Office of National Statistics – look for ‘Social Trends’

Good stuff!

it would need to accept Lilliput’s terrible premise that one parent bad, two parents good.

Does that mean 8 parents even better?

There’s a case to be made that the answer to your rhetorical question is ‘yes’. As JohnB points out at 64, the post-industrial, post-Puritan nuclear family is anthropologically aberrant and even in this country is very recent. I grew up among people whose typical family unit included between three and six parents in the sense we use the word. The establishment a child grew up in would typically also contain at least a couple of embryonic families as the children of the core partnership started to marry but still lived at home. A typical family home would have had between 30 and 50 people in it.

Even if you think purely from a western, and common-sense, perspective there are advantages to multi-parent families; think about only being on pee-watch for the little kids one night a week instead of every night of the week. Imagine being able to get evenings in private with your partner because other parents are looking after the kids that evening. Financial advantages of pooling salaries and buying supplies in bulk, significant childhood socialisation advantages…

What I don’t believe is that there’s anything wrong with single-parent families. What I do believe is that it’s a hell of a lot of work for one person to take on, and that sharing the load has merits too.

Limited scope of understanding and thought.

Do you mean would I have preferred not to have suffered through the daily shouted arguments, the permanent poisonous atmosphere, the disruption and emotional trauma of two people trapped in a loveless marriage? Yes please. Divorce would have been better for everyone.

>>”And why since the 1960s has the family group stopped “meeting societies needs” when it met them adequately for centuries before that ?”

It didn’t. Professor Ronald Hutton of the Uni of Bristol was one of the first to speak up against this fallacy – in short, the two-parent nuclear family never was the ‘building block’ of society and nothing will fall apart if it goes. Children even a few hundred years ago were often brought up by communal groups of women, or by extended families, or other arrangements. The modern nuclear family was only possible when the Industrial revolution allowed one man to earn enough to provide for the whole family, before that both parents (and the kids) would be working all day and not see each other anyway.

But no, two loving parents of the same sex have to be worse than absent parents, parents working two or three jobs and never at home, abusive or loveless marriages… cobblers. The data is emerging and it shows that traditional marriage is not critical – contact time is critical and so is money, but a loving relationship is the key. Parents staying together ‘for the kids’ is about as effective as it sounds.

Ah, now, two can play that game, look:

“The real reason the right is so keen on ‘the family’ is because they want to be free to beat and rape their spouse and children without any hinderance or ‘intervention’ from ‘the state’.”

And why since the 1960s has the family group stopped “meeting societies needs” when it met them adequately for centuries before that ? The need to be in a social group is innate and universal, which is why all known societies have something analogous to a family unit as the basis of their society, what is unique about the post industrial west which has suddenly negated this need ?

If you’re having trouble answering that it’s because the real reason the left dislikes the nuclear faimly is beuse it is economically and socially self sufficient, and does’t give a lot of (largely childless) psudo professional, sanctimonious state aparachnicks the chance to “intervene” in family life.

Results: Kids with parents who stay in a failed relationship do worse than children in single-parent families, worse than with gay foster-parents, worse than everyone. And yet this is precisely what Cameron is encouraging.

It’s the relationship which is key, contact time, and money. Mostly money. Bribing society to stay in groupings which no longer fit its needs is appalling, but in this case will also lead to worse results in exactly the areas Cameron’s trying to improve.

Sheesh, when even Johann Hari can prove you’re full of it, you’re really in trouble:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-when-divorce-is-the-wiser-option-1719907.html

“How do you know there aren’t ? Given a choice between a 12 hour shift in McDs and state supported single parenthood which would you take ?”

This little opening gambit perhaps best sums up your flawed world view, it shows you have no idea about benefitsd and how much you actually get and it also shows you only approach other people from the worst case scenario in their actions, when in reality, it is the other way round.

The increase in the number of welfare dependent single parents is not tax breaks you dolt but poverty and social-econmoic issues.

“This is a feminist myth/fantasy.”

A HA! Now we get the gist of it, the feminists are to blame! Sadly, you can’t just dismiss a perfectly good idea as a feminist myth and fantasy, al that does it makes your own prejudice look lazy and tired.

And for the record, the gap between low paid work and benefits is not that massive at all, it’s a myth, JSA or IS comes in at £50 a week, minimum wage work, where you can still claim Housing and Council Tax Benefit, comes in £229 a week. Also, the idea that money is the only factor in people wanting to work shows you’ve not worked with people who are unemployed and want to work. The desire to do something, in life, is the key driver, a sense of self-worth but I don’t expect you to get that.

And to repeat, just going LOL like a child doesn’t mean you’ve actually taken on the point, it may sadden you to know that life is complex and your simplisitc ideas will hold no weight in practice but that’s the way it goes. Do keep up!

