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7 minutes ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Instead modern feminism has failed women by driving them out of the home and forcing them to work via the reality today of dual income mortgages.


Thinks LBGT+ equality is 'propaganda': tick
Doesn't like feminism: tick

Anything else you want to add to the list in this thread alone?

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Go and research absence of fathers and the effect on gang culture and crime and come back to me. The evidence isn’t flawed - it’s indisputable if, amongst those who delight in identity politics and trashing marriage and the family, unpopular. 
 

but all of that is quite beside the point. All I argued is that the current obsession with sexuality is beyond boring now- let’s just treat everyone nicely

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27 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

See the link above, Teemu - that one looks at matters beyond taxes. At the same time, singles pay in but can't leave benefits to others readily - the focus is purely on those in romantic relationships.

But they can leave the toilet seat up and skip the washing up for a day without getting it in the ear, and don't have to have a 30 minute debate about what is getting ordered on Justeat, how much value are you putting on that? 

 

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1 hour ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Class is the biggest problem facing Uk - not race or sexuality. A thuggish moronic minority will always be hate filled but most people today are neither racist or homophobic, however millions are impoverished by poor wages, poor housing and the unfair distribution of wealth perpetrated by the class issue. But business alike to virtue signal about the latter two because it’s easy and costs little - whilst the other one would hit them in the pocket  

I agree with much of what you say. It will always be impossible to eradicate hatred and I suppose in this diverse world someone could argue its a person's right to think hatred but not act hatred.

Personally I believe all the current publicity is probably made up of genuine people but also anarchists, revolutionists and good old wannabes.

As you say, the majority of people are not in any way racist or homophobic or any other hateful phobia. And they do not involve themselves in the debate. And the rest do not want to debate with the morons. Why would you?

World poverty is growing. Climate change is making it worse and the pandemic is stripping already low resources in many poor countries. So maybe while we choose to narrow the discussion to subjects such as gender equality or BLM, we are missing the real point.

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I have researched it, it's exaggerated considerably due to the flaws I've already pointed out.

A classic one is that single-parent kids were apparently far more likely to be drug addicts. In a classic case of fiddling the figures the difference was only 1.2%.

"When studies find that children of single parent households do worse in some way or another than children of married parents, there is often a critical difference in the two kinds of households: The single-family households have less income, less in savings, and fewer assets. That means that the married parents are more likely to be able to afford health insurance, safe neighborhoods, and SAT prep courses for their kids. The issue, in short, is not (just) having too few parents, it is having too little money."

The Children of Single Parents Are Doing Better Than You Realized | by Bella DePaulo | Fourth Wave | Medium

Edited by TheGunnShow
Copied key quote showing flaw in societal assumption.

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35 minutes ago, Canarywary said:


Thinks LBGT+ equality is 'propaganda': tick
Doesn't like feminism: tick

Anything else you want to add to the list in this thread alone?

How does Arguing that women should be free to choose between work or home make me not like feminism? You might think enslaving people in the modern workplace is freedom- I don’t! 
 

my argument was clearly that I was for equality but against the tedious championing of woke causes. If you can’t see the difference between propaganda and tolerance then I feel sorry for you. You clearly lack the skill the think critically 

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18 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

But they can leave the toilet seat up and skip the washing up for a day without getting it in the ear, and don't have to have a 30 minute debate about what is getting ordered on Justeat, how much value are you putting on that? 

 

"What you fancy watching?"

"Anything"

*picks something*

"NOT THAT"

I'd happily pay an annual tax to avoid those situations on a daily basis.

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Maybe read beyond your favoured left wing voices. In the real world fatherlessness is a massive issue. I’ve worked with homeless and in prisons and guarantee it 
 

this is from America 

https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes 
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. 
     
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  

This is from uk 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/the-shocking-cost-of-fatherlessness-in-the-uk-33143/%3famp

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8 minutes ago, hogesar said:

"What you fancy watching?"

"Anything"

*picks something*

"NOT THAT"

I'd happily pay an annual tax to avoid those situations on a daily basis.

Tell me about it.

These single folk got the hump about a few hundred quid.

