DuckIII wrote:Dominater wrote:DuckIII wrote:
I’m not the one who said if parents were better no one would need police. Just pointing out the absurdity of such an extreme statement, not because I think good parenting doesn’t matter to crime rates.
Ok maybe not none! But a hell of a lot less
Look, I absolutely agree there is a strong correlation between environment and criminal behavior and that the quality of parenting is in turn a significant percentage of that environmental influence. But bad parents produce amazing children and amazing parents produce awful children. And those aren’t extremely rare exceptions either.
I mean, I was raised in a stable, middle class, Christian, two parent household. My parents had an exemplary relationship, openly loving towards each other and to their kids. Fair discipline, enthusiastic and active support in my interests, you name it. I spent my entire 30s and early 40s as an alcoholic, and the last few years a shockingly chronic one. I can’t even count how many times I drove over the legal limit and I’m ashamed of it still. Thankfully I never injured or killed anyone. I’m sober now over 4 years. But I did that. I did all that. That behavior wasn’t a product of my environment. It was a product of me.
Point being, in our present manner of debate people tend to take shortcuts to extreme opinions or just jump to assumptions. But all of these issues of culture, crime, parenting and socioeconomics are extremely complicated on both and macro and micro level.
We’ll never really get anywhere without both sides of these issues recognizing that each of those sides has some elements to them that are perfectly valid and warrant attention.
Not an assumption or a sound bite or a reductionist idea.
First, I want to applaud an intelligent, well thought out reply as you know I am a proponent of such nuanced conversation. As you highlight, the success or lack of success of individual can be dictated by a variety of variables (some which you have listed).
Second, unfortunately, statistics do not support this idea of equal outcomes for children raised in two parent households vs single parent households. Statistics firmly conclude the being raised in a two parent household leads to better outcome for children across the board. Pick a metric. They do better on average.
Since 1960, the amount of single motherhood has jumped from 8.0% to 23.1% (US Census). This is supposed to be a good thing? Explain why this is a positive trend in society.
In contrast, single fatherhood homes have jumped from 1.1% to 3.7%. So there are significantly less fathers raising children by themselves than mothers.
The reason for supporting the notion of two parent households are fairly obvious.
Now as I list some of these examples, let's conclude one thing that we both agree on. Under no circumstance should a person who is being abused by a significant other be forced to stay in such a relationship. Almost everybody agrees that this is an intolerable situation and should allow for the abused spouse to successfully leave the home. High conflict homes/marriages also have disastrous results on children. With that conceit, let's investigate why single parent (primarily single mother homes) are not as successful as two parent households.
1: Resources. Parents can split time. Two incomes can create more wealth. It is easier to produce and allocate resources with two parents as opposed to one. These resources can be utilized in a variety of ways.
2: Children from two parent households are less likely to end up in poverty by up to 82% (perhaps one of the socioeconomic factors that influences crime?). 57% of children living in two parent households were living at 200% above the poverty line while only 21% of single parent households (Pew Research).
3: Children from two parent households have higher graduation rates leading to better jobs, opportunities, and careers and consequently leads to less unemployment rates (again factors that can lead to increased crime). (numerous studies)
4: Children living in two parent households have physically healthier lives by 20-30% (Dawson). Consequently, 50% of children following divorce will development physical problems.
5: Children from two parent households have better verbal reasoning than single parent households (Kinnard and Reinherz).
6: Children from two parent households are more likely to experience academic achievement (Manning and Lamb).
7: 37.1% of Single Parent households live in poverty compared to 6.8% of two parent homes. That's OVER one third. Arguably, the greatest weapon against childhood poverty is two parent households.
8: 17.4 million children in the US are being raised without fathers and almost 50% of them are living in poverty. This is not a problem? Explain.
9: By comparison only 21% of children living in single father homes live in poverty compared to single mother homes and are more likely to have a cohabiting partner (41% vs 16%).
We are really going to conclude with straight faces that there is the majority of crime committed is not related to poverty? I do not want to take the time to debunk that claim, but it should stand on its own weight of just general assumption (again, violent crime).
If you want better results, we need to reconsider how much welfare programs are helping children. Statistically, if they perpetuate single parent households, it is leading to less successful outcomes compared to two parent households and its not even close. I submit that if we want to produce better citizens, less crime, and better outcomes we need to find ways to keep parents together.
I continually support any continued conversation in this regard.
Side note: I did not bring in other variables such as race/ethnicity, but a lot of these statistics deviate when you account for additional factors and it highlights significant problems within certain communities.