The gist of your primitive argument is the old Christian Right, parents needs to stay together at all costs.

Sorry but until we live in a nation that is dominated by silly moral values people will have a choice to step out of destructive relationships, the be all and end all is not the parents staying together, it is about a postive and healthy environment for the child.

And sorry but I don’t buy the analogy that the rich avoid tax either, life is not that simple and cannot be boxed into such silly, simple concepts.

You need to spend some time in the real world, volunteer at a local young mum’s group, work with young people, young carers and young parents, put a human face on your vulgar, baseless ideas and you’ll soon learn that people to not have kids to get an extra pittance in their benefits, you’ll see most young families living hand to mouth and desperate to increase their skills so they can work and do the very best they can for their child.

Your world view speaks more of your own personal negativity and prejudice. I feel sorry for you.

Again, your rant about people running off with toy boys exposes your deep set prejudice, I’m starting to get the feeling you’re a bit of a chauvinist, your turn of phrase smacks of your gender prejudice and thus leaves ideas a bit hollow.

You ask whose fault it is and the answer is our fault, not the govenrments fault, we’ve built a world that puts work over family, we have to repair that no the government, finger pointing starts at home, we get the society we want.

“So it’s much better to split the family up and let the state fuck them up rather than their parents ?”

No, I never said that, you seem to like taking an idea an jumping with it to justify your own flawed views, try not to do that, the gaping whole in the logic lets a lot of air through it.

Absent Father = bad.
Absent Father (he’s off fighting in Afghanistan) = DOUBLEPLUSGOOD!

Nope, I can’t work it out, either.

LOL – so the old “there are too many variables, it’s all too complicated” argument comes to the rescue. Any researchers worthy of the name would control for other varaibles and time and again the research still shows that irrespective of other factors single parenthood is the most reliable single indicator of a range of negative outcomes.

In terms of cause and effect no one can know with certainty what the direction of effect is for every factor, but common sense tells you that single parenthood is the cause of most of them – for example income tends to drop after divorce, not before, leading to poorer home environments, loss of social support systems, realtionships becoming distant and stressed etc etc

I’ll put it in really simple terms as you’re obviousy unfamiliar with even basic techniques in social psychology: Even if you come from a stinking rich family with very loving and supportive parents, even if you had had lots of friends, a great social life, the best eductaion money can buy and are super intelligent you will stil, on average, do worse on a number of indicators (pysical and mental health, life expectancy, career sucess, healthy relationships, propensity to crimiality, unemployment, homelessness, addiction etc etc) if your parents separate than someone from EXATLY the same background whose parents stsy together.

“Only an idiot like you would equate a tax system with an encouragement to be a single parent family, think about it, you are only ine step away there from the myth of having children so as to increase benefits claims, as ridiculous as it is offensive”

Only an idiot would deny it. On another thread here there is a debate about tax avoidance, which takes for grated that rich people will act in their own self interest to avoid paying tax, why wouldn’t people on benefits manipualte their social suituation to increase benefits, where they have no other gfeasible means of increasing their income ? or are you doing the usual patroning “poor people aren’t clever enough to know what their best interests are” line ?
Evenin terms of tax cradits (which 60% of working parents get althoug hthey are not aren’t technically a benefit) my partner would get more than she does now, for the kids, if we lived apart.

And the fact that something may be offensive to some people does’t mean that you pretend it isn’t happening.

“I’m sensing a lot of hatred towards single parent families, which you also eager to think it is always female centric, when it is not, I’ve met plenty of single parent fathers, you need to broaden your intellectualy pallet, you’re limited.

Stop talking like a fucking counsellor you arsehole, if I’m “limited” you’re blinkered. Yes there are obviously single parent fathers, but thanks to harperson and the family courts only where the mother had died, run off with a toyboy, or is a complete car crash (although even the latter isn’t usually enough on it’s own).

“And parents do get that choice, our modern society is built on childcare and people, esp. from middle-class backgrounds, having kids but not really looking after them as they rush back to work.”

Yes and whose fault is that ? If you’re on average wages our system is structured so that you work your arse off just to pay a childminder, all so that the government can say they are giving women “a choice”. Why not give a genuine choice – by allowing one parent to stay at home, without being financially penalised.
The irony is that single parents are the only people who have that choice and still mostly produce crap outcomes, even though they spend more time with their kids than working people do.

“This is where your lack of knowledge of families and of the impact of parenting hits home, you really don’t have any knowledeg in this field aside from what your moral compass tells you to blindly follow. Come back to me when you’ve actually worked with parents and thier children, at the moment you have no knowledge or expertise. Bad parenting can occur in any set-up and hits the child hard, all damaged young people I have worked with, aside from those with disabilities, have picked up the behaviour from their parents in some form or another, as Larkin, said, “they fuck you up your mum and dad, they don’t mean to but they do.”

