America's biggest failing

BrntOrngStmpeDe

BrntOrngStmpeDe

1,000+ Posts
it has been mentioned here many times but I think it bears repeating in light of the Newtown tragedy.

The increase in single parent households is our biggest failing. We have to quit treating the "single mom" and "single dad" moniker like a badge of honor. It is failing on an individual level and a societal level. Marriage can be tough but it is a commitment and once children are introduced into the equation that commitment is multiplied tenfold.

Single parent households have tripled over the last 40 years from about 3.5M to almost 12M now. And the races with the worst percentage of single parent households do the worst in virtually every other respect (crime, poverty, education etc).

problems with crime, education, violence etc can all be traced back to increased divorce rates and increased instances of single parent households.

That's the root issue that needs to be addressed.

No fault divorce should be a thing of the past (at least after there are children involved). And there should be a "remarriage tax" that makes it awfully cumberson to get remarried, and there should be a minimum child support threshold, and idiot TV shows should be shamed for casually using the phrase "baby mama" like its no big deal to bring a child in this world with piss poor support and no dad around.
 
Oh, and I forgot to mention that much of our healthcare future will be determined by this tragedy as well. Children from single parent households are much more likely to be obese as well. Which, as we all know, is a primary driver to so many of our high cost ailments.
 
As a product of a traditional two parent family, I could not disagree more.

The issue is holding people accountable, parents and children regardless of whether the parents live together.
 
I think you are on to something important. I am a dad. And more and more there are less and less functional dads out there. We either divorce our wives or we spend all our energy on work or our own interests. We just aren't that involved with our children. I am conscious of this with my own children and I still feel the pull to put my time and attention in other places.

Making it harder to divorce and remarry won't solve the problem but it is a start. Somehow decreasing the rate of pregnancy outside of marriage will be very important too. It is a growing trend in our culture and it will lead to the poverty and bad health of the children of this country. That is what all the statistics say.

But of course once you have a family intact it has to function well too. There has to be moral teaching. There has to be discipline. There has to be love and acceptance. There has to be attention. There has to be love (included twice on purpose). These things won't eliminate violent crime but it will decrease it more than tracking mental illness and taking away guns.

So how as a society do we discourage pregnancy outside of marriage while encouraging maintaining marriage? How do we encourage people to view the role of parent as important enough to invest real time and attention into it?
 
I couldn't agree more. The cultural marginalization of a strong father figure, especially, is an epidemic.

Lanza, apparently had no contact with his father who was divorced from his mom. From all accounts, his father tried his best to reach out to him...obviously it wasn't enough. This kid was seriously anti-social, and trying for a divorced father isn't enough when your son is exhibiting such symptoms.

When you become a parent, whether you're married or not, that kid freaking owns your life now. Any selfish concerns you have are now secondary to your primary responsibility to raise a well-adjusted compassionate human-being. Strong father figures are central to this, especially for boys. No matter how much love a single mother can give her son, it can't replace the lessons sons learn from their fathers about how to be men.

As the OP pointed out, we can clearly see the strong correlation between crime and violent crime to single parent households. While it's easier to see the data through the filters of socio/economic/ethic communities that have higher a higher ratio of single-parent homes...the effect cuts through that. Lanza was living in a very affluent home. His mom, who by all accounts was very caring, was receiving near $300k in alimony.

Our biggest failure is lack of personal responsibility, selfishness, and entitlement.
 
Accountable for what? And how would you suggest we hold people accountable?

Who do we hold accountable when a kid reaches 18 and can't read above a 4th grade level....Mom, Dad, the kid??? and what is this method or accountability. "Tough luck kid, now your doomed to a life of adult fast food worker".

IMO, the accountability is in making parents accountable to each other and to the progeny they spawned.

You said "I do" and then you had a child. Accountability is imposed by raising the bar for walking away from either of these commitments.
 
There is not a government policy that will fix this problem. Fathers, think of your children. Is there any government policy that would convince you to be less involved in your child's life? Probably not. So, what makes you think that a father that doesn't give two shits about raising his kids would change his mind due to some government policies. If having a little boy or girl running around and calling you dad isnt enough motivation for you to get your **** together, uncle sam means nothing.

Also, more birth control would help. I don't care who pays for it. You think its expensive? Well, its cheaper than paying people like me to raise them.
 
There's no methodology to show how different kids' lives would be if parents considering divorce stayed together. We can talk about stats all we want to show how children from single-parent homes are worse off, but there's no way to tell how poorly off they'd be if the parents stuck it out. Perhaps listening to parents argue and escalate problems all the time would have caused just as much damage.
 
Accountable to attend school and follow the rules. Accountable to follow laws once outside of school.

For parents, accountable to see the aforementioned occurs. Accountable to properly house and feed the kids. Acoountable for everything until that kid turns 18.

Really not enough time and space to list everything that they should be accountable for, but are not and have no consequences for doing so?
 
theiioftx,
I'm certainly not advocating less accountability but I'm not really getting your stance.

Accountable in what way? A law that says you have to go to school...we have that. A law that says you have to obey the law...we have that. A law that says you have to provide for your children...we have that. Are you saying that these laws need to be more stringent, more severe in penalty....???

There are several things that have lead to where we are and it is hard to argue against some of them. IMO, women no longer feel as tied to a marriage because they have more options as workers. And where they might have stuck it out before for financial reasons, they don't feel they have to now. But how do you say "let's go back" because those times had obvious negative issues for women.

Also, people see 'movie' love and confuse it for real life and will accept nothing less. And get quickly disenchanted when Mrs. Right turns out to have a few flaws. but that has been around for a while so why is the problem growing so much now?

And if you grow up in a single parent house, you are probably more apt to accept that as normal and more apt to go that route when your marriage hits a bump.

I don't know if we can fix it through laws/rules but I feel very strongly that it is the root issue.
 
I used to think "shame" was overused by my parents generation and the horror of being pregant in high school in the mid-1970s was so palpable people moved away. In the small town where I lived I even overheard a pregant preacher's daughter offer up "I knew fornication was a sin, but I didn't know what it was." But now I visited with an African American friend 10 years younger than me, absolutely thrilled that her 19-year-old daughter was kocked up by a successful married man. Grandkids, even if born to a mother without a husband, without a job, without a plan and no especially marketable skill. Wow -- I didn't even know where to start exploring common ground.
 
Maybe I'm out of touch, but I think it has roots in the fact that it takes both parents to work to earn a living. I remember commig home fom school and my Mother was there and met me at the door. Usually had a snack for me. Made sure I did my homework, chores, then play until I had to clean up for super. Then we all sat down together. Like a family. I am not advocating to get women out of the workforce. Just my take.
 
I don't think it really takes both parents working to earn a living but you do have to be willing to forego some of the trappings of "success".

I've never seen a stat that teased out what the difference in achievement/health/obesity/academics were for two parent/both working versus two parent/one working but that would be an interesting study.
 
I see you are still crying, 123! Makes me smile all the more!


cool.gif
 
I am not advocating any new laws, but enforcement of the ones we have and sensible consequences when not followed. For example, the kids in our middle school who absolutely refuse to follow the rules and are openly disobedient to the teachers and administration.

I say force the parents to come pick them up and deal with them rather than make the teachers and principals have extra work through holding them in a separate room for detention. Suspend them, make it hurt for the parent rather than just be a baby sitter and allow them to take away from the educational process for other kids. If necessary, suspend them.

Our teachers are placed in positions they should never face and it is because of parents who are not held accountable for their own children. And if you father a kid, make them pay for the kid. If they fail to pay, make them work it off for the city or county via manual labor at nights and on the weekends or face jail.
 
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