Taken from another poster on another thread;
"Popenoe (who has made family is life study) suggested ending no fault divorce if kids are involved as it harms them a lot and requiring good cause to end a marriage."
I think the issue here is whether both parents live with the children rather than whether they remain formally married.
Perhaps ending no-fault divorce would only produce nominally married separated single parents.
And can you force couples to live together? For example suppose Dad is a pilot and gone half the time for work, or a troop on deployment in a foreign nation etc.
I do think it wise to educate people about the value of two parent relationships on children, but is it wise to legislate it?
Thoughts?
In my opinion.
Fatherhood research AKA stable families.(short version the system wont accept 22 pages)
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The effect of not having the biological father in the home is devastating to children emotionally, socially, and psychologically. Based on the research findings, a strong case can be made that paternal deprivation has become the most prevalent form of child maltreatment today. Social research traces increased levels of crime and delinquency, premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the growing rates of child abuse and many other social problems to fatherlessness.
Children of divorce and never-married mothers are less successful in life by almost every measure. Even remarriage and step-parenting do not heal the wounds.
Fathers teach children two key character traits: self-control and empathy. People with antisocial and criminal tendencies lack both. The single-mother's predicament to provide effective parenting in this regard is borne out by social science findings. Boys who are father deprived early in life are likely to engage later in rigidly over compensatory masculine behaviors. The incidence of crimes against property and people, including child abuse and family violence, is relatively high in societies where the rearing of young children is considered to be an exclusively female endeavor.
For men, more than for women, marriage and parenthood are strongly interlinked. Men need cultural pressure to stay engaged with their children, and that cultural pressure has long been called marriage.
Fathers have a unique and irreplaceable role to play in child development. Fathers are not merely would-be mothers. The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary—culturally as well as biologically—for the optimal development of a human being.The most important and enduring dimension of fathering has to do with a child's feelings. Children need to feel recognized and accepted by their fathers; they need to feel that they are special. More than just needing their fathers, children need a committed male and female couple--a mother and a father in a joint partnership—to provide them with dependable and enduring love and attention at least during their growing-up years. Biological fathers are more likely to be committed to the upbringing of their own children than are non-biological fathers. Human beings invest more readily in genetically related persons than in non-related persons. Being a father is much more than merely playing a social role. Engaged biological fathers care profoundly and selflessly about their own children, and such fatherly love is not something that can be transferred easily or learned from a script.
"Epidemiological studies and social surveys have shown that marriage has a civilizing effect independent of the selection factor (men who are willing to marry already have civilized virtues). It is not just that particularly healthy and competent and morally upright persons are more likely to marry, but that marriage actually promotes health, competence, virtue, and personal well-being.” *(76)In one of Cleveland's rough inner-city neighborhoods Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization has reunited over 2,000 absent, unwed fathers with their children. Contrary to the standard theory of first finding a man a job in order to make him into a responsible father, this project has focused on convincing these men of the importance of being a good father resulting in *(76)-
- Increase from 12% being employed full-time to 62% with another 12% employed part-time. (76)
- 97% began to provide financial support for their children. (76)
- 71% had no additional children out of wedlock.*(76)
§ Trait differences include-
Aggression and activity level; cognitive skills; sensory sensitivity; sexual and reproductive behavior.(10)
- While male proficiency rests with "things and theorems," female proficiency rests with personal relationships.(11)
- Females most want to be "cherished" by their mates, males most want to be "needed" by theirs.(141)
§ Differences in fathering and mothering behaviors include-
- Mothers are more able to read an infant's facial expressions, handle with tactile gentleness, soothe with the use of voice.*(11)
- Mothers provide comfort and emotional acceptance with toddlers while men are more active and arousing in nurturing activities, foster certain physical skills and emphasize autonomy and independence. (11)
- With older children fathers play is more likely to involve a rough-and-tumble approach.* Mothers tend to be responsive, fathers firm; mothers stress emotional security and relationships, fathers’ competition and risk taking; mothers express more concern for the child's immediate well-being, fathers concern for the child's long-run autonomy and independence.(12)
§ Both approaches are important for children in developing the need for affiliation with others while learning also to be independent. They need both "roots" and "wings"; one parent who encourages to risk, another who comforts when they fall short.(12)
§ Men and women can take on each other's part. However, most men and women are not predisposed or well-motivated to take on even temporarily the behavior and attitudes of the other sex. Most children want and need and can easily detect the real thing. Fatherless children are therefore at a distinct disadvantage. (12)
o Social changes including—
- Economic changes including women's employment opportunities, and earning ability.(43)
- Government incentives that reward people for being unmarried rather than married. This "welfare effect" is relatively modest (5.4% of population is receiving subsidies through AFDC).(44)
- Pushing aside traditional "Victorian" values of self-sacrifice, commitment to others, and institutional obligation, and adopting self-fulfillment as the dominant life goal. One of the reasons is the decline in institutional (church, government, education, and especially marriage) confidence.(45)
- Development of an anti-institutional frame of mind and skepticism of authority.(46)
- Development of an overly individualistic society resulting in personal alienation and a breakdown in social control of individual behavior.(48)
The
decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected, and extraordinary social trends of our time.(3)
- From 1960 to 1990 the percent of children living apart from biological fathers doubled (from 17% to 36%).(3)
- US divorce rate = 50%.(5)
- 40% of all children do not live with their biological fathers.*(19)
- Of children born in the past decade, 50% will not be living with both biological parents by age 17.(19)
- Father absence is a major force behind crime and delinquency; premature sexuality and unwed pregnancy; deteriorating educational achievement; depression; substance abuse; poverty.(3)
- Marriage and the nuclear family are the most universal social institutions in existence. "Legitimacy of children is another cultural universal."(4)
§
The Unattached Male. Society is heavily dependent on men being attached to a strong moral order centered on families, not only to help raise children but to discipline their own sexual behavior and to reduce their competitive aggression. Family life is a considerable civilizing force for men.(12)
o A high proportion of male criminals are unattached.(13)
o
"Do we really want a society filled with single men, unattached to children, leading self-aggrandizing and often predatory lives?”(13)
o
"The decline of fatherhood and of marriage cuts at the heart of the kind of environment considered ideal for child rearing. Such an environment… consists of an enduring two-parent family that...provides a great deal of quality contact time between adults and children...”(14)
§
Reasons for growth of fatherlessness include divorce, out-of-wedlock births, non-marital cohabitation, and sperm-donor fathers (20); divorce and non-marital births are the main culprits.(192)
§
Step families. (33)
- 75% of divorced men remarry.
- What divorced fathers do instead of parent their own children is to parent their stepchildren; commonly called "transient father syndrome", "serial parenting", and "child swapping."(33)
- Far from providing a solution to the erosion of fatherhood, stepfamilies are very much a part of the problem. Step fathering acts very much to diminish contact between fathers and biological children. *(33)
- In these new families, stepfathers take a less active role in parenting than do typical custodial biological fathers. *(33)
- "Even after two years disengagement by the stepparen,t disengagement is the most common parenting style...characterized by low levels of involvement and rapport, and a lack of control, discipline, and monitoring of the stepchild's behavior and activities."*(33)
- 62% of remarried women under age 40 will eventually divorce. 10% of remarriages without stepchildren and 17% with children end in divorce within 3 years. (33)
- Not only is the quality of' family life in step families typically inferior to that of biological-parent families, but the children of step families face a greater chance of family breakup than they did in their original families. *(33)
- 15% of children will go through two family disruptions before coming of age. *(33)