Then you've got the two people one toilet issues which arise, when you both need a morning wee, or when one needs a turd when the other is taking a shower. 

Don't know how lucky they are. 

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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7 minutes ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Maybe read beyond your favoured left wing voices. In the real world fatherlessness is a massive issue. I’ve worked with homeless and in prisons and guarantee it 
 

this is from America 

https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes 
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. 
     
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  

This is from uk 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/the-shocking-cost-of-fatherlessness-in-the-uk-33143/%3famp

Whilst I appreciate the use of sources for informed discussion, none of that counters my observations showing the flawed methodologies showing why the figures are dubious at best.

All you did was throw in another link to a study without looking at the litany of prevailing flaws behind them. In fact, your UK piece is showing that divorce is a serious problem, where we agree. However, by definition that shows marriage is also problematic! It highlights my point perfectly showing that when marriage is highlighted as a gold standard, they only manage to pull it off by taking out the divorced and widowed from the marriage stats. In other words, cherry-picking.

Put it this way, if I tested a new drug and then some people stopped taking it, and others had side-effects, and I focused on the proportion that it worked on only, how valid would that medical trial be? It wouldn't.

Yet this is exactly how a lot of pro-marriage research has worked in the past, and indeed why their findings are nowhere near as clear-cut as they would like them to be.

Edited by TheGunnShow

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1 minute ago, TheGunnShow said:

Whilst I appreciate the use of sources for informed discussion, none of that counters my observations showing the flawed methodologies showing why the figures are dubious at best.

All you did was throw in another link to a study without looking at the litany of prevailing flaws behind them. In fact, your UK piece is showing that divorce is a serious problem, where we agree. However, by definition that shows marriage is also problematic! It highlights my point perfectly showing that when marriage is highlighted as a gold standard, they only manage to pull it off by taking out the divorced and widowed from the marriage stats. In other words, cherry-picking.

Put it this way, if I tested a new drug and then some people stopped taking it, and others had side-effects, and I focused on the proportion that it worked on only, how valid would that medical trial be? It wouldn't.

Yet this is exactly how a lot of pro-marriage research has worked in the past, and indeed why their findings are nowhere near as clear-cut as they would like them to be.

I'm of the belief that you need to simplify the divorce procedure in order to make marriage less scary.

End the stigma associated with divorce by introducing 'no fault / no reason' quickie divorces, or 'concious decouplings' and make pre-nuptial agreements actually hold some weight in UK courts. 

Make divorce less messy and fewer people will be turned off by marriage.

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Just now, TeemuVanBasten said:

I'm of the belief that you need to simplify the divorce procedure in order to make marriage less scary.

End the stigma associated with divorce by introducing 'no fault / no reason' quickie divorces, or 'concious decouplings' and make pre-nuptial agreements actually hold some weight in UK courts. 

Make divorce less messy and fewer people will be turned off by marriage.

Can go with that, and to be fair to @Dean Coneys boots the second part of his UK source on legislative options re. parental custody for fathers are also things I agree with. Where I disagree, and where the research is flawed, are the statistics beforehand.

As for pre-nups, there was the Rademacher/Granatino case, where a pre-nup actually was upheld for once. Not much progress seems to have been made since 2010 though.

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15 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

I agree with much of what you say. It will always be impossible to eradicate hatred and I suppose in this diverse world someone could argue its a person's right to think hatred but not act hatred.

Personally I believe all the current publicity is probably made up of genuine people but also anarchists, revolutionists and good old wannabes.

As you say, the majority of people are not in any way racist or homophobic or any other hateful phobia. And they do not involve themselves in the debate. And the rest do not want to debate with the morons. Why would you?

World poverty is growing. Climate change is making it worse and the pandemic is stripping already low resources in many poor countries. So maybe while we choose to narrow the discussion to subjects such as gender equality or BLM, we are missing the real point.

I agree with much of what you say, too. I would add that it is worthwhile trying to understand how we got to this current position of what might be called identity politics, though not necessarily confined to that subject, in just a very short time, perhaps within the past five years. 

