Posted on 06/15/2005 7:45:55 AM PDT by robowombat
Fathers keep society safe June 15th, 2005
For the last couple of weeks, lefties in Britain have been leaping to the defense of the three teenaged sisters, aged 16, 14, and 12, who have each recently brought a little bundle of joy into the world. These brand-new single parents live with their single-parent mother, Julie Atkins, in public housing - at a weekly cost to the state of about $1,200, or $60,000 per year.
“There have always been women like Yeats’s Crazy Jane whose gardens grow ‘nothing but babies and washing,’” huffed Germaine Greer from a bunker on the feminist senior circuit.
“They live in an alternative society that is matrilineal, matrifocal, and matrilocal, a society that the patriarchy has always feared and hated.”
And old lefty Roy Hattersley spluttered in The Guardian that “they’re being treated like characters in a Victorian morality play!”
But the absent father of two of the young mothers had another opinion.
Reading about their new status in the papers he declared that it was all the fault of the schools.
It’s appropriate that our lefty friends should be leaping to the defense of single moms right now. What better time to celebrate single motherhood than in the run-up to Fathers’ Day, celebrated this year on June 19th? Liberals seem to like nothing more than spoiling other peoples’ holidays.
But we mortal folk may as well go ahead and celebrate fatherhood anyway. If liberals are against it, then we must have good reasons to be for it. And indeed there are. Let us rehearse just three. Fathers promote the safety of children; fathers promote safety for society from feral children; and fathers protect society from feral government.
Children living with their fathers are safer than other children. The safest place for a child to live is with its biological married parents. The most dangerous place to live is with mother and a boy friend who is not the father of the child. Want to guess how dangerous? It is 33 times more dangerous for a child to live with mommie and her boy friend than to live with the child’s married biological mother and father, according to James Bartholomew in The Welfare State We’re In.
But, surely, most children are not subject to the predations of a live-in boy friend? That is true. A child is only 5 times more at risk when living with mother married to a stepfather than when living with its married, natural parents. Children living with their fathers are safer not just from violence by others but also from becoming violent themselves. There are dozens of studies demonstrating the connection between juvenile crime and single parenthood. Here is a list of just a few. Children living with their natural, married parents are less likely to commit crimes; they are more likely to start having sex later, and they are more likely to finish school.
With this sort of evidence about fathers and child safety you’d think that liberal activists would be proposing legislation from coast to coast to promote traditional families and to end forever the social devastation of single parenthood, in fact nothing less than a War on Single Parenting. You would expect earnest academic social scientists and activists to be turning up on TV talk shows demanding that the government end the holocaust in at-risk teens by demanding a comprehensive and mandatory government program to protect at-risk children from the dangers of single parenthood.
But in fact you don’t see any such activity.
There’s another good thing about fathers. They lower the cost of government, and that’s a good thing because it increases freedom. Of course, it’s no secret that married people tend to vote Republican, and therefore for less government. And it’s no secret that the “marriage gap” has been increasing. According to USA Today:
In 1984, the difference in the presidential votes of married and unmarried women was 17 percentage points, according to surveys taken as voters left polling places. There was a 21-point marriage gap in 1992, a 29-point gap in 1996, a 32-point gap in 2000.
In 2004, the marriage gap was 44 points. Married women voted for Bush 57% to 42%, and single women voted for Kerry 64% to 35%. But add children into the mix, and the marriage gap expands even more. According to USA Today again:
“Married women with children are even more Republican [than] those who don’t have children; single women who have children are even more Democratic than those who don’t.”
The more married fathers you have, the less government you need to support women and children.
Every man learns soon enough that men are expendable. Whether it’s the War in the Pacific or the War on the Patriarchy, it is men that get sacrificed for the greater good of all. That’s as it should be. But expendable or not, you sure wouldn’t like to live in a society without fathers.
Christopher Chantrill mailto:chrischantrill@msn.com blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. Take the test.
A 12-year-old is not "teenaged." And where are the statutory rape and/or child abuse prosecutions for the sperm donors?
Good article. Thanks for posting.
No surprise there.
In 2004, the marriage gap was 44 points.
Wow!
In 2004, the marriage gap was 44 points. Married women voted for Bush 57% to 42%, and single women voted for Kerry 64% to 35%. But add children into the mix, and the marriage gap expands even more.
Votes for Bush, 57% (married) - 35% (single)= 22% difference. Votes for Kerry, 64% (single) - 42% (married) = 22% difference.
Now we'll add those together and get ... 44% of a hole in the head!
Stop subsidizing bad behavior.
Sigh. We are currently on track to have bastardy in the general population reach the levels it was in the black population in the 70's. We all know what a disaster the disapearance of black fathers has become. Something like 80% of black kids never live with their dad.
This is not a good trend for the future of our country.
The more married fathers you have, the less government you need to support women and children.
And now you know why sex education, contraception, abortion, sexual promiscuity, the corruption of childhood innocence, and the denigration of fatherhood and authentic masculinity are so important to the Left. It's their ongoing meal ticket.
Whole, happy, productive families don't need much governing. Broken, unhappy family-substitutes do. Sexual license and tyrannical government are just two sides of the same coin.
You are correct: it is not a good trend..
The issue here isn't single motherhood, it's welfare parenthood. People who have children when they can't support them are irresponsible, whether they're married or single. And their irresponsibility nearly always continues as they raise (or simply ignore) the child.
Look at a sample of married parents who are perpetually on welfare, and you'll see the same sort of lousy outcomes with the kids, as you see with single mothers who are perpetually on welfare.
Wrong. There's plenty of data to indicate that a biological father present in the home makes a tremendous positive contribution to childrearing. Any sane married mother (and many single ones who are honest) will tell you that a father's firmness is an essential backstop in disciplinary matters, for one thing.
Look at a sample of married parents who are perpetually on welfare, and you'll see the same sort of lousy outcomes with the kids, as you see with single mothers who are perpetually on welfare.
Proof?
It's not just welfare. Children without fathers in the home experience poorer outcomes in life irrespective of economic status. Infant mortality correlates with unmarried motherhood regardless of income or education. Democrat voting lines up with single parenthood, even for the employed.
I agree that welfare is a big part of the problem, in that it facilitates women's having children without husbands (as well as other poor decisions), but fatherlessness is a serious problem by itself.
I'd like to see the number on "married parents who are perpetually on welfare." All the studies I've seen show that married couples are rarely in poverty, and even more rarely in poverty for very long.
Yup. Very unusual unless (typically) the husband is in prison or something, which counts as an "absent daddy" situation.
Maybe "married parents living together" is a better formulation, although when a spouse is deployed with the military, for example, that doesn't greatly affect economic status. However, when fathers are absent for long periods because of deployment or other work requirements, that often negatively affects the children's behavior, school prospects, etc.
Britain is an irreligious society - such things are only mildly illegal there, and seldom prosecuted.
How swell for the pregnant 12-year-old. Does Britain also not practice adoption?
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