44 Comments

This is a great review and discussion.

The question that occurs to me now, which I almost can't believe I'm asking: Is single parenthood bad for children?

Could it be that we always had a distribution of circumstances and outcomes for kids, some better than others, and that the real change is that today children on the bottom end of the distribution are more likely to have unmarried parents, but that it's not the unmarried part that's doing the legwork?

I'm not 100% sure how you'd get at this question, but widening gaps in outcomes over time as single parenthood became more prominent might be one signal.

If I remember right (which maybe I don't), Charles Murrary once looked at children who had a single parent due to the death of a parent vs the more conventional absent second parent, finding that children of a deceased parent had better outcomes. That would support the idea that it's factors correlated with non-marriage, not the non-marriage itself, that is causal.

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I also remember hearing about that paper but couldn't find it when writing this piece. I'm therefore, considering the state of the social science literature, forced to assume it's not completely true.

My guess is that for maybe 30% of single-parent households the kids would be better off if the parents were together.

- Men are generally improved by marriage and cohabitation

- Extra resources (both time and money) are helpful, and even if the father contributes fairly, just having two houses is more expensive

Also, there are the comparisons between states with different divorce laws which shows that more liberal divorce decreased kids' outcomes.

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The divorce law comparison is more convincing than the lenient-judges study, even it's a really clever approach. It's not hard to imagine a man being a poor parent if he'd -- checks notes -- otherwise be in jail.

And your (true) point about marriage improving men is valuable. The man a woman did not marry isn't necessarily the same person he'd be if they had married.

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Very true -- although it's worse stressing that in the US 9% (!!!) of men go to prison at some point. So it's not an insignificant number.

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I would think it obvious that the outcomes for the kids of educated single (or divorced) women with careers would be better than the kids of married day laborers.

The tendency is to control for income, then say look, controlled for income, single parents have worse outcomes,. But if *marriage* were the key, then all single parents would do noticeably do worse than all married (or at least on average).

But I've long thought it obvious that this isn't done because the inevitable finding would be that poverty is bad for *all* forms of parenting. Which could lead to policies like reducing support like food stamps and welfare and even the EITC in favor of things like tax deductions for any investment in children. So make child care, child support, tutoring, sports fees, private school, tax deductible. But do *not* support stay at home spouses in any way, as that increases risk of poverty.

And that discussion would be very unpleasant.

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Substance use seems to be a common theme in these stories. I think this is good news since reducing substance use (especially alcohol and marijuana) is probably more tractable than somehow training men to be more conscientious.

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Beautifully written.

I agree that a significant portion of American men are not marriage material. However, women's expectations of their partners are quite high. I would argue too high. They are much more likely to leave a less-than-ideal partnership, albeit not abusive, regardless of its negative impact on their children.

Interestingly, gay male marriages are the most stable while lesbian divorces far surpass straight divorces.

Men need to step up. And women need to lower their standards, just a bit.

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(reiterating some of my comment below but I think it's relevant to your comment here). Why are their standards not higher for the fathers of their children, though? Why would they have kids with someone they wouldn't marry? I don't get that part.

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I suspect it’s because the average self-control of the readers of the Substack is far greater than the average self-control of an unmarried parent

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I often wonder to what extent culture is for keeping people from making really poor choices.

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"Culture" or societal pressure was largely to keep people from making choices that were poor for society.

Society works better with intact families (and maybe only works period with intact families as far as current advanced societies go; I don't think much of the west is really functioning on a sustainable basis now; they are drawing down on prior capital, both social and material, established by prior generations).

Fortunately most of the decisions societal pressure discourages are also bad for the individuals making them, so on net it was a pretty good system, with outliers left worse off (those in truly abusive marriages e.g.) Lots of sad divorcees right now that rushed through a frivolous divorce because the immediate stigma is no longer there and they are not conscientious enough to properly account for the long term consequences. Lots of never married, past their prime people trying to convince themselves they're happy without a family and sometimes without a good career because they weren't treated with the lack of respect that partying away your 20's and early 30's used to bring.

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As a gay married male (for the past 15 years), I find it not that surprising. Most gay married couples I know have been together for a really long time. There are several reasons this might be the case, the main two being that open marriages are really common among gay folks and gay male couples are unlikely to have the burden of child-raising, which can breed resentment.

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Great job! I had most of the same thoughts when reading the book and had not seen them written up anywhere else in this level of detail. I could not help but think that if this is the strongest case the pro-marriage crowd can muster, the case is pretty weak.

I would also have preferred a sharper focus on the strongest pieces of evidence we have, instead the book is full of correlational stories. Much more quasi experimental evidence would have strengthened the book. The judge sending some fathers to jail study for example was fascinating and one of the better pieces of evidence brought up. But as you say, Kearney did not take the implications seriously enough.

Wilcox in Get married also discusses the fracking boom. His interpretation was that merely earning money is not sufficient for men to get married and have children inside wedlock, but that the structure of some jobs basically domesticates men and that is what is needed. This seemed plausible to me.

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Thanks so much!

