6 ms·

In my opinion, much of this comes down to blind empathy. Folks are more worried about hurting people’s feelings than about their life outcomes. They would rathe

In my opinion, much of this comes down to blind empathy. Folks are more worried about hurting people’s feelings than about their life outcomes. They would rather “lean in” and embrace the huge rise in single parent households than push back, even with the knowledge that these social changes have resulted in millions of children living in poverty who otherwise would not have! It’s absolutely bananas.

tootie 3y ago
What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like? Christian fundamentalism? Think about this from a perspective of getting positive outcomes from the actual world that exists. Divorce happens. Unplanned pregnancy happens. Family planning is being actively dismantled by the same people who are pushing for increased privatization of schooling and decreases in social safety nets. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think being overly sympathetic is infinitely preferable to merciless cynicism. Removing poverty is also much more preferable than, what?, making it harder to divorce? We could probably makes huge strides in education outcomes by adopting universal healthcare and free school lunches so single parents aren't so burdened.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Stop incentivizing single parenthood. This reestablishes social norms around staying together as they (the parents) need each other. Trying to approximate that via social engineering and creating clients of the state has failed for 50+ years.
  - tootie 3y ago
    No one has ever incentivized single parenthood. We offered protection for children born into difficult circumstances not of their making.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      There’s 0 evidence of that. What has happened is the lower class family structure has been decimated as generation after generation of mother becomes a client of the state and dads aren’t around because they aren’t actually needed. The kids have not benefited from this (there’s no metric that shows this and in fact the achievement gap has widened and prison outcomes are increased for lower class kids) and in fact are probably worse off. But, the state has created a massive bureaucracy to manage this and gobs of money to get distributed to both public and private managers of these clients. Yeah, it’s about the kids lol.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > dads aren’t around because they aren’t actually needed They're incarcerated [1]. [1] https://nij.ojp.gov/media/image/19511 https://nij.ojp.gov/media/image/19511
      - tootie 3y ago
        You're telling me there's zero evidence of my claim and yet you are going deeper down the hole of thoroughly disproven theories. Child poverty numbers in the US were the best ever recorded just prior to the pandemic and you can draw very direct lines from government anti-poverty programs as being a major contributing factor. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/record-drop-in-child-poverty.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/record-drop-i...
        nemo44x 3y ago
        All that chart shows is how they have successfully ganked more and more money from taxpayers. Where does it show outcomes have been improved or that the outcomes of kids from single mothers (those that have been "lifted out of poverty") are improving relative to traditional families? The outcomes I see VS 75 years ago is that incarceration rates are through the roof, premature death due to drug use is through the roof, and suicide is too. The fact that being "lifted out of poverty" is somehow seen as a victory when the state has aggressively promoted and incentivized single motherhood for the last 50+ years is astounding. Because that's all a dad was good for. Things. I'm not sure if it's men that allowed this to happen or if women just fell for it. But it's clearly indicative of the massive decline the West has seen.