More
babies are being born to unmarried, cohabitating parents in America
than ever before. This has some sociologists are worried. Will children
lose out on the benefits of living in a financially solid home? They
might, but there is a way to address that: stop biases against single
people.
At the federal level alone, there are more than 1,000 laws that
benefit and protect only those people who are legally married, including
tax breaks and access to a spouse’s social security benefits.
There is also a vast array of ways in which single people are targets
of “singlism”, which is when you are stereotyped, stigmatized, and
discriminated against because you are single. For example, when I and
two fellow researchers asked rental agents about their preferences for
renting a property to various sets of applicants who were similar in
every way except for their marital status, we found that the agents
favored a married couple (chosen 61% of the time) over a cohabiting
couple (24%) or a pair of opposite-sex friends (15%). If married people
are getting better access to preferred properties, they may also be
getting more affordable properties.
The laws and practices that favor married people economically have
considerable implications for children - some grow up in less
economically secure households simply because of the marital status of
their parents. If our concern is truly with the well-being of children,
then we should fashion policies that help them directly, rather than
trying to coax or shame their parents into getting married and reaping
advantages that way.
The discussion about the increase in babies born to unmarried
cohabiting mothers has a whiff of the sentiment “well at least they are
not single mothers”. Yet the dire claims about the fate of single
parents’ children are often misrepresentations of the evidence, as I
found in my research for Singled Out. Even within particular types of
families, there are meaningful variations. We are sensitive to factors
such as education and economics, yet other considerations often go
unacknowledged.
In what is perhaps the most comprehensive investigation of the implications of different kinds of family structures for the well-being of teenagers, Thomas Deleire and Ariel Kalil studied more than 11,000 adolescents raised in ten different kinds of households, including, for example, households with married parents, biological cohabiting parents, single mothers (divorced, always-single, and cohabiting considered separately), divorced single mothers in multi-generational households, and always-single mothers in multigenerational households. Conventional wisdom would predict that the children of married parents would do well, and they did. But the children of divorced single mothers in multigenerational homes did just as well.
The children who did the best – even better than the children of
married parents – were the children of always-single mothers in
multigenerational homes. They were less likely to drink or smoke, more
likely to graduate from high school, and more likely to enroll in
college.
Single-parent and cohabiting-parent households are just a few of the
many contemporary ways of living. Some of the 21st century innovations
in child-rearing are so new that we have little or no social science
research on the long-term implications. For example, the CoAbode website
offers single mothers and their children the opportunity to find other
compatible single-mother families with whom to share a home and a life.
Even more revolutionary are the adults who come together in parenting
partnerships to raise children, without committing to each other
romantically.
Their children have two adults in their lives for the long haul. Will
it matter – for better or for worse – that the adults are not married
or even interested in any romantic involvement? We just don’t know.
What I think we can predict is that creative ways of living will continue to proliferate. Never again will huge swaths of the population follow the nuclear family path or any other predetermined road to the good life. We get to design our own life spaces.
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So the multigenerational homes which supplied (presumably) more hands, more hearts, more caring people and (presumably) more financial funding of the home provided enough assets to raise a child well who finished HS, didn't drink or smoke (how important is this?) and entered college (did they finish?). I can't tell whether you're being cute with the 3 mentioned pluses or just making a socialist welfare state point.
Maybe the consistency of a single blood related family structure sans younger Father figure made the child feel secure and decisions less complicated. I just don't see a "better outcome" applying to 2 of the 3 things you cited.
The gov is biased in favor of babies born to unwed mothers! They have an easier time qualifying for Medicaid, Medicaid for the working poor state programs and public assistance than any married women do by far. Baby = full ride on public assistance for the entire family for 18 years if mom decides she doesn't want to work.
It is single people that bear the worst discrimination by the gov having to pay taxes for all kinds of child related things like schools but getting ZERO tax write offs and often ZERO public assistance unless they are months away from death.
You have no idea how many millions of women claim single parent status, get thousands in benefits every month and have the supposedly long gone babydaddy mooching off taxpayers right along with them. Babydaddy may not work at all but often he has a job and that income is not reported as part of the household so the family can get thousands a month in handouts. It pays extremely well for parents to stay unwed in the US!
Babydaddy's legal address, if mom doesn't deny knowing his whereabouts, is always his mother's house. Ask grandma's neighbors when babydaddy will come home and they say he doesn't live there; just picks up mail once in a while.
