By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General Discussion - The American family is falling apart

Since this is the same conversation we've had before, I'll give a brief summary of our last conversation before leaving you with my last post that I never received a response to:

 

Me: So what do you think we should do about this? My thoughts are that we can improve the education system within poor communities (to improve life outcomes of many of these children), improve sexual education, improve support networks for single parents, and provide greater assistance to single parents through the welfare system.

Numberwang: The welfare system caused the rise of dysfunctional families. We should only give welfare if parents stay together.

Me: Do you have any evidence that this was a causal link? Further, I struggle to believe that a family held together by nothing but the welfare system would be  healthy family. Second, to some extent single parenthood is inevitable. The second step to improving this issue (with the first being decreasing single parenthood rates) would be improving the welfare of these children. Government assistance is probably the clearest way to do that, but what are you proposing?

Numberwang: *Insert pics like in the OP and a YT video which do nothing to prove that there is a causal link*

Me: Well, here are my sources which dispute that:

 

 

First of all, you didn't really post anything in the way of evidence of a causal link. I am asking for evidence to be posted, not for you to simply make comments that evidence exists. 

Further, you seem to have deleted half of my post. I would like a response, as it is important, given the fact that it made up over half my post:

Either way, to some extent, single parenthood is inevitable. The second step of fighting the negative consequences of single parenthood (the first being reducing the single parenthood rate) is to fight the negative repercussions of single parenthood. This means fighting issues like the poverty of single mothers, and the reduced time parents have to spend with their children. Welfare is one of the more clear avenues, with assistance in parenting close behind. I also suggested improving parental leave programs, however I would expect that to have a significantly lesser impact. How do you propose tackling this side of the issue? To ignore this angle would be to only address a piece of the problem you are discussing.

Now, I would like to post the results of my searches:

Welfare reform in the mid '90s has virtually no effect on a number of variables such as marriage rate, divorce rate, and birth rate to unmarried women. Commonly, primarily conclusions on this front are that there is either no behavioral effect or a small behavioral effect due to this welfare reform. Further studies indicate fairly scattershot results with no consistent pattern. 

From what I've read, largely seems to mirror the conclusions from above. The effects are often found to be small or insignificant or contradictory, but this is a bit of a read, so I admit I didn't go through it with a fine-toothed comb. 

The Effects of Welfare Reform Policies on Marriage and Cohabitationhttps://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/full_513.pdf
And again, similar results to above. This one is probably the easiest to read. It presents a meta-analysis of other studies in a way that is easy to understand what the important points are. I've posted a couple quotes below.

"The meta-analytic results further show that these programs generally did not affect marriage or cohabitation overall or for most subpopulations characterized by the parent’s -21- age; prior marital status; race or ethnicity; prior welfare and work experience; and the age and number of her children."

 "despite the scattered effects on marriage that have been reported in earlier studies, we conclude based on the evidence presented here that these welfare and work programs — at least in the short run — had few effects on marriage and cohabitation for single parents, whether for all the programs combined, for particular program types, or for subgroups. This conclusion is in line with economic and sociological theory, which provides no clear prediction about the effects of changes in economic circumstances on marital behavior, and with the past and emerging non-experimental literature on marriage, which has failed to find any consistent effects."

The Economic Consequences of Divorce for Women in the EUhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-004-1694-0

This one is just an abstract, but I wanted to include it just quickly as it discusses the improved economic stability of women in areas with stronger welfare systems.
"Multivariate analyses show that welfare state arrangements temper the economic consequences of divorce for women. "

 


And that is where the conversation ended...



Around the Network

As a lot of people have already pointed out here, marriage is not the same thing as family.



VGPolyglot said:
numberwang said:

Broken families and violence are highly linked, maybe even the strongest predictor of violence in life.

Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has written that “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.” His views are echoed by the eminent criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who have written that “such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates.”

https://ifstudies.org/blog/school-shootings-fathers-divorce-family-structure

Are you just going to continually ignore what we post?

Yeah i think the OP is more interested in propagating an agenda than engaging in a meaningful discussion/debate on this complex topic.



So long as there are still two people rather than one person having to grow two heads or be richer than Bill Gates, I don't mind this at all...



xenogears1234 said:
VGPolyglot said:

Are you just going to continually ignore what we post?

Yeah i think the OP is more interested in propagating an agenda than engaging in a meaningful discussion/debate on this complex topic.

What am I supposed to do with a positive anecdote? Good thing it worked out for them in the end but it is not representative.

Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39 percent (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.

In 2011, children living in female-headed homes with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6%. This is over four times the rate for children living in married couple families.

57.6% of black children, 31.2% of Hispanic children, and 20.7% of white children are living absent their biological fathers.

http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/



Around the Network
numberwang said:
xenogears1234 said:

Yeah i think the OP is more interested in propagating an agenda than engaging in a meaningful discussion/debate on this complex topic.

What am I supposed to do with a positive anecdote? Good thing it worked out for them in the end but it is not representative.

Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39 percent (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.

In 2011, children living in female-headed homes with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6%. This is over four times the rate for children living in married couple families.

57.6% of black children, 31.2% of Hispanic children, and 20.7% of white children are living absent their biological fathers.

http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/

You're showing that you're clearly not interested in engaging with actual discussion with us on the topic.



This isn't exactly new but yes the numbers of single parents are increasing. I didn't read the numbers my apologies but honestly I wouldn't need to living in the city I reside in...the evidence is just there.

What happened?

No one can definitively say what caused such change but I would tend to argue that traditional family values have been compromised by media and ideology. The influence of both premises' can in my opinion have a great impact on society and way of life.

Is that the reason? More than likely but if it isn't then I would like to know because you're statement is an actuality that didn't just pop up out of nowhere...for no reason or without cause.



Insert Coin. Press START. You Died. Continue?

numberwang said:
xenogears1234 said:

Yeah i think the OP is more interested in propagating an agenda than engaging in a meaningful discussion/debate on this complex topic.

What am I supposed to do with a positive anecdote? Good thing it worked out for them in the end but it is not representative.

Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39 percent (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.

In 2011, children living in female-headed homes with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6%. This is over four times the rate for children living in married couple families.

57.6% of black children, 31.2% of Hispanic children, and 20.7% of white children are living absent their biological fathers.

http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-extent-of-fatherlessness/

I'm not sure if you already had a discussion you're trying to participate in but since I'm guessing not, I have to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with marriage, which the first post as about. You can have a family (with two parents) without marriage, you know?



I guess that's better than having childless families.



Nogamez said:
You dont have to be married to be a family you know.

 

Ka-pi96 said:
Good. Marriage is overrated and it's about time it started to die out anyway.

 

SuperNova said:
This might come as a shock to you, but my parents were never married. Yes, I'm one of those 'out of wedlock' children.

Of course, they had been toghether for nine years when they had me and it lasted another four, but no marriage ever happened.

This did not stop me from being a happy, well adjusted child for the most part. Nor did it mean at any point that I didn't have two loving, caring parents, two sets of grandparents and an assortment of aunts, uncles and family friends, that all looked out for me and took care of me growing up.

It is almost as if marriage is a societal contruct, that is loosing importance or something.
Then again I'm not american.

 

Barozi said:
pretty statistic but of no significance.

You don't have to be married to live and raise a child together.
The child's parents could be divorced one year after childbirth, which leads to the child being raised by one parent.

 

smroadkill15 said:
So what? My nephew was born out of out wedlock and my sister and her husband are still together after 15 years.

I'm glad to see that nearly everybody here understands that this is not a problem. Marriage, in and of itself, is of no consequence whatsoever. It is literally just a government license, proving that you paid a fee.