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  > What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like? A previous poster spelled it out: > by encouraging and aggrandizing stable two-parent families instead of getting schools and teachers to fill proxy parenting roles You seem to be thinking of "pushing back" as some sort of attack upon single parents, when I believe that the original spirit of the comment was more along the lines of: Let's strive to spread awareness of the myriad of benefits two parents can provide in a child's life. Let's try to move the conversation an inch or two away from 'my happiness above all else' and slightly more towards 'sometimes being part of a family requires sacrifice.' Hell, let's create a national holiday dedicated to households with two parents raising children together as a team. Let's remind people that they aren't freaks for not getting divorced as soon as the initial spark died down. That it's okay to continue trying to make things work for the benefit of their children. So often today I encounter the sentiment that "there are so many fish in the sea, and it's so easy to find them, why bother putting effort into it if it isn't perfect from the get go?" In my opinion, the prevalence of this school of thought is harmful to the propagation and stability of two parent families. American society at some point became so obsessed with "self care" that, you guessed it - they forgot about the children.
  - tootie 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
      > That's a load of fluff policy ideas that you have no possible reason to believe will be effective. Would you care to enlighten me why I have no possible reason to believe that my suggestions will be effective? Surely you know better than I.
      - Shocka1 3y ago
        I think the person you are responding to may have forgotten they are no longer posting in the Reddit tab. I've been on this site for a long time - unfortunately these vitriolic types have been bleeding over into this forum more than ever the last few years.
- slt2021 3y ago
  it all comes down to Mother's decision to sustain pregnancy in unstable relationship. Currently America incentivizes single mother childhood because all social handouts are increased if 1) mother is poor/low income 2) has dependents 3) more dependents => more handouts Things like Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP, EBT - were supposed to have social safety net - the lowest standard that any mother can rely on. It ended up that many mothers cannot rely on anything else. once you are in the hood and on government's program - there is no incentive to leave them. People can't even get a fulltime job, because that would mean disqualification from Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, EBT, etc The vicious cycle of black poverty continues... This is what keeps black people locked in the hood: 1. Black women get locked by social welfare and kids out of wedlock 2. Black males get locked by adolescent crime (culture of "background checks" with lifetime record of crime), keep themselves in the jail system forever / outside legal employment system
  - tootie 3y ago
    This reads like rational debate, but is really just pure conservative fantasy and at least a little racist. Every time you mention black people in the hood, I assume it means you have never been within 100 miles of an urban environment and have no idea what you're talking about. You act like poverty and broken families only exist with black people. Welfare Queens don't exist. Absolutely no human being in existence since the New Deal has considered having a baby to be a profit-making venture. I can submit that maybe some, but vanishingly few consider a life on government assistance to be sustainable. The reason something like Medicaid can be a trap is because private healthcare in this country is capitalist hellscape. ACA made the miniscule effort to raise the Medicaid eligibility window and half the country rejected it. Programs like Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP are intended to prevent descent in penury and/or to protect the completely innocent children. Less so the parents. Your opinion is really just the lowest form of victim blaming. These problems are almost entirely unique to America in the developed world. We have undeniable objective proof that being more generous with benefits improves everyone's lives and does not breed dependence. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487602 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487602 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welfares-corrupting-influence-on-the-poor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welf... https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/article/dispelling-myth-welfare-dependency https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/article/dispelling-myth-welfare... And for good measure here's someone who thinks dependence is genetic and all the people who think he's a terrible scientist: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/09/adam-perkins-welfare-dependency-can-be-bred-out https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/09/adam-perkins...

