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Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >

Wow, this article isn't scientific at all, in the least. >As mentioned in the previous essay, single parenthood correlates with a number of social maladies. >The best environment for these children is a home with their biological mother and father. Marriage is statistically the best way to ensure these environments for children. Healthy marriages create stable families. Stable families create strong and safe communities. Strong communities create prosperous cities. Prosperous cities create successful nations. Successful nations advance humanity. Citations needed. There's no proof of any of this, it's just the social norm we've had for centuries. "We've always done it this way" isn't proof, and the way our society was before ~50 years ago was actively bad and oppressive for many members of society, particularly women who really were second-class citizens, unable to vote or hold most jobs. Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. Don't ask me for citations; you'll just have to take my word for it, just as the author of this article did.

debacle 9y ago
> Citations needed There are studies that show that single parent homes correlate with certain social outcomes. The next dozen leaps, however, are way out there or patently false.
- Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago
  Yes, It is all confounded by the heritability of all mental traits. I suspect the offspring of single women who use sperm donors (who are screened heavily for proxies of genetic quality, such height, facial symmetry and educational attainment) are more successful then the offspring of married couples on average. I don't know if anyone has looked into it though.
  - refurb 9y ago
    I think you're putting too much emphasis in heritability rather than the impact of childhood on mental states.
    - honestoHeminway 9y ago
      I have yet to see a boy who is not mangled by his single mother into some early adolescence by oversharing of information.
mercutio2 9y ago
I’m with you on almost everything, I happen to agree communal and/or polyamorous parenting is great (no sarcasm, kids raised this way are great); but when do you think universal female suffrage happened in the U.S.? The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920. Are you implying there was some kind of poll tax or equivalent suppression of the female vote until the 60s?
- Djvacto 9y ago
  http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/... I think ~50 years ago referred more to this type of thing, while stuff like voting rights was just included since it's relevant to the struggle as a whole.
  - mercutio2 9y ago
    Agreed that 1960s housewives didn’t have it easy. But they most certainly could, and did, vote.
    - Djvacto 9y ago
      What I'm saying is, I doubt he thinks they couldn't vote in the '60s. I think he just used ~50 years ago earlier in his comment and then later on was mentioning some of the other struggles, like voting.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  Women couldn't hold most jobs until the 1960s or later; they could only be nurses, teachers, secretaries, etc. Suffrage was earlier, but just like black people (men) who got freedom and suffrage way back in the mid-1800s, they still weren't full members of society until significantly later.
Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago
I'm almost certain widespread polyamory will degenerate into polygamy approximately instantaneously.
- mercutio2 9y ago
  Your “widespread” modifier gets you off the hook, who can say how social contract adjustments play out when they go mainstream. But the polyamory community doesn’t look anything like polygamy. Like, not at all. More like polyandry, but most polyamorous folks I know have a single primary (and that primary lasts way longer than the average married couple, in my personal experience) and the rest of the business sees women finding multiple partners much more easily than men. But it’s a complicated and open scene, YMMV.
- netrap 9y ago
  A Brave New World!
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    BNW had a stable polyamory, that was the appeal. And a wonder drug to alleviate the few residual atavisms to boot. But close enough.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  Most modern polyamorous relations end up with the women having more partners than the men. Women have a far easier time finding sex partners than men do, on average.
  - remarkEon 9y ago
    But this is only a recent trend because of the advent of birth control technologies, which shifted the balance of risk in having multiple partners. Prior to this, high status males had consistently high partners than females.
    - gorkonsine 9y ago
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. As an introvert, this is my idea of hell. I have one wife, one child, and two cats - and that's about the maximum I can currently handle, emotionally and... attentively? Adding more significant relationships in my life would be really, really, really taxing.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  It's simple: with a polyamorous relationship, your wife would have another boyfriend/husband to spend her time with, and also to help take care of the kid, leaving you alone more of the time with the cats. There's no requirement in polyamory for everyone involved to have multiple partners.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I think polyamory might work fine for some, but giving it out as a blanket suggestion is asinine. My wife's an introvert, too - she doesn't want another husband, either. Other people to take care of the kid would be fantastic, but traditionally that's done by the extended family - grandparents, siblings, etc.
    - gorkonsine 9y ago
      Do you two not have any other friends? You don't even have to have sex with other people: add up all the time you spend taking care of kids without any help from extended family. Now imagine you join up with another couple just like you that you're great friends with, and you move in together into a bigger house, each couple with their own master bedroom. Now you have 4 adults taking care of all the kids, as well as doing household chores. Is it not obvious how this is useful? As for extended family, what if they suck? A lot of people don't get along with their extended family. Why be stuck with your blood relatives when you can choose the people you live with instead?
      - 9y ago
alva 9y ago
> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings If you want to accelerate western societal collapse, this is the way to do it. What would likely occur is the richest will have a large number of wives and children causing huge amount of tension and unrest in a society. The problems this causes are likely why monogamy is such a strong factor in the major world religions. Societies in which there is a massive imbalance in the opportunity to have offspring is ripe for turmoil.
remarkEon 9y ago
>Citations needed. There's no proof of any of this, it's just the social norm we've had for centuries. More like millennia. You should ask yourself why/how the concept emerged independently across many cultures and civilizations what that signals for its usefulness in building social structures that are able to respond to negative external stimuli (war, disease, environmental catastrophe etc). >Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. Don't ask me for citations; you'll just have to take my word for it, just as the author of this article did. Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, since the opposite is true.

debacle 9y ago

> Citations needed There are studies that show that single parent homes correlate with certain social outcomes. The next dozen leaps, however, are way out there or patently false.

Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago
Yes, It is all confounded by the heritability of all mental traits. I suspect the offspring of single women who use sperm donors (who are screened heavily for proxies of genetic quality, such height, facial symmetry and educational attainment) are more successful then the offspring of married couples on average. I don't know if anyone has looked into it though.
- refurb 9y ago
  I think you're putting too much emphasis in heritability rather than the impact of childhood on mental states.
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    I have yet to see a boy who is not mangled by his single mother into some early adolescence by oversharing of information.

mercutio2 9y ago

I’m with you on almost everything, I happen to agree communal and/or polyamorous parenting is great (no sarcasm, kids raised this way are great); but when do you think universal female suffrage happened in the U.S.? The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920. Are you implying there was some kind of poll tax or equivalent suppression of the female vote until the 60s?

Djvacto 9y ago
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/... I think ~50 years ago referred more to this type of thing, while stuff like voting rights was just included since it's relevant to the struggle as a whole.
- mercutio2 9y ago
  Agreed that 1960s housewives didn’t have it easy. But they most certainly could, and did, vote.
  - Djvacto 9y ago
    What I'm saying is, I doubt he thinks they couldn't vote in the '60s. I think he just used ~50 years ago earlier in his comment and then later on was mentioning some of the other struggles, like voting.
gorkonsine 9y ago
Women couldn't hold most jobs until the 1960s or later; they could only be nurses, teachers, secretaries, etc. Suffrage was earlier, but just like black people (men) who got freedom and suffrage way back in the mid-1800s, they still weren't full members of society until significantly later.

Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago

I'm almost certain widespread polyamory will degenerate into polygamy approximately instantaneously.

mercutio2 9y ago
Your “widespread” modifier gets you off the hook, who can say how social contract adjustments play out when they go mainstream. But the polyamory community doesn’t look anything like polygamy. Like, not at all. More like polyandry, but most polyamorous folks I know have a single primary (and that primary lasts way longer than the average married couple, in my personal experience) and the rest of the business sees women finding multiple partners much more easily than men. But it’s a complicated and open scene, YMMV.
netrap 9y ago
A Brave New World!
- antisthenes 9y ago
  BNW had a stable polyamory, that was the appeal. And a wonder drug to alleviate the few residual atavisms to boot. But close enough.
gorkonsine 9y ago
Most modern polyamorous relations end up with the women having more partners than the men. Women have a far easier time finding sex partners than men do, on average.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  But this is only a recent trend because of the advent of birth control technologies, which shifted the balance of risk in having multiple partners. Prior to this, high status males had consistently high partners than females.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. As an introvert, this is my idea of hell. I have one wife, one child, and two cats - and that's about the maximum I can currently handle, emotionally and... attentively? Adding more significant relationships in my life would be really, really, really taxing.

gorkonsine 9y ago
It's simple: with a polyamorous relationship, your wife would have another boyfriend/husband to spend her time with, and also to help take care of the kid, leaving you alone more of the time with the cats. There's no requirement in polyamory for everyone involved to have multiple partners.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I think polyamory might work fine for some, but giving it out as a blanket suggestion is asinine. My wife's an introvert, too - she doesn't want another husband, either. Other people to take care of the kid would be fantastic, but traditionally that's done by the extended family - grandparents, siblings, etc.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    Do you two not have any other friends? You don't even have to have sex with other people: add up all the time you spend taking care of kids without any help from extended family. Now imagine you join up with another couple just like you that you're great friends with, and you move in together into a bigger house, each couple with their own master bedroom. Now you have 4 adults taking care of all the kids, as well as doing household chores. Is it not obvious how this is useful? As for extended family, what if they suck? A lot of people don't get along with their extended family. Why be stuck with your blood relatives when you can choose the people you live with instead?
    - 9y ago

alva 9y ago

> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings If you want to accelerate western societal collapse, this is the way to do it. What would likely occur is the richest will have a large number of wives and children causing huge amount of tension and unrest in a society. The problems this causes are likely why monogamy is such a strong factor in the major world religions. Societies in which there is a massive imbalance in the opportunity to have offspring is ripe for turmoil.

remarkEon 9y ago

>Citations needed. There's no proof of any of this, it's just the social norm we've had for centuries. More like millennia. You should ask yourself why/how the concept emerged independently across many cultures and civilizations what that signals for its usefulness in building social structures that are able to respond to negative external stimuli (war, disease, environmental catastrophe etc). >Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. Don't ask me for citations; you'll just have to take my word for it, just as the author of this article did. Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, since the opposite is true.