An easier time qualifying for Medicaid, etc. - because they are poorer.
I'm glad to see you agree with the article that the playing field needs to be leveled.
Married couples who want to cash in on that sweet sweet single mother dough can simply divorce and cohabitate. People don't seem to be doing that. Guess it doesn't really pay.
So maybe both traditional laws, and historic religious vows, that publically recognized "Marriage" in the past had - and still has - a far more important role to play in the future life of children than the current fad of unmarried parents pursuing sexual pleasure while willy-neeley spawning babies with no thought to the future.
Stopping 'biases' against 'single people' will solve nothing.
Sorry folks. The current crop of cohabiting young people more reminds me of animals acting on instinct to perpetuate their species than civilized humans using their brains to plan their and their offspring's future.
In the early years of the Soviet state, the Communists brought in all sorts policies to remodel the family - many that look exactly like today's right-on thinking on the family.
The Communists believed a worker's utopia would mean the family as an economic unit would no longer be relevant. Families would become based merely on mutual affection and divorce easy to obtain for when this mutual affection waned. Religious marriage went as State Atheism was brought in. Unwed and other single mothers received special protection and support. Abortion was legalised, etc.
Pretty soon this assault on traditional family ties and support networks, and a civil war, meant the State was now dealing with millions of homeless or inadequately parented children. Party officials therefore did a 180 and brought in very conservative 'pro family' polices. Adults were made more responsible for the children they had fathered/mothered and common-law marriage was given equal legal status with civil marriage. Divorce was tightened up and abortion banned. Large families were encouraged with payments.
When I was a social science student I read arguments that even the concept of a traditional family unit was effectively oppressive to non-typical families and thus should not be promoted as an ideal or celebrated - indeed it was lambasted by many. But it doesn't really matter how right-on you are - soon enough the basic reality that a typical family unit is the best building block for society kicks in.
Trying to portray these as somewhat similar in effect made me laugh.
+1 for comedy
Being single, I don't see why earned income from two wage earners should be taxed differently depending on marital status.
But I can see why landlords might prefer married couples to singles. And, if we keep piling restrictions on landlords, rental properties will start to disappear.
And government preferences re marriage are ore than offset by the preference for single mothers inherent in the welfare programs.
I think that married to single preference is a bit off - as a single female with no live in boyfriend and no kids I am pretty sure I'm in the highest demand of all, as a renter anyway. I could see it for larger properties you'd want as many incomes and as unlikely to move a renter as possible. As a home-buyer I would also not be desirable, at least from a bank's perspective - only one income makes me at least twice as precarious as a standard married couple. But these things aren't against me because I'm single - they're against me because I am inherently more mobile, and I have less in terms of financial resources to tap.
"And government preferences re marriage are ore than offset by the preference for single mothers inherent in the welfare programs."
Ahem. Only works if you are poor.
Rich people still get married. Maybe they should stop. The institution of marriage really needed to die out quite a while ago. I can understand people wanting to do traditional religious ceremonies, or have a party, but the legal stuff, in place to protect inherited wealth and children by gift of tax breaks, doesn't need to be there. You shouldn't get to knock money off your tax return because you've managed to trap someone into a "life-long" commitment.
Yes, take away the "married" tax breaks and see change. Better to be single than in an unhappy relationship and, according to all statistics, 50% of men have affairs. How healthy is that marriage? A good marriage a blessing - a bad marriage creates unhealthy children who often have a difficult time forming and maintaining healthy relationships.
50% of women do too. It's normal human behavior. With those stats, 75% of marriages will experience at least one affair.
Our society support patriarchal marriages, which reflect society as a whole.
Engels wrote about this long ago in discussing the historical reasons for the oppression of women. Wilhelm Reich showed how the patriarchal family structure played a huge role in the vast majority of Germans supporting Hitler when the economy went bad, rather than the socialists or the communists.
Sharon Smith, a modern socialist thinker, wrote an interesting essay on Engel's work.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/02/engles_family.shtml
I believe that for societies to become decent places for all people, instead of for the powerful and vicious few, women will have to play much larger roles in every aspect.
Let's not forget that the idea that good aryan women are only good for producing good aryan children kept many german women from joining the war effort and, therefore, industrial production in nazi Germany suffered.
You completely missed the point here Bella.