I need to disagree with you over world poverty, however, as statistically it is decreasing rather than increasing. Since the 1960s two of the most populous countries in the world, India and China, have gone from states where vast numbers of people where literally starving, to becoming middle-income countries of today and will continue to rise up the rankings of wealth into the foreseeable future. Of course, it doesn't mean that the wealth has been evenly distributed so that there is no longer areas of poverty. There still is. But both those countries, which account for a sizeable proportion of the world's population are moving in the right direction. 

Even if you examine Africa, which is still the world's poorest continent, the figures on poverty show considerable improvement.  Today, the average standard of living in Africa is now on a par with mid-1950s Britain, in other words at a level that some of us as youngsters would have experienced. Again, the improvement is not evenly spread and the Covid pandemic will hit economic growth very badly in the poorer nations. But we should recognise that progress is being made and we need to understand the underlying causes for progress

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3 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

I have researched it, it's exaggerated considerably due to the flaws I've already pointed out.

A classic one is that single-parent kids were apparently far more likely to be drug addicts. In a classic case of fiddling the figures the difference was only 1.2%.

The Children of Single Parents Are Doing Better Than You Realized | by Bella DePaulo | Fourth Wave | Medium

 

This is by far the most ridiculous thing you've suggested in this thread so far and you've made a lot of wild claims already.

There are countless real world examples most people can attest to that show children of single parent households don't have the same advantages, opportunities, benefits, healthcare, etc because as opposed to having two fully grown adults taking care of them, offering the opportunities to nurture the child in their most crucial stages of development, they just have one parent, who will of course need to work to provide food and shelter.

Which, as has already been stated,  is becoming increasingly difficult in the modern world where those "nuclear" families you like to complain about so much can barely scrape by with raising just one child as housing and standard of living costs go up - meaning most western nations are currently at a below replacement level birth rate (below 2 child per family). This will eventually lead to an economic collapse as there are less workers to fulfill jobs that fund the pensions of the elderly and maintain society which is why there is a push for immigration to fill this gap that will occur.

There are countless studies that have found the negative effects of single parent households which give off the impression it is highly more beneficial to a child to have a 2 parent ("nuclear family") raise them as opposed to a single parent.

Increased health risks of children with single mothers: the impact of socio-economic and environmental factors

"Children with single mothers showed an increased risk regarding parent-reported..."

  • poor health status
  • psychological problems
  • overweight
  • asthma 

"Adjusting for socio-economic factors attenuated the strength of the association of family type with child health. Although environmental factors were associated with most health outcomes investigated and children of single mothers were more often exposed, these environmental factors did not alter the differences between children with single mothers and couple families."

"Conclusions: The increased health risks of children from single-mother families vs. Couple families are partly explained by socio-economic factors, but not by the environmental exposures studied."

Children of single parent households have higher cases of mental health problems

Children of single parent households struggle more academically

 

 

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40 minutes ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Go and research absence of fathers and the effect on gang culture and crime and come back to me. The evidence isn’t flawed - it’s indisputable if, amongst those who delight in identity politics and trashing marriage and the family, unpopular. 
 

but all of that is quite beside the point. All I argued is that the current obsession with sexuality is beyond boring now- let’s just treat everyone nicely

I think you are referring to statistics rather than "research". I say that because this is another political football. It has been criticised, and rightly so, by many because it actually is lacking a lot of context.

For example, socio economic situation. And if you look at young people becoming involved in crime due to their socio economic background, you'd find a high correlation there too.

This is the problem with being spoon fed stuff and believing it rather than checking and asking questions about it.

As for treating everyone nicely - so long as they're not expressing their gender/sexuality in your view right? You know how not very different that is to certain countries which have laws about public expression of sexuality that is not straight?

Luckily, we live in a "free" society and you are welcome to freely not watch or partake in a Pride March or to ignore Pride Month. But by saying you don't want people to express things that you take issue with, you are going against the right everyone has and many fought and died for - freedom of expression.

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2 hours ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

I own several properties, so for me high property prices and high rents are absolutely brilliant - keep getting divorced folks. 

