“The Two-Parent Privilege” - a new book by Professor Melissa Kearney - advances 10 key claims. Let’s assess! Single motherhood is rising, primarily amongst women with less education. Children of single mothers (especially sons) have lower social mobility. They are more likely to remain in poverty and less likely to graduate from college.
I haven't read the book yet (though this review reminded me that I plan to order it, and should). So maybe I will change my mind one way or another after reading it.
But my initial impression seems to be that you're *both* right. Meaning: you are absolutely correct that low trust is a major impediment to forming stable relationships. But let's unpack that further. Why is there such low trust? The obvious answer is, too many young men show themselves to be untrustworthy.
Take that back one more step. Why are they untrustworthy? I suspect it is in no small part due to the lack of positive male role models, and the overwhelming presence of *bad* role models, who encourage caddish behavior. Whether these are in the media they consume, or in their lives, there are a lot of them.
Small children don't start out being reliable and responsible, someone has to teach them to be. Someone has to override malign influences from the outside and maybe even the inside. Government can't do this. Mothers can do this when their sons are little, but young men going through puberty and dealing with the flood of testosterone it unleashes can be very difficult for their mothers to understand and relate to. Grandfathers are elderly, and weak. Uncles and teachers are not there all the time, and don't love these boys as unconditionally as a parent would. Who is left?
It has to be their fathers. Who else can it be? This is where I think I agree with Kearney -- the norm has to be that dad sticks around and marries his kids' mother, and goes through the day-to-day with her. That he models responsibility, and love. And that the culture shames and ostracizes men who parent from a distance (or not at all), rather than just shrugging off "deadbeat dads" and garnishing their paychecks.
It’s been a while but I read PROMISES I CAN KEEP, a study of impoverished single mothers in Philly. The problem there wasn’t that the men didn’t have good jobs (though they didn’t), it was that they were embroiled in drugs, crime, violence and philandering. IIRC While women could gain status with their peers by caring for their children, men did not (their friends might taunt them as “whipped” etc).
Here is a question I ponder constantly as a single mom: why isn’t being a deadbeat dad or a runaway dad a serious crime? If I abandoned my child now, I’d be arrested and charged with neglect, yet men do it all the time with no repercussions whatsoever.
Every single mom I know Irl is single because of a deadbeat man.
We need to criminalize child abandonment for men and inflict stiff penalties with jail time or at least allow women to sue them for emotional damages. Right now, you can’t even sue a man for emotional damages if he abandons you and the kids.
I’m saying men need to take care of their kids. If they abandon their kids, they should be punished. Abandonment means not seeing, not watching, not providing. Obviously if the man is a drug addict or an abuser, this doesn’t apply, but in those cases the man should be getting help with the goal of becoming a parent again.
If a woman doesn't want a man to live with her (who isn't abusive), and he leaves because of that, surely it is the woman who has abandoned the family not the man.
The man may be called deadbeat, but isn't it really the mother who's the deadbeat here by choosing not to keep her family together?
Do not conflate abandoning the family with abandoning the children. Those are two different things. Both parents should be punished if they abandon their children. No parent should be punished for abandoning the relationship. Co-parenting is the in-between.
The other view is that whichever parent abandons the relationship should be punished by losing all the fruits of the relationship: the children, the house and any other wealth.
Often co-parenting is not economically possible: it compromises total earnings at a time that total costs have risen. Even when it is, it depends on men being able to mirror and duplicate the 'mothering' role in the family, perhaps through their new wife. The expectation that all men can do the mothering effectively or find the reward in it that a mother typically does is misplaced. There's a reason why men don't have jobs in nurseries and kindergartens. This is a cross-cultural, cross-species universal.
Men are not women and women are not men. How are you going to motivate a man to act like another woman with the children after you break up? Too often women have never asked themselves this question before they make the split. At least you're offering something when you threaten them with gaol, but would you really trust your children with a man who was only there because of that?
I am p sure most women don’t find a huge amount of fulfillment in changing dirty diapers, scraping applesauce off the ceiling, and having babies spit up all over them for the fifth time that day either. Yet they do it. Men may not like caring for random children in general (neither do a lot of women btw) but they have a responsibility to care for their own children.
As someone who raised 2 daughters by myself for 15+yrs, I can speak to this.
There is a legal question (child support) which is now settled law across the US with financial, civil, sometimes criminal penalties at both state & very rarely federal levels (extreme, rare cases)
Then there is the your question of abandonment, enforcement of parental codes & behavior.
