Public Service Announcement re children raised by single mothers

[Clymene]

There is a recently deleted thread about a woman raising a son when his dad said he didn't want to see him.

This is not a TAAT but I wanted to correct the assertion made by several posters in that thread that children - particularly boys - have poor outcomes without fathers in their lives.

This is a myth.

Sadly a lot of single mothers live in poverty and are under immense stress trying to raise the children men have abandoned. It's poverty and poor mental health that causes the poor outcomes.

srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.13342

The children with the best academic outcomes are raised in lesbian households.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122420957249

Agree with this. In addition lack of finances leads to stress, anxiety and severe, poor mental health which impacts all children living In the household.

It is possible to find good mentors in teachers, sports coaches, family friends etc. But lack of money to pay bills etc is what takes its toll.

A good father is the best option in the house even if your relationship hasn't worked that shouldn't stop them from playing an active role in their children's lives. They don't need to be living in the home to do this. However I've seen many relationships where the father is no more than an extra child, meaning the mother is doing everything for the children and the partner who only goes to work but leaves all the responsibilities to the working mother and he is just a figure, on the outside it looks as though he is great dad just because he is "present and has a job".

I find it hard to understand the opinions of some people who seem to think that all single parents choose to bring up children that way.

Of course happy 2 parent family > happy single parent family

But most of us single parents don't have that choice. The choice was:
Really unhappy conflict ridden 2 parent family
OR
happy single parents.

Examining factors that lead to worse outcomes for children of single parents, eg poverty, is really important because then we can start to do something about those factors, rather than just harping on about how everyone's children would do better if they just somehow magicked up a relationship of two enthusiastic parents. I don't think that considering all the factors and acknowledging that sometimes "present dad does not equal happy kids" makes you a 'single parent apologist' who thinks all men are useless, as some have suggested upthread.

Staying together for the sake of the children is a nonsense. There are many factors that affect outcomes for children and we would do well to examine them all, not just focus on the ones that suit our particular ideological/ political aims.

Staying together for the sake of the children is a nonsense.

Shouldn't the welfare of the children come first? At least until they're 18?

I thought there was pretty incontrovertible evidence that boys brought up without fathers were far more likely to end up as criminals?

I can attest that growing up with parents that hate each other isn't really great. I was drowning my sorrows with Jack Daniels and weed at the age of 16 while they screamed at each other a few rooms down. Then ecstasy/coke by 18.

Luckily, I sorted my shit out but my mates whose parents split up and got out of toxic relationships seemed far more stable.

I thought there was pretty incontrovertible evidence that boys brought up without fathers were far more likely to end up as criminals?

The trouble is that single parenthood is so entwined with poverty and abusive relationships that it's extremely hard to disaggregate it enough to prove that kind of link.

I'm a single parent, not struggling for money, and my kids are emotionally resilient, academically fine, and show no signs of going off the rails (yet, I suppose there's always time). I think that if I couldn't work sufficient hours around their needs to support us, so that I was continuously stressed, or having to leave them to their own devices whilst I worked, or if they were deprived because despite working hard we still didn't have enough money, I think it would be a very different picture.

Properly supporting single parents so they're not swimming uphill with no money would go a very long way to reducing any link between single parent families and their kids getting into trouble.

I can't fathom how people can say that single parenthood isn't a disadvantage. My father died when I was little and, off the top of my head, here are some of the impacts:

• my sibling and I had the trauma of parental bereavement (in another single parent scenario this would be abandonment or whatever)
• we lost our only breadwinner as my mum was a SAHP at the time

-my mum was very depressed and angry for the majority of my childhood as she couldn't cope and took it out on us

• my mum had nobody to pull her up on her behaviour and nobody to sense-check some of her questionable parenting decisions
• when we were teens she could no longer control my brother who was bigger than her, and equally angry. He ended up getting involved in drugs and was expelled from 2 schools. I think a second parent, and ideally a male one, would have helped him.
• we lost the opportunity for any guidance from our dad and every point in our lives, from homework to career advice etc. That impact is ongoing forever.
• my mum was a much more absent parent as a result of having to carry the entire financial load herself, she never had the time to take a day off if we were sick for example.

We were financially fortunate, due to my mother going back to work and doing well for herself. On paper, my DB and I are successful now - high earners, no criminal record, no gang membership! But our childhood was undeniably worse as a result of single parenthood and the circumstance that led to it.

Of course in instances where the dad is violent or a paedo it is better than they have no contact. By the vast majority of dads, even if they are worse parents than mums, do more help than harm to their children.

Surely if they’re raised in a lesbian household they’re not single parents? I don’t agree that you can group two same sex parents in the same category as a single, one parent household.

Some people are still missing the point here.

Obviously growing up in a happy 2 parent home is going to be an advantage. But that's not always an option.

Poverty is a confounding variable when considering outcomes of children from single parent families. it's very difficult to unpick whether adverse outcomes are caused by lack of a parent or poverty/low income, as single parent families are likely to be less well off.

I said that staying together for the sake of the children is nonsense, because that involves the parents being able to maintain a fantasy image to the children that all is well, perhaps for years, while they are actually stressed and miserable, without the children being aware that anything is wrong. This is so unlikely to be the case! The much more likely scenario is the choice between a happy and stable single parent home (or at least happier) or a miserable, conflict ridden existence but yay, you still have 2 parents present. I don't know why it's so difficult for some people to grasp that this choice just doesn't exist for most couples whose relationships are breaking down. It's insulting and patronising to suggest that they could have been a happy 2 parent family if only the selfish parents put their kids first. That's a fantasy and it helps no one.

This is not saying that 2 parents aren't better in most circumstances, rather that we shouldn't pressure parents unduly to stay together because that in itself is likely to be harmful, and other factors are likely to be influencing the outcomes for children.

Parental bereavement is obviously going to be traumatic - my sympathy to anyone, child or adult, who has experienced this. I don't think anyone is suggesting that this isn't an awful scenario.

There’s no suggestion on the OP that lesbian households with two mothers are the same as single parent households with just one. OP’s point was that the research is a good counter to the argument that boys need fathers -that a male parent is somehow essential to bringing up children, especially boys, well. The research that OP links suggests that’s not the case. There’s no magic in having a man around, it’s the issues with being single, not with being female that are at fault.

And the implication is that society could do a hell of a lot to ameliorate those issues if it wanted, much more easily than it could make relationships between parents better. Single parenthood doesn’t have to result in poor outcomes for children because as a society we could support women in that situation and that would work.

Thank you @NumberTheory - that was exactly my point. Even on this thread, people are still perpetuating the myth.

And I'm so sorry that your father died @MisschiefMaker - it sounds very traumatic.