Single mødre debatten

Debatten har nu fundet vej til Information, også der går bølgerne højt. En spændende debat faktisk.

Hvad der sker ikke familielivet er både et symptom på en samfund i forandring, men hvad man skal gøre sig klart, er at det er udvikling som forgrener sig langt ud i fremtiden, med de konsekvenser det nu har:

Helmuth Nyborg ser det som en positiv selektionsproces, hvor de intelligente kvinder kan få adgang til "intelligent" sæd og vi får løst problemet med at intelligente får færre børn delvist, ved at kvinder som måske ellers ikke ville få børn, får det alligevel.

Men spørgsmålet er om de intelligente kvinder ikke i stedet kunne få adgang til intelligente mænd.

Men så er vi ovre i noget som ikke kan besluttes politisk, noget med personlighed og indstilling.
Noget med evnen til at tage det sure med det søde. Noget med at være åben over for hvad andre mennesker kan give uden at stirre sig blind på det man ikke får.

Lev og lad leve. Og huske at give kejseren, undskyld ægtemagen, hvad ægtemagens er.

En af debatørene linker dog til en undersøgelse, som viser at børn af enlige mødre klarer sig dårligere.

Her gælder det naturligvis, at det er nok ikke ressourcestærke kvinder man har undersøgt - overvejende i hvert fald.

Men enlige mødre er der til gengæld mange af.

Fra undersøgelsens resultater:

Lone mothers

Are poorer

• Lone mothers are twice as likely as two-parent families to live in poverty at any one time (69% of lone mothers are in the bottom 40% of household income versus 34% of couples with children).²³
• Lone parents have twice as much risk of experiencing persistent low income (spending three out of four years in the bottom 30% of household income) as couples with children – 50% versus 22%.²⁴
• Lone parents are more than twice as likely as couples with children to have no savings (68% versus 28%).²⁵
• Lone parents are eight times as likely to live in a workless household as couples with children (45% versus 5.4%).²⁶
• Lone parent households are over twelve times as likely to be receiving income support as couples with dependent children (51% versus 4%). They are 2.5 times as likely to be receiving working families tax credit (24% versus 9%).²⁷

Are more likely to suffer from stress, depression, and other emotional and psychological problems

• At the age of 33, divorced and never-married mothers were 2.5 times more likely than married mothers to experience high levels of psychological distress. Even after accounting for financial hardship, prior psychological distress, and other demographic factors, lone mothers were still 1.4 times more likely to have psychological distress.²⁸
• Lone mothers are seven times as likely to report problems with their ‘nerves’, even after controlling for other demographic factors.²⁹

Have more health problems

• Results from the British General Household Survey show that, even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic circumstances, lone mothers still have significantly poorer health than partnered mothers for four out of five health variables.³⁰
• Divorced women have death rates which are 21% higher on average than those of married women. Death rates for divorced women aged 25 and older range from 35%-58% higher than those of married women of the same age.³¹

May have more problems interacting with their children

• Young people in lone-parent families were 30% more likely than those in two-parent families to report that their parents rarely or never knew where they were.³²
• After controlling for other demographic factors, lone parents were
• 2.25 times more likely to report their child’s behaviour was upsetting to them.
• 30% more likely to report significant arguments with their children.
• 60% more likely to expect too much or have too high expectations of their child.³³

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Non-resident biological fathers

Are at risk of losing contact with their children

• Twenty to thirty percent of non-resident fathers have not seen their children in the last year. Another 20%–40% see their children less than once per week.³⁴

Are more likely to have health problems and engage in high-risk behaviour

• Divorced men aged 20 to 60 have 70%–100% higher rates of death than married men.³⁵
• In a population of young adults, divorced men and women were twice as likely to increase their drinking compared to those who remained married. In this case, there was virtually no selection effect. In other words, heavy drinking did not lead to divorce. Rather, divorce led to heavy drinking.³⁶
• Divorced non-residential fathers were significantly more likely to smoke marijuana and to drive a car after drinking alcohol.³⁷
• Divorced men reported the highest rates of unsafe sex, with 15.7% reporting both multiple partners and lack of condom use in the previous year, compared with 3% of married men, 10.4% of cohabiting men, and 9.6% of single men.³⁸

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Children living without their biological fathers

Are more likely to live in poverty and deprivation

• Children living in lone-parent households are twice as likely to be in the bottom 40% of household income distribution compared with children living in two-parent households (75% versus 40%).³⁹
• Even after controlling for low incomes, children growing up with never-married lone mothers are especially disadvantaged according to standard scales of deprivation.⁴⁰
• After controlling for other demographic factors, children in lone-parent households are still 2.8 times as likely to forego family outings.⁴¹