🤢🤢🤢

 

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12 minutes ago, Renskay said:

There are countless real world examples most people can attest to that show children of single parent households don't have the same advantages, opportunities, benefits, healthcare, etc because as opposed to having two fully grown adults taking care of them, offering the opportunities to nurture the child in their most crucial stages of development, they just have one parent, who will of course need to work to provide food and shelter.

Which, as has already been stated,  is becoming increasingly difficult in the modern world where those "nuclear" families you like to complain about so much can barely scrape by with raising just one child as housing and standard of living costs go up - meaning most western nations are currently at a below replacement level birth rate (below 2 child per family). This will eventually lead to an economic collapse as there are less workers to fulfill jobs that fund the pensions of the elderly and maintain society which is why there is a push for immigration to fill this gap that will occur.

There are countless studies that have found the negative effects of single parent households which give off the impression it is highly more beneficial to a child to have a 2 parent ("nuclear family") raise them as opposed to a single parent.

Increased health risks of children with single mothers: the impact of socio-economic and environmental factors

"Children with single mothers showed an increased risk regarding parent-reported..."

  • poor health status
  • psychological problems
  • overweight
  • asthma 

"Adjusting for socio-economic factors attenuated the strength of the association of family type with child health. Although environmental factors were associated with most health outcomes investigated and children of single mothers were more often exposed, these environmental factors did not alter the differences between children with single mothers and couple families."

"Conclusions: The increased health risks of children from single-mother families vs. Couple families are partly explained by socio-economic factors, but not by the environmental exposures studied."

Children of single parent households have higher cases of mental health problems

Children of single parent households struggle more academically

 

 

You've just gone and said it. This is about resources and the cost of living denying opportunities to many kids, and less the family structure itself re. the bit I underlined in black.

Those studies you linked potentially suffer from the same issues I mentioned before re. divorce being taken out of the marriage stats. It looks like, in trying to rebut my argument, you've may just have doubled down on the same flaws made beforehand (but as we can't see how they compiled the stats, none of us know for sure). On top of that, the last two studies are tiny, with under 160 people.

If countless studies say the same thing, yet all have the same methodological flaws, then they're meaningless.

This link opens to a litany of others showing research and also where other research has errors in it.

Single Parents and their Children: Don’t Believe the Prophecies of Doom - Bella DePaulo

Edited by TheGunnShow

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3 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Can go with that, and to be fair to @Dean Coneys boots the second part of his UK source on legislative options re. parental custody for fathers are also things I agree with. Where I disagree, and where the research is flawed, are the statistics beforehand.

As for pre-nups, there was the Rademacher/Granatino case, where a pre-nup actually was upheld for once. Not much progress seems to have been made since 2010 though.

Remember having these discussions with you over on the other side of the forum. I was quite impressed with your arguments at the time and you put up some informational links as well which expressed a point of view that is not often put forward, so I really enjoyed our contact at the time and can respect your decision to be childless in the same way we ought to respect most life style choices that are not harmful in any way. 

I can see why you might feel disgruntled at having to pay a premium for you lifestyle choice - through higher taxes and fewer benefits, as well as non-financial burdens - but maybe it's reasonable to pay a premium in order to enjoy such a lifestyle?

How so?

Because on of the ways a society arranges itself is to assure its continuation. As the elderly remove themselves at one end, so it requires newer members to be born as replacements in order to keep society going. If everyone in a society chose to be childless then in one generation that society would cease to exist. 

So it seems to me that a society can function with a certain amount of people remaining single or childless but for the majority it is better if they are arranged in such a way that children are conceived and nurtured. 

You posted some interesting links to suggest that maybe the institution of marriage may not be the most efficient way to raise children and undoubtedly there's a lot of merit in studying and researching the subject. But I don't think it negates the fact that a society has to arrange itself in a way that provides for the replacement of members, perhaps by offering benefits and incentives for people engage. But that, unfortunately for you, by choosing to opt out, which is a perfectly valid choice to make, do not get to receive those incentives and end up paying a premium. 

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50 minutes ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Maybe read beyond your favoured left wing voices. In the real world fatherlessness is a massive issue. I’ve worked with homeless and in prisons and guarantee it 
 

this is from America 

https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes 
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. 
     
