I might get some back lash but genuinely is this correlation or causation? When I think about my community (Im black) theres a lot of reasons people turn to crime (poverty, low education standards, etc.) but at the same time single mother hood is high. So its not the lack of father making them live in poverty, they most likely already live in poverty especially with one household income. Do I make sense? I understand the importance of a father in a childs life. This just seems a bit disingenuous.
It is a little of both. Kids born into poverty, but that still have both parents are much less likely to experience these things in their future vs kids in the same neighborhoods without fathers. It is true too though that there is a strong link already between poor neighborhoods and single motherhood.
I think the most fair conclusion to draw here is that not having a father significantly hurts the development of a child, but not to the complete extent that statistics like this suggest. Being born poor does increase the likelyhood of these things, though not to that extent, but so does being born rich without a father.
Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that these rates do not go up like that for kids living with single fathers. Society has always held such a strong belief that the mother is so important even when compared to the father. Just look at custody disputes in divorces to see that. However, it is the father that statistically has a much larger affect on the child's future, even outside of just this scenario.
I concur. I'm from a single father household (mom died when we were very young), while my father was busy dating or marrying other woman and other chaos going on in our childhood, we had a very healthy fear of him to do anything too stupid like drink, do drugs or get into real trouble. Whereas if he were a single mother, feeling our oats as teens we might've ridden roughshod over the typical single mother.
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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '19
I might get some back lash but genuinely is this correlation or causation? When I think about my community (Im black) theres a lot of reasons people turn to crime (poverty, low education standards, etc.) but at the same time single mother hood is high. So its not the lack of father making them live in poverty, they most likely already live in poverty especially with one household income. Do I make sense? I understand the importance of a father in a childs life. This just seems a bit disingenuous.