3 ms·

> The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them to

> The downside is that when they do have kids outside of marriage it's a worse situation as the families are less stable without the institution holding them together. There's an unstated major premise here - that any "two parents cohabitating" family, even an unhappy one, is better than a single-parent or separated-parents family. Is that true?

ThrowawayR2 8y ago
Why not just Google for it? According to this study, an unhappy 2-parent family has about the same negative effect as being in a single parent family. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/ Of course, other studies may differ so this shouldn't be taken as conclusive.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  More generally, I don't like to take any observational studies based on cohort data like this to be useful for attributing any sort of causes. Whenever you've got people self-selecting into treatment populations, you need to be extremely careful about causality. For example, let's say that you've got a positive association between delinquent behavior and divorce, and that it seems to be stronger when the custodial parent stays single than it is when the custodial parent remarries. One story is that an unstable family situation causes delinquent behavior. Another equally plausible one is that difficult-to-rear kids stress their parents out, which causes them to divorce, and makes it harder for them to remarry. It is possible to at least poke at these kinds of tangles, but you've got to be extremely diligent and careful about it. More careful than I think is possible in the "giant scattershot regression model" genre of observational study. When I asked, "Is that true?", I meant it as a rhetorical question. I doubt anyone actually knows the answer. There's an idea, which I got from Green & Gerber's textbook on field experimentation, that some questions are just fundamentally unanswerable.
alistairSH 8y ago
I don't actually have an answer, but I wonder if it's something in the middle... No, two unhappy parents cohabitation (married or not) is not ideal. No, a single parent is not ideal. But, a single parent who bounces in and out of relationships every few years is worse than either of the above. That instability is worse for the child than the other options. Just a thought, nothing to back it up one way or the other.
Nasrudith 8y ago
I somehow recall that was already proven as not worse in studies of children from divorced households (might have been largely equitable custody) vs nondiviorced that the answer is no even without extremes like domestic violence being involved. There are extra expenses and difficulties involved in separate situations technically but the alternative may be worse. Two separate remarried families wouldn't even suffer from the resource loss and lack of support structure assuming both have healthier relationships. The rhetoric seems to be spread more from a mix of traditionalism and insecurity about being dumped or stuck in an unhappy marriage than solid facts.

ThrowawayR2 8y ago

Why not just Google for it? According to this study, an unhappy 2-parent family has about the same negative effect as being in a single parent family. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/ Of course, other studies may differ so this shouldn't be taken as conclusive.

bunderbunder 8y ago
More generally, I don't like to take any observational studies based on cohort data like this to be useful for attributing any sort of causes. Whenever you've got people self-selecting into treatment populations, you need to be extremely careful about causality. For example, let's say that you've got a positive association between delinquent behavior and divorce, and that it seems to be stronger when the custodial parent stays single than it is when the custodial parent remarries. One story is that an unstable family situation causes delinquent behavior. Another equally plausible one is that difficult-to-rear kids stress their parents out, which causes them to divorce, and makes it harder for them to remarry. It is possible to at least poke at these kinds of tangles, but you've got to be extremely diligent and careful about it. More careful than I think is possible in the "giant scattershot regression model" genre of observational study. When I asked, "Is that true?", I meant it as a rhetorical question. I doubt anyone actually knows the answer. There's an idea, which I got from Green & Gerber's textbook on field experimentation, that some questions are just fundamentally unanswerable.

alistairSH 8y ago

I don't actually have an answer, but I wonder if it's something in the middle... No, two unhappy parents cohabitation (married or not) is not ideal. No, a single parent is not ideal. But, a single parent who bounces in and out of relationships every few years is worse than either of the above. That instability is worse for the child than the other options. Just a thought, nothing to back it up one way or the other.

Nasrudith 8y ago

I somehow recall that was already proven as not worse in studies of children from divorced households (might have been largely equitable custody) vs nondiviorced that the answer is no even without extremes like domestic violence being involved. There are extra expenses and difficulties involved in separate situations technically but the alternative may be worse. Two separate remarried families wouldn't even suffer from the resource loss and lack of support structure assuming both have healthier relationships. The rhetoric seems to be spread more from a mix of traditionalism and insecurity about being dumped or stuck in an unhappy marriage than solid facts.