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  

This is from uk 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/the-shocking-cost-of-fatherlessness-in-the-uk-33143/%3famp

Now would you like to post the figures for violence against women; or perhaps you could have a little guess who women are most at threat from, their male live-in partner or a male stranger? While your at it, have a little guess who children at most at threat from in regard to violent and sexual abuse, their mother's live in partner or a male stranger?

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36 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

You've just gone and said it. This is about resources and the cost of living denying opportunities to many kids, and less the family structure itself re. the bit I underlined in black.

Those studies you linked all suffer from the same issues I mentioned before re. divorce being taken out of the marriage stats. It looks like, in trying to rebut my argument, you've may just have doubled down on the same flaws made beforehand (but as we can't see how they compiled the stats, none of us know for sure).

If countless studies say the same thing, yet all have the same methodological flaws, then they're meaningless.

This link opens to a litany of others showing research and also where other research has errors in it.

Single Parents and their Children: Don’t Believe the Prophecies of Doom - Bella DePaulo

No. That is a very ignorant deduction from what I just said to you and stupidly cold on a human level to even suggest that a person growing up without the natural nurture of two parents in a home gets the exact same benefits if you just throw enough money at them.

You completely ignore the mental aspects are quite obviously linked to single parent households, that obviously don't solely happen just because you don't have enough money. if that were so ALL poor households would replicate the same results to the same extent which they do not.

As @Dean Coneys boots stated in his post there is a huge factor of people from single parent homes turning to crime, suicide or homelessness. 

The question you should ask is why beyond the inhuman way you have already done.

Clearly a person with a good family structure with two role models, each guiding them with unique abilities each parent can provide will have a healthier home life mentally as they feel actually loved and not abandoned (which is the primary emotion single children feel in regards to their departed parent)

It boggles the mind how you claim there are too many perks of having a "nuclear family" when in actuality it has never been harder for a young couple to settle down and have children and at the same time you advocate more money to be given to people in single parent households as a substitute for both parents in the home --- which is clearly an incentive to create more single parent households as has been the case in the USA where more and more people forego actually partnering up with the person who fathered/mothered their child to receive benefits from the government and the children of the situation to become mentally broken more and more with each generation and led down a path of crime (in many circumstances) and failure due the human circumstances beyond just money people like you can so readily overlook. 

It is particularly a problem in the African-American community where single parent households are at ridiculously high rates of 70% or higher African-American children born to single parent households. This clearly has an effect as there is a direct causation in these same disadvantaged children, who have their fathers substituted by government handouts, and those who turn to crime.

Too much strain is put on one person in raising a child, which no amount of money will fix. People are not machines.

Edited by Renskay

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1 hour ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

Maybe read beyond your favoured left wing voices. In the real world fatherlessness is a massive issue. I’ve worked with homeless and in prisons and guarantee it 
 

this is from America 

https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/

  • 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes 
  • 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.
  • 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  
  • 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average. 
     
  • 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  

This is from uk 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/the-shocking-cost-of-fatherlessness-in-the-uk-33143/%3famp

I'm also going to jump on the obvious issues with this.

First of all, you link to a Blog. Blogs are NOT reliable sources of accurate information for varying reasons, the first is obvious which is that they are not independently verified. Usually research comes from more recognised sources such as leading businesses in their industry, scientists and universities. Often there is competition which drives for better evidencing to support whatever the research is saying. They are then released and scrutanised by peers and competitors who don't agree. When it comes to pharmaceutical companies, their research has to be conducted in a certain way and pass certain criteria. If published and found not to meet this criteria they can be sued for millions for trying to mislead the market to buying medications etc.

So back on point. This Blog. It actually has some links to sources which is sort of nice. But then it refers to "Biblical Foundations" and a religious trip. That means that we know from the start that this Blog and the arguments within it will be pre-determined. Therefore the statistics have been cherry picked to suit the argument being made. Having checked the bibliography, a number of the links are dead - and none of the specific statistics are actually sourced properly, so you can't find them easily to check them. I would argue that this is deliberate.

Obvious question - qualification of "fatherless homes". For example, does it mean any home where the biological father is not present? Does it mean any home where no father is present? Does it mean any home where only a single mother is present? What about shared custody - does fatherless equate to two nights a week with their dad or does it have to be not at all? What if they see them every day after school but don't live with them?