tootie 3y ago

What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like? Christian fundamentalism? Think about this from a perspective of getting positive outcomes from the actual world that exists. Divorce happens. Unplanned pregnancy happens. Family planning is being actively dismantled by the same people who are pushing for increased privatization of schooling and decreases in social safety nets. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think being overly sympathetic is infinitely preferable to merciless cynicism. Removing poverty is also much more preferable than, what?, making it harder to divorce? We could probably makes huge strides in education outcomes by adopting universal healthcare and free school lunches so single parents aren't so burdened.

nemo44x 3y ago
Stop incentivizing single parenthood. This reestablishes social norms around staying together as they (the parents) need each other. Trying to approximate that via social engineering and creating clients of the state has failed for 50+ years.
- tootie 3y ago
  No one has ever incentivized single parenthood. We offered protection for children born into difficult circumstances not of their making.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    There’s 0 evidence of that. What has happened is the lower class family structure has been decimated as generation after generation of mother becomes a client of the state and dads aren’t around because they aren’t actually needed. The kids have not benefited from this (there’s no metric that shows this and in fact the achievement gap has widened and prison outcomes are increased for lower class kids) and in fact are probably worse off. But, the state has created a massive bureaucracy to manage this and gobs of money to get distributed to both public and private managers of these clients. Yeah, it’s about the kids lol.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > dads aren’t around because they aren’t actually needed They're incarcerated [1]. [1] https://nij.ojp.gov/media/image/19511 https://nij.ojp.gov/media/image/19511
    - tootie 3y ago
      You're telling me there's zero evidence of my claim and yet you are going deeper down the hole of thoroughly disproven theories. Child poverty numbers in the US were the best ever recorded just prior to the pandemic and you can draw very direct lines from government anti-poverty programs as being a major contributing factor. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/record-drop-in-child-poverty.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/record-drop-i...
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        All that chart shows is how they have successfully ganked more and more money from taxpayers. Where does it show outcomes have been improved or that the outcomes of kids from single mothers (those that have been "lifted out of poverty") are improving relative to traditional families? The outcomes I see VS 75 years ago is that incarceration rates are through the roof, premature death due to drug use is through the roof, and suicide is too. The fact that being "lifted out of poverty" is somehow seen as a victory when the state has aggressively promoted and incentivized single motherhood for the last 50+ years is astounding. Because that's all a dad was good for. Things. I'm not sure if it's men that allowed this to happen or if women just fell for it. But it's clearly indicative of the massive decline the West has seen.
dumpsterdiver 3y ago
> What the hell does pushing back on single-family homes look like? A previous poster spelled it out: > by encouraging and aggrandizing stable two-parent families instead of getting schools and teachers to fill proxy parenting roles You seem to be thinking of "pushing back" as some sort of attack upon single parents, when I believe that the original spirit of the comment was more along the lines of: Let's strive to spread awareness of the myriad of benefits two parents can provide in a child's life. Let's try to move the conversation an inch or two away from 'my happiness above all else' and slightly more towards 'sometimes being part of a family requires sacrifice.' Hell, let's create a national holiday dedicated to households with two parents raising children together as a team. Let's remind people that they aren't freaks for not getting divorced as soon as the initial spark died down. That it's okay to continue trying to make things work for the benefit of their children. So often today I encounter the sentiment that "there are so many fish in the sea, and it's so easy to find them, why bother putting effort into it if it isn't perfect from the get go?" In my opinion, the prevalence of this school of thought is harmful to the propagation and stability of two parent families. American society at some point became so obsessed with "self care" that, you guessed it - they forgot about the children.
- tootie 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    > That's a load of fluff policy ideas that you have no possible reason to believe will be effective. Would you care to enlighten me why I have no possible reason to believe that my suggestions will be effective? Surely you know better than I.
    - Shocka1 3y ago
      I think the person you are responding to may have forgotten they are no longer posting in the Reddit tab. I've been on this site for a long time - unfortunately these vitriolic types have been bleeding over into this forum more than ever the last few years.
slt2021 3y ago
it all comes down to Mother's decision to sustain pregnancy in unstable relationship. Currently America incentivizes single mother childhood because all social handouts are increased if 1) mother is poor/low income 2) has dependents 3) more dependents => more handouts Things like Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP, EBT - were supposed to have social safety net - the lowest standard that any mother can rely on. It ended up that many mothers cannot rely on anything else. once you are in the hood and on government's program - there is no incentive to leave them. People can't even get a fulltime job, because that would mean disqualification from Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, EBT, etc The vicious cycle of black poverty continues... This is what keeps black people locked in the hood: 1. Black women get locked by social welfare and kids out of wedlock 2. Black males get locked by adolescent crime (culture of "background checks" with lifetime record of crime), keep themselves in the jail system forever / outside legal employment system
- tootie 3y ago
  This reads like rational debate, but is really just pure conservative fantasy and at least a little racist. Every time you mention black people in the hood, I assume it means you have never been within 100 miles of an urban environment and have no idea what you're talking about. You act like poverty and broken families only exist with black people. Welfare Queens don't exist. Absolutely no human being in existence since the New Deal has considered having a baby to be a profit-making venture. I can submit that maybe some, but vanishingly few consider a life on government assistance to be sustainable. The reason something like Medicaid can be a trap is because private healthcare in this country is capitalist hellscape. ACA made the miniscule effort to raise the Medicaid eligibility window and half the country rejected it. Programs like Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP are intended to prevent descent in penury and/or to protect the completely innocent children. Less so the parents. Your opinion is really just the lowest form of victim blaming. These problems are almost entirely unique to America in the developed world. We have undeniable objective proof that being more generous with benefits improves everyone's lives and does not breed dependence. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487602 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487602 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welfares-corrupting-influence-on-the-poor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welf... https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/article/dispelling-myth-welfare-dependency https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/article/dispelling-myth-welfare... And for good measure here's someone who thinks dependence is genetic and all the people who think he's a terrible scientist: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/09/adam-perkins-welfare-dependency-can-be-bred-out https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/09/adam-perkins...