Conference moira::parenting_v3

Well thank goodness they didn't say anything negative about
the male parent/non-parent/step-parent/etc..

    RE:-1  That's a heck of a conclusion to draw.  I saw it as saying
    something about society as a whole (yes, both male and female) as
    opposed to picking on women.  But I guess that's as good a way as any
    to discredit an article which supports the (what used to be)
    traditional family (which seems to be very popular these days).
    
    
    Mike  

    re: .1 & .2  The tone is degrading rapidly here, folks.  There's
    no reason to get petty and snide about this.  
    
    That said, I noticed some of what .1 is talking about -- ie, all
    families mentioned in the article were children living with their
    biological mother.  There were no figures on children living in a
    single-parent family headed by a man or step-families living with
    biological father and a step-mother. Completely ignored were children
    of families with both parents of the same sex.
    
    Therefore, the study is incomplete.  The variations which were omitted
    are statistically less common than the ones included.  That may be the
    reason they were omitted, or their omission may indicate a bias on the
    part of the researchers.  There is insufficient data to tell.

    re: -.1  It is pretty obvious that they have left out other
    non-tradional family situations (foster homes, children with
    two adoptive parents, father-headed families).  
    
    re: .0 
    
  >  Children living in mother-headed families or with mothers and
  >  stepfathers were anywhere from 40% to 70% more likely to have
  >  had to repeat a grade than those living with both biological
  >  parents.  Children from disrupted marriages were over 70% more
  >  likely to have been suspended or expelled, and those living
  >  with never-married mothers more than twice as likely.
    
    This leads me to wonder if the problems here are a carry over 
    from problems in the marriage before the breakup, and, if they
    would have been even worse if the marriage were to have continued.
    
    
    Valerie

    Whoa, people!  Slow down a bit!
    
    Just because the WSJ article doesn't mention something does not
    mean the real study also doesn't mention it.  It's not "pretty
    obvious" that anything was left out at all; it's just obvious
    that the article author picked the most newsworthy items from
    a long paper.
    
    One thing to consider about any study is that you can't match
    everything: while you can match "biological" and "step" familes
    to some extent, you can't match "length of marriage of parents"
    and "length of time children have been with parents" at the same
    time.  The history of a child has an impact on the child's present,
    and that may be the difference which shows up in the injury and
    illness statistics.
    
    I think it's clear that the stress of a divorce has some impact
    here; the real study may have a breakdown along the lines of
    "within a year of the divorce", "second year", "third year" and
    so on--we just don't know.  If you are really interested in arguing
    back, go get the actual paper.
    
    			-John Bishop

    .0 > This article was preceeded by one on a survey of the level of
    .0 > sexual activity of children from different kinds of households, with
    .0 > daughters of divorced mothers being more active, etc.
    
    That's rather distorted.  The first finding cited is that "children
    whose mothers had married young generally had more accepting attitudes
    toward premarital sex than children whose mothers married older." 
    Second finding: "Children whose mothers were pregnant before marriage
    were substantially more sexually active themselves than children
    conveived after marriage."  It then says "parental divorce and
    remarriage had similar impact."  The final point: "One particularly
    interesting finding . . . was that children whose mothers divorced and 
    remarried were far more sexually active than those whose mothers didn't
    remarry."  No findings whatsoever refer to "daughters of divorced
    mothers."
    
    Also unmentioned is that the study was confined to children born to
    Detroit families in July, 1961. Family patterns were quite different in
    the '60s, and perhaps quite different in Detroit.  There is also no
    indication as to whether this study was controlled for income, race,
    or other factors.
    
    I wouldn't take either "article" very seriously.  They are really just
    items in a "human interest" column meant to lighten up the Wall Street
    Journal.  The column doesn't even bother to cite where the findings
    were originally published. 
    
    		- Bruce

    re .6:
    
    When I typed in the article, the only part of the preceeding one
    on the scrap of paper I had was fractions of the last sentence.
    I thought I'd remembered details better, but it's clear I didn't.
    
    To clarify more: the "sexual activity" survey is the Detroit one,
    and necessarily must be about the decades-old past (because the children
    in question must have grown up enough to have been sexually active for
    several years).  The "injury" survey is based on un-attributed
    government statistics, and could be about more recent events.
    
    I suspect the intermediate source is American Demographics, a
    subsidiary of Dow Jones, but I don't know.
    
    			-John Bishop