The National Review Online published this column
claiming that married mothers deserve special praise, because staying
married is soooo much better for the children. After a couple of creepy
digs at single motherhood and sperm donors (and the NY Times, of course) author W. Bradford Wilcox claims, "...married
mothers serve our nation's neighborhoods, children, and even themselves
better than any of the dizzying array of alternatives to married
motherhood. This truth was abundantly clear to me after surveying the
social-scientific literature on marriage and child well-being with 15
other family scholars for a recent report, Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences."
Oh, now I get it. See, the link is to an organization called the
Institute for American Values, which puts out all kinds of socially
conservative studies, often with an array of supporters from both
political camps. A few years back they told us that kids are hardwired to need religion.
(BTW, they are primarily funded by conservative foundations.) What they
neglect to mention in this report on marriage is that many of those
studies cited have been questioned by other researchers, for a couple
of key reasons. One of the biggies is that when it comes to divorce,
it's sometimes hard to know where the real problem lies. For example,
couples divorce generally because of certain marital issues, and it can
be hard to determine if the divorce itself messed with the kids, or if
it was those other issues, or even the years of being witness to a
troubled relationship. Another problem is that some studies ask
children of divorce to self-report levels of happiness, and it's hard
to know if those folks claim greater angst because their parents'
problems were identified and perhaps more openly discussed.
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