The problem isn't with how we treat couples who are married vs. couples that are not, that is a SYMPTOM of the problem. The actual problem is how society defines marriage as a religious institution rather than a purely civil one. Were the mysticism removed from the process of combining two people into a mutually supportive relationship, and the many archaic common laws around marriage updated as well, there would be far fewer barriers to entry which are keeping many of those people "single".
Absolutely the opposite. We should be backing children from married couples all the way even if one study did show that single-parent multi generational families did OK with their kids. Many studies show that children do best within marriage and the Guardian reported that kids from single-parent families are twice as likely as two-parent families to have mental health concerns. No its or buts, marriage is the way to go if we want a society full of happy people.
because baby boomers turned out to be so well adjusted. It is not the marriage but the health of the relationship. I bet of you control for how long a couple has been together regardless of marital status, then you wouldn't see much difference. Besides, being a single parent means raising a kid alone, not being unmarried but living as a couple.
Maybe some years ago people didn't marry because they were shy of commitment (not good for kids), but I think today, many people do not marry because they do not think it is necessary for commitment.
Think you may be approaching this the wrong way round. Children may do better with married parents but its not automatically the marriage itself that is the cause - happier long term stable couples are more likely to get married.
Actually, baby boomers are pretty well adjusted on the whole.
The semantics in this article and headline are very confusing. Single parents, to my mind, are parents raising children alone. These could be parents who are never married, widowed, seperated or divorced. The marital status of couples raising children is another issue.
I agree...was somewhat confusing when they use "single" and "cohabitating" as interchangeable words. Cohabitating in no way means single to me.
Is it that "real estate" or estate agents as we say in the UK purposely discriminate against non married couples or is it that they see them as safer bets especially in the rental markets?
Whilst there are no absolute certainties I imagine an individual who has not met any couple would probably see the married couple as more likely to stay together and guarantee continual rental income... other than a couple who were not married and if they broke up would probably have to re-advertise etc which could mean a temporary loss of income.
In the end estate agents work on commission and rental agents receive it throughout the tenure of the contract... the longer it goes on the more money they receive.
If unmarried couples were seen as more likely to pay more, it would take a particularly stupid agent to not favour unmarried couples.
Maybe unmarried couples are perceived as not wanting kids as much and kids can wreck propertied scrawling on walls and so on or married couples will eventually want to own a home instead of renting and so unmarried couples may be a better long-term bet.
A friend of mine is a single mum. She worked all her life, part time when he son was small so she could be there for him. She's raised a simply wonderful man, a super husband and dad with an excellent career.
A single mother isn't necessarily a feckless mother.
Nobody is saying that but the overall stats favour marriage.
And how much of that is because society supports married families in ways it does not support unmarried ones?
"A single mother isn't necessarily a feckless mother"
Of course but anecdote =/= data.
There are kids from single parent families who turn out brilliantly.
There are (more rarely, but still significantly) kids from stable marriages who go off the rails.
But general trends are clear. Except in the cases of abuse or neglect; kids are, as a general proposition, better off with two parents than one. In many respects, MUCH better off.
Cops, social workers, teachers and others at the frontline understand this, even if Guardian columnists don't.
I’m generally predisposed to wanting to support alternative family structures beyond the married 2.4 norm, but I don’t think this article does itself any favours.
For a start, there’s too much of a tendency to discuss cohabiting couples/parents and single parents as being one and the same, as a group that stands together but separate from marriage. I don’t see that as being the right approach.
Particularly when you look at the study referred to. The author rather glides over how well the children of single parents did, i.e. the children “single mothers (divorced, always-single, and cohabiting considered separately).” She refers instead only to those single mothers in multi-generational households, which I would assume means with grandparents present, and there may be other factors at play that are relevant to this rather than singledom.
And unfortunately, when you actually look at the study cited (or the one that appears to be as close to as I can find), it shows that only children raised by single mothers in multi-generational families do as well as children raised by married couples, but all other non-married family forms don’t fare as well (although there are other studies available that show otherwise for some family formations).
I’d also argue that none of this addresses whether it’s right to discriminate against any nonmarried families. Can families be coerced or incentivised into marriage? Will it keep them in marriage? And what are the risks of privileging one family form over the other? These to me are the pertinent questions to be asking.
That's an interesting article. The key thing must be the welfare of the child, as it is cannot look after itself. It makes sense that one adult will have a difficult time earning money and looking after a child by herself/himself so any arrangement that gets more adults involved constructively and over the long term should be encouraged. In the past this happened with extended families so why not modern equivalents?