The legal system (Family Court), social system (special staff, psych, guardian ad litem, social workers etc..) doesn't have the capacity to process much less enforce the 10s millions of cases this would generate.
Most parents either have shared 50/50 to 65/35 custodial rights with a access timetable that can move based on work, lifestyle, age of child, as children grow their consent etc..
or one party gives up partial or full parental rights, which Family Court then process on a weighted basis calculation to determine child support, spousal or partnership benefits or special contracts that are established by both parties & custodial rights.
Family court is truly built for the welfare of the child(s), not the needs of the parent given the child is not of legal age to establish their own rights by themselves.
Family court together with Criminal court focus only on extreme cases of child neglect, violence etc.. maybe 100,000 cases a year US wide..
The best the system we have can do is dissolution of marriage or partnership contract, then spousal restitution.
if both parties were not married or in a partnership contract, then the court establishes parental rights & child support until adulthood or special agreements to the age of 19-21 that both parties agree to.
Thats really as far as the system can go. And given the collapsing marriage rate in the US, already collapsed in Western Europe. The Child support contract is really all thats left long term.
Unless we consider a radical financial solution (early access to social security benefits) which cannot occur unless a parent is disabled or dead or extremely rare finding in State, Federal Admin court.
There really is nothing more the family court system can do.
Of course the experience is horrible for anyone who is going through this. My sympathy is with you and anyone else who is experiencing it.
Also, when you state child abandonment that is a specific violation of state code vs. state laws on child abandonment and desertion which vary significantly.
Some states combine all acts under one crime, while others might have separate laws and penalties for one or more of these acts.
The issue is Family Law is a state affair in a federalized system of devolution as the United States has.
It’s like the first parent who runs away is fine, no crime, but if the second parent runs away, it’s a crime. This isn’t right. No one should be able to run away.
I haven't read the book yet (though this review reminded me that I plan to order it, and should). So maybe I will change my mind one way or another after reading it.
But my initial impression seems to be that you're *both* right. Meaning: you are absolutely correct that low trust is a major impediment to forming stable relationships. But let's unpack that further. Why is there such low trust? The obvious answer is, too many young men show themselves to be untrustworthy.
Take that back one more step. Why are they untrustworthy? I suspect it is in no small part due to the lack of positive male role models, and the overwhelming presence of *bad* role models, who encourage caddish behavior. Whether these are in the media they consume, or in their lives, there are a lot of them.
Small children don't start out being reliable and responsible, someone has to teach them to be. Someone has to override malign influences from the outside and maybe even the inside. Government can't do this. Mothers can do this when their sons are little, but young men going through puberty and dealing with the flood of testosterone it unleashes can be very difficult for their mothers to understand and relate to. Grandfathers are elderly, and weak. Uncles and teachers are not there all the time, and don't love these boys as unconditionally as a parent would. Who is left?
It has to be their fathers. Who else can it be? This is where I think I agree with Kearney -- the norm has to be that dad sticks around and marries his kids' mother, and goes through the day-to-day with her. That he models responsibility, and love. And that the culture shames and ostracizes men who parent from a distance (or not at all), rather than just shrugging off "deadbeat dads" and garnishing their paychecks.
Very nice, as always
It’s been a while but I read PROMISES I CAN KEEP, a study of impoverished single mothers in Philly. The problem there wasn’t that the men didn’t have good jobs (though they didn’t), it was that they were embroiled in drugs, crime, violence and philandering. IIRC While women could gain status with their peers by caring for their children, men did not (their friends might taunt them as “whipped” etc).
Great summary.. look forward to reading it when it comes out next week.
I think being aware of the variability of the data by geodemo's & demos of marriage
https://www.axios.com/2022/09/07/approval-of-interracial-marriage-america
https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/juteau-marriage-rate-US-geographic-variation-2021-fp-22-25.html
Also, interesting data, patterns of divorce..
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/divorce-statistics/
Here is a question I ponder constantly as a single mom: why isn’t being a deadbeat dad or a runaway dad a serious crime? If I abandoned my child now, I’d be arrested and charged with neglect, yet men do it all the time with no repercussions whatsoever.
Every single mom I know Irl is single because of a deadbeat man.
We need to criminalize child abandonment for men and inflict stiff penalties with jail time or at least allow women to sue them for emotional damages. Right now, you can’t even sue a man for emotional damages if he abandons you and the kids.