Got to love this stat "90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes" - if they are homeless, they have no home. So do they mean in addition to the first question, that their father wasn't present at home before being homeless or now that they have no home their father isn't homeless with them.

This leads on to the most obvious next question - as all of these statistics are drawn from a plethora of different places, are the parameters all the same? For example, the US department of health/census will rely upon the census input from the public, we'll ignore inaccuracies incumbent with that in a minute. They are drawing information and forming statistics from across the US, others, will rely more upon samples - so the principles association, for example, will only involve schools that are willing to take part in sharing such information, others may be more localised etc.

This is also where the parameters come in, the census will mean people will follow legal definitions for things such as benefits if they are able to get them and other things. So for example, I know in the UK, to be considered to be living somewhere full time I think you have to be there 4 or 5 days a week to class it as your permanent residence. For children, the parent with custody will record on a census that their address is their permanent address even if the other parent is having them stay 2-3 nights a week etc.

So it is an incredibly weak source of statistics.

Then there is the "several times the average". No description or link has been provided to show us what the average is or where it has been gained from. Are they applying the average determined by one set of research to ALL of these statistics from other bits of research? If so this simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I'll give an example. I decide I want to look at the average income in Norfolk. I decide that I don't have a lot of time so I am going to try and get in about 100 surveys. I then find another piece of research looking at the same thing in the North East using a sample size of 50k people. I then use the average household income from the 100 people surveyed in Norwich and set it against the 50k people in the North East and state - "The average household income in Norwich is 6 times less than the average".

The inaccuracies come because of the poor relation of sample sizes used for the research and to qualify what the average is and where it came from. It would fail and likely be asked to enlarge the sample size.

In addition to that, comparing to the average isn't a very good method either. For example, does the 'average' used include or exclude the people you are comparing it to? Makes a big difference either way.

Edit: In addition, I wouldn't want to use any sort of US crime statistics when looking at any other country. The US has the biggest prison population in the world. 2.3million people. It is also a private system that runs factories as well as chain gangs - eg it makes a profit from prisoners, it is in the prison systems interest to have inmates. So the question then becomes, what are youth incarceration suicide rates like in the US? One source I found quickly said 2-3 times higher than the suicide rate of those of the same age not incarcerated. 
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-01/m-sda011719.php

Edited by chicken

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6 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

Remember having these discussions with you over on the other side of the forum. I was quite impressed with your arguments at the time and you put up some informational links as well which expressed a point of view that is not often put forward, so I really enjoyed our contact at the time and can respect your decision to be childless in the same way we ought to respect most life style choices that are not harmful in any way. 

I can see why you might feel disgruntled at having to pay a premium for you lifestyle choice - through higher taxes and fewer benefits, as well as non-financial burdens - but maybe it's reasonable to pay a premium in order to enjoy such a lifestyle?

How so?

Because on of the ways a society arranges itself is to assure its continuation. As the elderly remove themselves at one end, so it requires newer members to be born as replacements in order to keep society going. If everyone in a society chose to be childless then in one generation that society would cease to exist. 

So it seems to me that a society can function with a certain amount of people remaining single or childless but for the majority it is better if they are arranged in such a way that children are conceived and nurtured. 

You posted some interesting links to suggest that maybe the institution of marriage may not be the most efficient way to raise children and undoubtedly there's a lot of merit in studying and researching the subject. But I don't think it negates the fact that a society has to arrange itself in a way that provides for the replacement of members, perhaps by offering benefits and incentives for people engage. But that, unfortunately for you, by choosing to opt out, which is a perfectly valid choice to make, do not get to receive those incentives and end up paying a premium. 

The issue, really, as I said to Teemu is the premium. There is a conflation of "not wanting to pay taxes at all" which leads to the libertarian strawman which landed in this thread earlier on, and my issue which is that essentially, I am paying a premium - and actually getting far less in return. In short, I don't mind, and indeed encourage government to spend my taxes on this. Where I am unimpressed is that due to it, this premium arises - and when considering the cost of living, single people in particular have it very difficult, especially as by definition they only have one income.