My rough take is monogamous marriage based on love are not human default. I think they're a great institution for women and children but it's a fragile institution. We probably can't even think up all the ways in which European society has enforced this as the standard and ask culture changes, we should expect, just for mean reversion reasons, that it becomes less pro-monogamous marriage.

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This is great and reflects what I was thinking when this book came out. The marginal straight man is probably a piece of shit loser and I don't think there is a way to change that.

I'm also very interested in the women who want to be single mothers. Why are they doing this to themselves? My understanding is that lesbian women are not becoming single mothers at nearly the same rates and that this is largely due to preferences, not access to sperm.

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I think some people just really want to be mothers ...

My grandma told me that it didn't matter if I found a husband but that I should want a child and it was the most important thing in her life

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"The marginal straight man is probably a piece of shit loser"

Again, this is likewise true of the marginal straight woman who is having kids she can't afford that taxpayers spend billions supporting even they, too, grow up to be marginal straight people.

Why give women a pass on this? They can stop having kids until they are capable of supporting them on their own. If they don't, then they are inflicting a crappy life on their kids even more so than the dad of those kids, as she had a choice.

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Cool article

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I’d give a children’s allowance on the basis of the number of children, including to one parent families. What about more for two parent families? It sounds attractive, but how easy is it to track? Joint tax return?

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You are dismissing the case for UBI too easily. Having the extra income added to the household by each parent increases the likelihood of them wanting the other around. Conversely, if the relationship becomes abusive, it's easier to take the kids and yourself to safety. It makes more a sensible amount of parental leave more feasible.

Yes, it can be expensive as can any public benefit. There are various ways to structure taxes to support it. One option is a more progressive income tax would rule people out of the UBI benefit at a certain point (due to taxes being more progressive.) but if that person's earnings drop or go away completely for UBI is there for them. It would also help a lot with reentry of incarcerated people and prevention of recidivism, leading to parents who are more able to engage with their kids.

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You correctly identified one of the major immediate causes: the quality of men available. But you didn't ask why. Why are so many American men not marriage material? Why are American men behaving so much worse than they were in the past? Did the genetic composition of American males dramatically change in a single generation, while that of American women somehow remain constant? (And all this during a time when per capita income tripled). Or did we lower our social expectations of men? As Rob Henderson puts it, "Young men will only do what’s expected of them. Which today is not much."

https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/no-one-expects-young-men-to-do-anything

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I'm not sure I believe that the men are worse than they have been in the past. I'm open to Henderson's argument here but I think it's also very plausible that many women were stuck in relationships with men who hit them and their children and drank most of their earnings

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I think a different way to put this is that generally a stable marriage over the long term is very beneficial, but virtually all marriages have periods where it's tough or at the very least, monotonous. In the past, there were a lot of social/cultural pressures to stick it out in marriage. That resulted in some bad situations where men or women were "trapped" in pretty unhealthy situations, but for the vast majority of partnerships, the long term good outweigh the short term negatives.

We've generally eliminated most of those social/cultural pressures, so now high conscientious people on average get and stay married because they recognize the long term benefits and don't overreact to short term struggles. Low conscientious people do not get and stay married, and so their children get the double whammy of low conscientious genes and a poorer home environment.

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"Did the genetic composition of American males dramatically change in a single generation, while that of American women somehow remain constant?"

Once again, boggled at the people who completely forget that we have completely structured our welfare system to support women who have children they can't afford even as they were granted near complete control over their choice to have them, from birth control to abortion.

Hilarious you think loser men are the problem. No, the losers are equally found among the sexes. We just spend billions supporting one gender's shitty choices and then whine because the other gender won't change. Why should they? Women haven't, and they were given far more control and support and we sure as shit don't expect much of them.

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So, what would it take to get men to be better? Incentives, role models and guidance.

A long, long time ago there used to be different tax rates for single men and married men. Higher and lower respectively. Inequality was lower then, so the effect of different tax rates was more widespread.

While reality TV and TV about the lives of celebrities (rappers or billionaires, say) show men being wildly successful with women by deception and manipulation, men will simply not believe women when they say they want a stable, reliable co-parent. What they see is women responding to excitement.

This is a collective action problem for women: to ensure that the (charismatic, powerful or wealthy) Bad Boy does not get all the girls--not any of them. Not in fiction, not in reality.

Those are necessary, but a clearly laid out career/life pathway which is set up to make being a good father the easiest path in life for men, and a training sequence that equips men for it, are also required.

We are a long way from any of these. A loooong way.

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Why is the assumption that men have to be "better"? Women are the ones having children they can't afford without massive governmental support they prefer to dealing with the men who knocked them up.

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How would you define a 'good man' in the context of this data?

And how does that compare against what you personally think of a 'good man'?

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The discussion of the marriage penalty deserves more clarity.

The calculation of the marriage tax makes it seem like almost irrelevant (2.69%). When in reality the marriage penalty can be more than 100% of the equivalent wages for a full time worker earning minimum wage (and then not counting the cost of child care -in a country with terrible maternity leave benefits and next to none paternity leave benefits-).

The marriage penalty for poor people (benefits cliff) has other pernicious effects, including for single men.