Are you saying that neither man nor woman should end their relationship with each other if they have children? (The old system.)
Or are you expecting men to stay invested in a woman's family after the relationship with the mother has broken down?
I’m saying men need to take care of their kids. If they abandon their kids, they should be punished. Abandonment means not seeing, not watching, not providing. Obviously if the man is a drug addict or an abuser, this doesn’t apply, but in those cases the man should be getting help with the goal of becoming a parent again.
If a woman doesn't want a man to live with her (who isn't abusive), and he leaves because of that, surely it is the woman who has abandoned the family not the man.
The man may be called deadbeat, but isn't it really the mother who's the deadbeat here by choosing not to keep her family together?
Do not conflate abandoning the family with abandoning the children. Those are two different things. Both parents should be punished if they abandon their children. No parent should be punished for abandoning the relationship. Co-parenting is the in-between.
The other view is that whichever parent abandons the relationship should be punished by losing all the fruits of the relationship: the children, the house and any other wealth.
Often co-parenting is not economically possible: it compromises total earnings at a time that total costs have risen. Even when it is, it depends on men being able to mirror and duplicate the 'mothering' role in the family, perhaps through their new wife. The expectation that all men can do the mothering effectively or find the reward in it that a mother typically does is misplaced. There's a reason why men don't have jobs in nurseries and kindergartens. This is a cross-cultural, cross-species universal.
Men are not women and women are not men. How are you going to motivate a man to act like another woman with the children after you break up? Too often women have never asked themselves this question before they make the split. At least you're offering something when you threaten them with gaol, but would you really trust your children with a man who was only there because of that?
I am p sure most women don’t find a huge amount of fulfillment in changing dirty diapers, scraping applesauce off the ceiling, and having babies spit up all over them for the fifth time that day either. Yet they do it. Men may not like caring for random children in general (neither do a lot of women btw) but they have a responsibility to care for their own children.
Charlotte,
As someone who raised 2 daughters by myself for 15+yrs, I can speak to this.
There is a legal question (child support) which is now settled law across the US with financial, civil, sometimes criminal penalties at both state & very rarely federal levels (extreme, rare cases)
Then there is the your question of abandonment, enforcement of parental codes & behavior.
The legal system (Family Court), social system (special staff, psych, guardian ad litem, social workers etc..) doesn't have the capacity to process much less enforce the 10s millions of cases this would generate.
Most parents either have shared 50/50 to 65/35 custodial rights with a access timetable that can move based on work, lifestyle, age of child, as children grow their consent etc..
or one party gives up partial or full parental rights, which Family Court then process on a weighted basis calculation to determine child support, spousal or partnership benefits or special contracts that are established by both parties & custodial rights.
Family court is truly built for the welfare of the child(s), not the needs of the parent given the child is not of legal age to establish their own rights by themselves.
Family court together with Criminal court focus only on extreme cases of child neglect, violence etc.. maybe 100,000 cases a year US wide..
The best the system we have can do is dissolution of marriage or partnership contract, then spousal restitution.
if both parties were not married or in a partnership contract, then the court establishes parental rights & child support until adulthood or special agreements to the age of 19-21 that both parties agree to.
Thats really as far as the system can go. And given the collapsing marriage rate in the US, already collapsed in Western Europe. The Child support contract is really all thats left long term.
Unless we consider a radical financial solution (early access to social security benefits) which cannot occur unless a parent is disabled or dead or extremely rare finding in State, Federal Admin court.
There really is nothing more the family court system can do.
We don’t have the capacity to prosecute child abandonment, yet we have the capacity to build atomic bombs... smh. Humans really deserve what we get.
Charlotte,
Of course the experience is horrible for anyone who is going through this. My sympathy is with you and anyone else who is experiencing it.
Also, when you state child abandonment that is a specific violation of state code vs. state laws on child abandonment and desertion which vary significantly.
Some states combine all acts under one crime, while others might have separate laws and penalties for one or more of these acts.
The issue is Family Law is a state affair in a federalized system of devolution as the United States has.
https://www.findlaw.com/state/family-laws.html
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_issues_for_consumers/books_family_home/
Thanks for all the info. I’ve given up on justice, but I hope the world improves for future generations.
It’s like the first parent who runs away is fine, no crime, but if the second parent runs away, it’s a crime. This isn’t right. No one should be able to run away.