I would actually pose a question for further thought at least:

If marriage really is so good and having kids is so great/natural, why is it financially/socially encouraged as hard as it is? Something intrinsically that good wouldn't need marketing, surely?

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Hedonistic lifestyle is the way forward.....then football and beer (an' a flash motor)......Oh, an' a one bedroom flat.....rented will do.....

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12 minutes ago, Renskay said:

No. That is a very ignorant deduction from what I just said to you and stupidly cold on a human level to even suggest that a person growing up without the natural nurture of two parents in a home gets the exact same benefits if you just throw enough money at them.

You completely ignore the mental aspects are quite obviously linked to single parent households, that obviously don't solely happen just because you don't have enough money. if that were so ALL poor households would replicate the same results to the same extent which they do not.

As @Dean Coneys boots stated in his post there is a huge factor of people from single parent homes turning to crime, suicide or homelessness. 

The question you should ask is why beyond the inhuman way you have already done.

Clearly a person with a good family structure with two role models, each guiding them with unique abilities each parent can provide will have a healthier home life mentally as they feel actually loved and not abandoned (which is the primary emotion single children feel in regards to their departed parent)

It boggles the mind how you claim there are too many perks of having a "nuclear family" when in actuality it has never been harder for a young couple to settle down and have children and at the same time you advocate more money to be given to people in single parent households as a substitute for both parents in the home --- which is clearly an incentive to create more single parent households as has been the case in the USA where more and more people forego actually partnering up with the person who fathered/mothered their child to receive benefits from the government and children of the situation to become mentally broken more and more with each generation and led down of crime and failure due the human circumstances beyond just money people like you can so readily overlook. 

It is particularly a problem in the African-American community where single parent households are at ridiculously high rates of 70% or higher  African-American children born to single parent households. This clearly has an effect as there is a direct causation in these same disadvantaged children, who have their fathers substituted by government handouts, and those who turn to crime.

Too much strain is put on one person in raising a child, which no amount of money will fix. People are not machines.

At the same time, you completely ignore the fact that many are single-parent families due to divorce, and the mental effect divorce has on kids. Which brings us back perfectly to my earlier point that much of the pro-marriage research looks as good as it is as the divorced and the widowed are taken out of the statistics. In other words, cherry-picking.

Being divorced/widowed is far more likely to be a source of the abandonment you mention. As for the African-Americans you mentioned, they're also as poverty-ridden as they get. Not to mention racism issues in America are probably a considerable factor in the mix.

It's a combination of the correlation/causation fallacy and the Texas sharpshooter all over again.

Edited by TheGunnShow

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8 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

At the same time, you completely ignore the fact that many are single-parent families due to divorce, and the mental effect divorce has on kids. Which brings us back perfectly to my earlier point that much of the pro-marriage research looks as good as it is as the divorced and the widowed are taken out of the statistics. In other words, cherry-picking.

Being divorced/widowed is far more likely to be a source of the abandonment you mention. As for the African-Americans you mentioned, they're also as poverty-ridden as they get. Not to mention racism issues in America are probably a considerable factor in the mix.

It's a combination of the correlation/causation fallacy and the Texas sharpshooter all over again.

And not to mention that having a criminal record, even a very low level one, can hugely impact upon your life chances in the US. Some employers simply won't take anyone on with one.

Hence why it has often been a topic of movies and TV shows over the years. Cool Hand Luke was sentenced for smashing up a parking meter, and then received more and more time for behaviour issues.

In the UK, it's criminal damage, you'd be fined and you might get a few months in prison but that's about it. I doubt they would add time on unless you assaulted someone when inside or committed a worse crime whilst there.

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1 minute ago, TheGunnShow said:

At the same time, you completely ignore the fact that many are single-parent families due to divorce, and the mental effect divorce has on kids. That is far more likely to be a source of the abandonment you mention. As for the African-Americans you mentioned, they're also as poverty-ridden as they get. Not to mention racism issues in America are probably a considerable factor in the mix.

It's a combination of the correlation/causation fallacy and the Texas sharpshooter all over again.

