s important to be clear on that.
November 10, 2012 at 6:32 pm #775482
JanSParticipantOh, good grief !!! I was married in a marriage that was not stable all the time ( although others assumed it was) and then I was divorced and a single parent when the daughter was 15 years old. While financially some times were just as stable, sometimes not so stable, I was just as much a good parent or bad parent when single as I was when married. My daughter is now 32, a productive member of society, bright, smart, talented, great job.
Life is what it is…parenting, whether single or in a loving (or not so loving) relationship is not a contest.
November 11, 2012 at 4:32 pm #775483
redblackParticipantsorry. SCL shut off my power yesterday while they upgraded my meter. so i walked away from the computer and enjoyed the weather.
look. the bottom line is that poverty is a bigger destabilizing factor than how many parents are in the home – or, back to the topic, whether or not they are gay.
which is what pissed me off in the first place about rich’s “you are different from me” post: it’s just more white christian exclusivity, zealotry, and ignorance. kinda funny from a guy with metallica’s “and justice for all” as his avatar.
anyway, i’ll concede that more single mom-headed families are poor than dual parent households. this from the 2011 census:
.
living with both parents: total = 51,456,000
living with both parents: below 100% of poverty = 7,062,000
.
.
living with mother only: total = 17,636,000
living with mother only: below 100% of poverty = 7,811,000
.
note that, while high, that is not 6 of 10 single mothers. it’s not even half.
(it’s from an .xls document, so no copy/paste. Table C8. Poverty Status, Food Stamp Receipt, And Public Assistance For Children Under 18 Years By Selected Characteristics: 2011)
http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2011.html
but i still contend that poverty is the destabilizing factor, and not the fact that there’s only one parent.
and regarding your stats, DP, remember that the balance of those kids that are suicidal, addicts, and criminals are presumably from dual parent homes. so was it poverty that drove those kids from dual-parent homes to such desperate measures, or some other factor that destabilized their households?
again, i’m not arguing just for the sake of arguing. i’m arguing against this leave it to beaver perception of america that some people still harbor. they try to hold poor people and minorities and single moms and gay people and muslims and whoever else is “different from me” to standards that haven’t existed for a very long time in this country – if they ever did.
and i’m sick of it. i’m tired of the snide comments and arrogance and the implication that “the others” just don’t try hard enough to be successful nuclear families and that there’s something wrong with that.
November 11, 2012 at 5:22 pm #775484
DBPMemberYes it’s true that some people do like to put down poor people.
Or glorify them.
Or make various other absurd generalizations about them.
But let’s get this discussion back to marriage now, shall we?
You know, in some ways the implications of this “gay marriage” thing are quite ironic.
(Or, as some people say, ear-ronic.)
By settling down, getting married and having kids, gay people can now fulfill their television-inspired aspirations to be just like the Cleaver family.
Only with two dads.
Â
Or two moms.
Â
Â
Still only one Beaver, though . . .
[SPROING!]
November 12, 2012 at 9:03 pm #775485
sb in wsMemberBack to gay marriage.
I don’t know why people are so head-strong about not changing the definition of the ‘word’ marriage. It has already been redefined many times over the centuries. I really don’t care if you don’t agree with it and never will. What I care about it to be able to have a legal contract with my wife that has all the same rights and privileges as everyone else that will protect both of us and our future children if something should happen. Of course there may be issues in other states that don’t allow or recognize gay marriage or ‘marriage for all’ and that is why it needs to be changed in the rest of the country. Remember back when interracial marriages were not allowed? Then Loving vs. Virginia came along and yeah there were still people who didn’t like it. So what! A persons rights are more important that your personal feelings. It is not right to deny a group of people this right and we shouldn’t have to vote on it either.
I do want to say thanks to the people that did. I am truly grateful.
November 12, 2012 at 9:11 pm #775486
BostonmanMemberI can’t wait for the first gay couple to get divorced. How will the courts determine alimony? I think the equal rights are great, probably long overdue, but, there are a lot of legal questions that will arrise. If there are kids who gets the kid? Usually in a traditional family the wife gets primary custody (which I think is BS) but in a household of two men or two woman who gets the kid.