Purleasse. So it’s much better to split the family up and let the state fuck them up rather than their parents ?

How do you know there aren’t ? Given a choice between a 12 hour shift in McDs and state supported single parenthood which would you take ?

Besides, this system is aimed at helping those who fall into single-parenthood, not promoting or encouraging it.

It doesn’t matter what it’s “aimed at” – it matters what the outcome is and that outcome is increasing numbers of welfare dependent single parents.

Another thing – why should a familiy stay together if the parents’ relationship isn’t working? Would it not be more damaging to the children if they’re parents lived a cold, loveless, sham partnership?

This is a feminist myth/fantasy. There is no reasearch to support the idea that living in an unhappy (in adult terms) relationship is somehow preferably, from a child’s point of view, to a single parent. Ask any kid what he would rather have his parents togetheror apart. Kids don”t see the world in terms of “oh look mummys not happy with daddy, it’ll be better for me if they split up” You are putting an adult construct onto childrens perceptions.

“All this nonsense about Labour ‘encouraging’ single parent families just doesn’t wash. The real issue of why we have had a rise in single-parent families is because people are having children at a young age. How many people have the same partner at 20 as they do at 30?
Children are being born too early into a relationship.

Educating youngsters on having kids at the right time is where we should be concentrating.”

Sort of agree with you here, although I would argue that the gap between low paid work and benefits is too small to incentivise work and creates dependency. Tax allowances should be increased so that no one on say, less than half the average salary pays income tax.

Incidentally, your anecdote is wonderfully inane; how does an example of benefit fraud add anything to the debate? Shock: people cheating a system may get more than others! Who knew?!

Thanks for visiting.

So you ignore all the theories of human behaviour, that says people will (on average) do what is in their own best interest?

Specific case: couple with kids.
Versus single mother with kids, and single man living alone.

I haven’t done the sums, but I hear that a couple up the road pretended to seperate because they were better off financially for doing so: the tax/benefits were higher.

If I understand it, both parents are unemployed; so now the tax-ayer funds two flats and the extra costs of the cash benefit that the couple calculated. And the man’s flat is empty 6 nights out of 7.

Please refute if this is not a case where the numbers show that couples will ‘split’ due to the tax system

Oh and before you make digs about the work I do, you should really have made more sense the first time you spoke, rather than getting it all arse before elbow.

Take care.

Well that explains your problem – you assume, even to the point of failing to notice that these figures flatly contradict your previous assertion that at Britain has at least 50% of children living in single parent homes.

In the vain hope of alleviating your painfully obvious ignorance, approximately 25% of all families with dependent children are lone parent families, consisting of 23% in which the lone parent is female and 2% are male. Lone parent families account for 23% of all dependant children under 16, slightly less in proportion than the figure for the number of families.

AND

These figures have been stable since the turn of the millennium.

In assuming that the number of lone parents must be rising you’re making the mistake of treating lone parenthood as an outcome and not as a transition stage between relationship, which is what it is for the majority of women who do find themselves with children but without a partner.

Even more lone parents……..

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-big-question-how-many-single-parents-are-there-and-should-they-be-forced-to-work-434358.html

Here are some figures quoted in 2007 – maybe you can find more recent ones because I assume they would have increased significantly.

As for your notion that a bad parent is worse then no parent at all – its a tough call to make as outcomes from children in care are just as atrocious!

“Evidence please that the offsping of single parents are not disadvanted by it. There is plenty to show that they are

So the tax beneifts system doesn’t encourage single parent families by making a women with children better off financially if she lives alone ?”

So kids from single parent families are disadvantaged but the single parents are not. Right?

Disclosure: I’m from a single parent family. My father died when I was in my early teens, leaving my mother to raise me and my younger brother. Of course we were disadvantaged by it. Financially, things were very difficult. You’re right then to say there is evidence that children of single parent families are disadvantaged.

But to then suggest that the benefits systems encourages single parent families is somewhat paradoxical. First, let me say quite resolutely: It doesn’t. At all. Secondly, the benefits just aren’t there to financially outweigh the loss of a parent. In fact, they should be higher, and support needs to be greater.

The tax benefits system doesn’t encourage anything whatsoever; it is there to support those in need, and it does that poorly. As Daniel mentioned, to suggest otherwise can be construed as offensive simply because the reality lies so, so far in the opposite direction.

In all of the above, I’m speaking just on the financial implications of single parenthood. Arguments are often wheeled out along the lines of ‘Kids from single parent families are more likely to be poorly educated/behaved/go feral/have some random psychological problem.’

Eh, who knows? I did start smoking when I was 15, and this one time, I crashed my car.