Why is it any better for a single parent household to be created by divorce? I know you will try to make the claim that people should be entitled to escape partnerships that are abusive but this is a minority of circumstances that motivate the reasons for a divorce.

Most divorces occur for reasons that would have otherwise not been issues in the past as rather than a bond for life in the original intention of the concept, marriage is now treated as some bureaucratic label that people do not feel any responsibility towards even if is there quite literally people depending on them to do so (i.e. Children)

We should not incentivize single parent households in any circumstance where it is not necessary because in each instance we deteriorate the quality of life of all children involved and then create a generation of people mentally broken for reasons far less important than they are suggested to be.

Why would we desire to make the emotional and mental standard of living worse for our next generation?

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Just now, Renskay said:

Why is it any better for a single parent household to be created by divorce? I know you will try to make the claim that people should be entitled to escape partnerships that are abusive but this is a minority of circumstances that motivate the reasons for a divorce.

Most divorces occur for reasons that would have otherwise not been issues in the past as rather than a bond for life in the original intention of the concept, marriage is now treated as some bureaucratic label that people do not feel any responsibility towards even if is there quite literally people depending on them to do so (i.e. Children)

We should not incentivize single parent households in any circumstance where it is not necessary because in each instance we deteriorate the quality of life of all children involved and then create a generation of people mentally broken for reasons far less important than they are suggested to be.

Why would we desire to make the emotional and mental standard of living worse for our next generation?

No-one said it was better for the single-parent household to be created by divorce. I'm simply saying that when such research is done showing how a married couple is better for the child such as the links you've put in for discussion, they miss out the divorced and widowed in the statistics for the married despite the divorced and widowed being married to reach that state. They are therefore cherry-picking in the process, which therefore puts their conclusions into question.

Deliberately omitting divorced and widowed people from marriage stats is generally how this research is made.

No-one here is disputing the negative effects of divorce (or, if we're talking single-parent families, death of a parent, so widowed). It's been well documented in longitudinal studies that divorced people require years to get back to similar levels of happiness/contentment to before their marriages. However, this is exactly how much of the pro-marriage stuff is spun to make it look far better. 

When such research starts putting the divorced/widowed back in with the rest of the marriage group, where they should be, marriage tends to look a fair bit worse. Now I won't say it's better for the kid to have a single parent in all cases, but I suspect a kid with a single parent but other good role models (sports coaches / teachers) could do just as well if not far better than a kid with two parents who are not in a great relationship. Such studies can never hope to take such varied factors into account. There was one survey about twenty years ago looking at people who were famous enough to merit a column in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whether infamous or famous. It turned out around third of them had lost a parent before the age of 15.

This article is not about single-parent families - but about how the overwhelming majority of pro-marriage research has serious flaws, so any research using these is inherently shaky at best. By definition, that includes research into single-parent families.

Cracking the Code: How to Think Critically About Reports of the Alleged Superiority of Married People | Psychology Today United Kingdom

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9 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

No-one said it was better for the single-parent household to be created by divorce. I'm simply saying that when such research is done showing how a married couple is better for the child such as the links you've put in for discussion, they miss out the divorced and widowed in the statistics for the married despite the divorced and widowed being married to reach that state. They are therefore cherry-picking in the process, which therefore puts their conclusions into question.

I don't understand this. They are researching the benefits of children being raised by two-parent households and you are saying the research is flawed because they aren't including households that aren't two-parent?!

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1 minute ago, canarydan23 said:

I don't understand this. They are researching the benefits of children being raised by two-parent households and you are saying the research is flawed because they aren't including households that aren't two-parent?!

No, I'm saying that when pro-marriage research is done, they always leave those who were initially married out. The point there is the family was a two-parent one in the past. Furthermore, who's more likely to feel abandoned - a kid that lost a parent through divorce or death and actually had that second parent to start with, or a kid that didn't have one in the first place?

This also brings up other problems that such research can't really resolve. Some single-parent families may then become two-parent ones again. How does the kid react after that? (Which brings us to another weakness, as many studies are not longitudinal, they don't measure the same people over time and if anything tend to merely be a snapshot of people at a point in time).

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