Parent statement: >> And we are back to gender essentialism, where moms are not empowered to provide structure making them dependent on father in work for it.

Parent statement: >> And we are back to gender essentialism, where moms are not empowered to provide structure making them dependent on father in work for it. And dad has a role of threat that comes home after being absent whole day just to punish you for mistakes during the day. Response: > Is having a dad and a mom so bad that you cannot accept those positive outcomes ( and I can easily grant there are bad ones as well )? Statement: << This is beyond uncharitable interpretation and in the realm of "completely twisting what I said". Having both parents does not imply what you wrote at all. Response: Is it uncharitable though? I maintain it is a valid interpretation. You explicitly said gender essentialism[1] explains why mothers can't seem to get the same results ( "they are not empowered enough" without actually explaining what would that entail I might add so you may want to expand on it a little ) and I simply followed that thread out of sheer curiosity of your frame of mind and responded with a clear counter which suggests that positive outcomes seem to be common to family units that are not, lets call them 'unstructured'. << "completely twisting what I said" It is possible I am misreading you. What are you saying, exactly? << Having both parents does not imply what you wrote at all. How so? It seems the few studies that were done support that notion[2]. Granted, it is not enough to simply have two parents. They need to be engaged, stable, have decent income so there are other factors at play, but I will boil it down to something really simple. Raising valuable members of society is hard work ; having kids is not that hard in abstract. It is doubly as hard for one person, because there is no one to share that burden with. There is also some empirical data suggesting otherwise including amount of parents, who stay in otherwise 'bad' unions for the sake of the children suggesting rather instinctive understanding that it is not exactly a 'one man job'. Now, that is being countered by individualistic nature of US, but that is a separate conversation in itself. In either case, you may want to expand on your thought process to convince me. Right now I don't really see an argument. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_essentialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_essentialism [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4553416/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4553416/ late edit: << But, what cultures that improve things have in common is that they are not happy about stuff they want to improve. I somehow managed to miss it. Can you elaborate a little further on this? I am genuinely curious about examples of such cultures.