Are more likely to have emotional or mental problems

• After controlling for other demographic factors, children in lone-parent households are 2.5 times as likely to be sometimes or often unhappy. They are 3.3 times as likely to score poorly on measures of self-esteem.⁴²
• Among children aged five to fifteen years in Great Britain, those from lone-parent families were twice as likely to have a mental health problem as those from intact two-parent families (16% versus 8%).⁴³
• A major longitudinal study of 1,400 American families found that 20%–25% of children of divorce showed lasting signs of depression, impulsivity (risk-taking), irresponsibility, or antisocial behaviour compared with 10% of children in intact two-parent families.⁴⁴

Have more trouble in school

• Children from lone-parent families are more likely to score poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills.⁴⁵
• After controlling for other demographic factors, children from lone-parent households were
• 3.3 times more likely to report problems with their academic work, and
• 50% more likely to report difficulties with teachers.⁴⁶

Tend to have more trouble getting along with others

• After controlling for other demographic factors, children from lone-parent households are three times as likely to report problems with friendships.⁴⁷
• Children from lone-parent households are more likely to have behaviour problems or engage in antisocial behaviour.⁴⁸
• Boys from lone-parent households are more likely to show hostility to adults and other children, and be destructive of belongings.⁴⁹

Have higher risk of health problems

• It has been estimated that parental divorce increases children’s risk of developing health problems by 50%.⁵⁰
• In England and Wales during 2000, the sudden infant death rate for babies jointly registered by unmarried parents living at different addresses was over three times greater than for babies born to a married mother and father (0.66 per 1,000 live births as compared with 0.18). Where the birth was registered in the sole name of the mother, the rate of sudden infant death was seven times greater than for those born within marriage (1.27 per 1,000 live births as compared with 0.18).⁵¹
• After controlling for other demographic factors, children living in lone-parent households were 1.8 times as likely to have psychosomatic health symptoms and illness such as pains, headaches, stomach aches, and feeling sick.⁵²

Are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.

• According to data from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), young people are five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse and emotional maltreatment if they grew up in a lone-parent family, compared with children in two-birth-parent families.⁵³
• All studies of child-abuse victims which look at family type identify the step-family as representing the highest risk to children⁵⁴ – with the risk of fatal abuse being 100 times higher than in twobiological- parent families according to international from 1976.⁵⁵ However, the use of the term step-father has become problematic, as, whilst it used to refer to men who were married to women with children by other men, it is now used to describe any man in the household, whether married to the mother or not. An NSPCC study of 1988 which separated married step-fathers from unmarried cohabiting men found that married step-fathers were less likely to abuse: ‘for nonnatal fathers marriage appears to be associated with a greater commitment to the father role’.⁵⁶
• Analysis of 35 cases of fatal abuse which were the subject of public inquiries between 1968 and 1987 showed a risk for children living with their mother and an unrelated man which was over 70 times higher than it would have been for a child with two married biological parents.⁵⁷

Are more likely to run away from home

• Children from lone-parent families are twice as likely to run away from home as those from two-birth-parent families (14% compared to 7%).⁵⁸

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Teenagers living without their biological fathers

Are more likely to experience problems with sexual health

• According to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, children from lone-parent households were more likely to have had intercourse before the age of 16 when compared with children from two-natural-parent households. Boys were 1.8 times as likely (42.3% versus 23%) and girls were 1.5 times as likely (36.5% versus 23.6%). After controlling for socio-economic status, level of communication with parents, educational levels and age at menarche for girls, the comparative odds of underage sex actually increased to 2.29 for boys and 1.65 for girls.
• Compared to young adults from two-naturalparent households, young men from lone-parent households were 1.8 times as likely to have foregone contraception at first intercourse (13.6% versus 7.5%) and young women were 1.75 times as likely (16.1% versus 9.2%). After controlling for other factors, these comparative odds were reduced to 1.11 for men and 1.23 for women.
• Girls from lone-parent households were 1.6 times as likely to become mothers before the age of 18 (11% versus 6.8%). Controlling for other factors did not reduce the comparative odds.⁵⁹

Are more likely to become teenage parents

• Analysis of data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) indicated that women whose parents had divorced were twice as likely to become teenage mothers as those from intact families (25% versus 14%). Men from divorced families were 1.8 times more likely to become fathers by the age of 22 than men from intact families (23% versus 13%). After controlling for childhood poverty and behavioural and educational problems, the odds for teenage motherhood and early fatherhood were reduced to 1.4. This means that children of divorce were still 40% more likely to become parents early, even after considering other family background factors.⁶⁰

Are more likely to offend

• Children aged 11 to 16 years were 25% more likely to have offended in the last year if they lived in lone-parent families.⁶¹
• Young men from lone-parent families were 1.6 times as likely to be persistent offenders as those from two-natural-parent families. The effects of living in lone-parent families seem to operate indirectly, through reduced levels of parental supervision.⁶²
• In focus group discussions, young people in prisons spoke frequently about disruption in their family lives and about their fathers’ absence.
  

Det er så yndigt at følges ad, ikke nødvendigvis. Det virker dog ikke som lykken at lade være, det giver andre bekymringer.