I think this will end up being a great equalizer for good men who have had to pay out the ass just to be able to see their kids after a divorce all because of politics.
Oh ya, and just so I am somewhat on topic. There is nothing wrong with gay rights. I think the advertising was BS because the state already provided for equal rights just without calling it marriage. A lot of ads I saw talked about equal rights, it wasn’t about equal rights. It was about being able to use a word.
November 12, 2012 at 9:36 pm #775487
LindseyParticipant@Bostonman – I work for an employee benefits consulting firm. We help business owners and HR managers offer the best benefits to attract and keep the best employees. I can tell you firsthand that domestic partners and married couples most certainly do not enjoy the same legal benefits. Employers aren’t required to include DP coverage as a dependent. IF they do, the amount the employee pays for DP is taken post-tax, not pre-tax like married couples or “regular” dependents. Insurance plans will now be required to offer same sex married partners coverage where ever they offer the same to opposite sex married partners, and on the same pre-tax basis.
November 12, 2012 at 11:10 pm #775488
JanSParticipantSo, let’s see if I’m reading the above right…two male(gay)
Men married to each other would provide a more stable household for their children than a single hetero parent of either gender?
So, what’s the problem with R-74?
November 13, 2012 at 2:15 am #775489
JoBParticipantBostonman
“Usually in a traditional family the wife gets primary custody (which I think is BS) but in a household of two men or two woman who gets the kid.”
the parent who is most involved with the day to day activities of the children..
just like in heterosexual couples…
If you do’t know the name of your children’s pediatrician and their after school schedule you probably aren’t going to be awarded custody.
November 13, 2012 at 3:33 am #775490
redblackParticipantbostonman:
there you go again.
look, dude. gay couples have already been divorced. they’ve already gone through all of that custody and visitation b.s. that straight couples have.
your post is yet another example of vilifying “the others” – the non-leave it to beaver crowd. it drips with contempt, misunderstanding, and ignorance.
and, again, i’m sick of it.
leave well enough alone and mind your own business. gay marriages don’t threaten my marriage or the sanctity thereof, so why do you – another presumably virulently married and hetero male – presume to be more threatened than i am?
why do you care?
“equal rights?” man, if you have to use that term, you really don’t understand why this was important enough to put to a vote.
so let me attempt to elucidate you:
gays were born with the same rights as you, me, and everyone else. to insinuate that they’re asking for something extra is patently offensive to anyone with a brain.
and yet – and yet! – they were denied the same rights as everyone else simply by being omitted as a class from insurance policies and in the eyes of probate law. a conundrum, right? can i get an “amen?”
is anyone starting to understand why this issue pisses me off so much? crikey. i’m not sure how to teach empathy over an internet forum, but i’m going to give it a shot.
November 13, 2012 at 3:52 am #775491
elikapekaParticipantRedblack, here’s your amen, brother
November 13, 2012 at 7:25 pm #775492
sb in wsMemberThank you Lindsey for pointing out some of the legal rights we have gained with R74. I know we have gained more than using the word.
@redblack, I agree and thank you. I don’t understand why it is so hard for people to understand how unjust this was and still it across the country. They say they understand but they really don’t and won’t until they put my shoes on.Thank you all, gay and especially straight people for the support.
November 13, 2012 at 7:42 pm #775493
ghar72ParticipantLindsey, I was always under the impression, and in fact told by my partner’s HR person, that the pre-tax part of health insurance is a federal issue. My partner’s employer does offer insurance to me, but the cost would be taken out post-tax and I’m not eligible to use any of her medical dollars (she works for a school district and the money they give her to pay for her insurance premium can’t be applied to my premiums, just our children). Are you saying this will change with the passage of Ref 74? I don’t see how until the feds fully recognize our marriage. But I guess I had thought they would treat our marriage the same as our domestic partnership (not see it as a marriage). I’m guessing our taxes are going to continue to be a total pain in the ass, requiring an accountant due to the Community Property law.
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