There is no need for UBI in order to deal with the benefits cliff. A proper phase out system would let people know if their marriage was actually stable.

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There's a very big range. If you dig down into the paper it finds the penalty can be as high as 45.8% for some people and others can gain 74.4%.

But I wouldn't dismiss a penalty of 2.69%, I think it can be psychologically very relevant to see that you won't be eligible for a benefit that seems important to you. Even if you get a little but more of something else.

I think you're confusing a marriage penalty with a motherhood penalty. This study assumes that motherhood is constant

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My point is that in making your case you undermine it by favouring a statistical result/effect rather than an explanation that more people will both understand and identify with.

I'm almost certain that people that need benefits don't think of them this way. You are either eligible or you aren't. And because of the way many of these programs are designed (ie categorical eligibility) having one benefit often means you are eligible for many others.

So your 2.69% is probably a mere statistic (an average or mean) rather than a meaningful figure for any given population group.

I know how these programs work pretty well, so I don't understand your basis for saying I'm confusing marriage vs motherhood. I'm aware there are penalties both for marriage and for working/earning money.

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The thing I don't understand is why these women have kids with someone they wouldn't consider good enough to marry. Are they unable to access birth control and / or abortions? I just don't get the argument that women's standards are preventing marriage but not child birth

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In Edin's research (Promises I can keep, the book Aria mentions) it seems like the answer is clear: because they highly value children. Their choice is not between being stably married to a decent guy or having a child with an unreliable father. Their choice is between having an unreliable father for their child or not to have children at all.

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Yes I think this is it

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And (as I've commented throughout) it's odd that given the outcomes of their kids are the problem, it's very odd we don't spend more time telling *them* to change their behavior. Instead, we give them billions for bad outcomes.

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What's the alternative? Do we punish children to teach them to have better parents?

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I don't think it's right to view it as "punishment" for the kids. You would be justified in saying "It's not fair to punish the children whose parents split up because of xyz welfare policy"

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There may not be an alternative, but at the very least we should return to accepting that this situation is the result of low achieving women given choices that result in kids who will be punished if we don't give them money, as opposed to thinking men are the problem.

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"there are the comparisons between states with different divorce laws which shows that more liberal divorce decreased kids' outcomes."

If the study didn't control for parental incomes, though, it wouldn't be much good. And if it did control for parent income, then every study I've seen has compared like to like. There's no evidence that I've seen saying that a divorced woman making $200K/year has kids with worse outcomes than a married couple making $60K.

So yes, if you marry, in most cases it's better to stay married. But if you define the optimal outcomes for kids, then more income > marital status.

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Kearney does a very crude version of this where she looks at educational attainment and she shows that if the mother went to college, then her child probably went to college regardless of marital status. If the mother dropped out of highschool, then they probably weren't going to college. But if the mother had completely high school, marital status was a great predictive factor in whether her child went to college.

Obviously very difficult to split this up from simple IQ. But I think you roughly see here that marital status doesn't make an extreme difference, but it probably does on the margin.

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Completing college: high IQ on average, thus child goes to college.

Not completing high school: low IQ overwhelmingly likely.

BUT

Completing high school has no real indicators for IQ--you could have as low an IQ as those who dropped out, or genius level.

So absent any meaning for IQ in high school graduates, marital status becomes a decent proxy. High school grad, married, and parent (in that order) has on average a higher IQ than high school grad, unmarried, parent.

And yes, I agree that marital status makes a difference controlled for IQ. That's where I began.

I was making a point to Andrew above that there's strong resistance to acknowledging that poverty, period, is bad for kids and that low skilled (low IQ) married couples will have much worse outcomes than high IQ single parents.

The policy outcomes from that would likely be: fewer supports for low income women having children and more support (ie tax breaks) for parents (regardless of marital status) investing in kids. Making daycare, private school, tutoring, sports activities, tax deductible would be very helpful to parents.

But instead, we go through nonsense like daycare tax credits (worthless compared to deductible whole amount) and vouchers (taken away from public school rather than an investment in child) and every time we do this we have to go through the endless argument of how to reward stay at home moms, rather than pointing out that she's already a tax deduction.

Poverty is bad for kids. We are structurally vested into arguing that marriage fixes poverty when it in fact would not (for reasons you observe in the article). Ideally, we would figure out some way to encourage poor women to have far fewer kids (probably involves money) and encourage non-poor parents to have more by allowing them to deduct more expenses.

And of course, we'd have to figure out a way to do this that didn't sound like eugenics and without penalizing the kids of the women who don't respond to encouragement.

Alternately, we restrict immigration radically and give low IQ men more manageable job opportunities while still encouraging non-poor parents to deduct more expenses. I prefer this approach, but in the meantime I just have trouble taking the debate seriously.

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Feminism

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It seems that given the demonstrably negative effect that birth out of wedlock has on the wellbeing of children it should be far less socially acceptable. Granted, this would come at the cost of further lowering the birth rate.

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Yes, I think it probably means fewer babies. Better to be born out of wedlock than not at all

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Not necessarily, given the outcomes. Probably better to focus on changing women's behavior.

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