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I think there are a significant number of liberals, and not just crazy people on the internet, who think this. A data point: a while ago, I fell down a rabbit h

I think there are a significant number of liberals, and not just crazy people on the internet, who think this. A data point: a while ago, I fell down a rabbit hole arguing with social justice people online who maintained that the notion that fatherlessness in the black community was problematic was a "myth." They justified their claim on the basis of a US government report which indicated that single black fathers spent more time with their kids as single white fathers. Seeing as this was a clear instance of Simpson's paradox (since non-single fathers of all races spend more time with their children than single fathers of all races, and there are more black single fathers than non-black single fathers), I assumed they'd just misappropriated unbiased research. But digging into the surveys they cited, I found that the researchers themselves had misrepresented their research in press outreach, in their official capacity as researchers. It was such an obvious case of statistical malpractice, I was shocked to see highly credentialed, well-published researchers engaging in it. What I have taken from this incident is that there are a substantial number of activists who have become so invested in social justice for African Americans that they will automatically discount any theory which they believe might place the locus of responsibility for change within the black community, even if the evidence for that theory is very strong.

tptacek 5y ago
I wrote this terribly, let me try again. I believe children are better off being raised by two parents than by one. I might also bristle in a discussion about crime and poverty if someone parachuted in and said that the real problem was single-parent families. I'd perceive it as an instance of the just-world fallacy. Things are much more complicated than that. If I tried to express that by arguing that two parents were not in fact valuable for children, I'd be overplaying my hand. I'd be wrong. But I'd be wrong in the service of pushing back against the just-world fallacy, not in valorizing single parenthood. I think you'd have a hard time finding a lot of liberals who, outside of charged discussions about crime and poverty, would argue that children don't benefit from having two parents in their lives. For posterity, the previous iteration: It's not hard to find situations where people will push back on two-parent households, because many of these discussions boil down (or are perceived to boiling down) to a just-world argument in which the fact that, holding income equal, a randomly selected Black family will live in a neighborhood with people making many tens of thousands of dollars left than a white family at the same income level. They're not right when they make those arguments; they're overstating their claim, fathers are important, two parents are beneficial, &c. But that's not really what they're arguing. And then there are people who believe, I don't know, fathers are somehow malign? A single parent is better than two? But that's a fringe belief.

tptacek 5y ago

I wrote this terribly, let me try again. I believe children are better off being raised by two parents than by one. I might also bristle in a discussion about crime and poverty if someone parachuted in and said that the real problem was single-parent families. I'd perceive it as an instance of the just-world fallacy. Things are much more complicated than that. If I tried to express that by arguing that two parents were not in fact valuable for children, I'd be overplaying my hand. I'd be wrong. But I'd be wrong in the service of pushing back against the just-world fallacy, not in valorizing single parenthood. I think you'd have a hard time finding a lot of liberals who, outside of charged discussions about crime and poverty, would argue that children don't benefit from having two parents in their lives. For posterity, the previous iteration: It's not hard to find situations where people will push back on two-parent households, because many of these discussions boil down (or are perceived to boiling down) to a just-world argument in which the fact that, holding income equal, a randomly selected Black family will live in a neighborhood with people making many tens of thousands of dollars left than a white family at the same income level. They're not right when they make those arguments; they're overstating their claim, fathers are important, two parents are beneficial, &c. But that's not really what they're arguing. And then there are people who believe, I don't know, fathers are somehow malign? A single parent is better than two? But that's a fringe belief.