I am on the fifth day with the flu. Hence the increased posting in this topic of heavy interest of mine, as are all other threads dealing with men‘s issues.
We did mention the increased risk of abuse in single-mother (fatherless) homes. As mentioned in other threads going back years, fatherlessness is also overrepresented in the following:
teenage suicides
runaways
teenage pregnancies
gang members
prisoners
rapists
sexual confusion
neurotics
academic failures
mass shooters
These are burdens on all of society. Hence the seriousness of the issue.
Nurture really doesn’t do shit for someone once they’re over the age of maybe 7 or 8. Not to say it isn’t nice to have, but it isn’t required to function as an adult.
Without someone giving kids “nature”, they are poorly prepared to enter the world.
Moms can absolutely do this, but it is less common.
Dads typically do this by default.
Anecdotally, when my wife tells my daughter to do something, she often has to say it more than once.
When I tell my daughter to do something, she does it the first time.
I don’t know exactly how this translates into adulthood, but I imagine the discipline required and expected of fathers plays a large role in how someone conducts themselves as an adult.
Those are intertwined. The reason why men act certain ways is because they’re men. Men are bigger, stronger, and can take down those who screw with their families. Some men are willing to jail time for defending their children.
There is more to it obviously.
Yes.
Yes. Not all fatherless people wind up in what is listed. This doesn’t change the fact that all social deviance is linked with single motherhood.
The same pathologies wound up in the white middle class because of single motherhood as stated before.
Have a listen to the link if you wish.
If single motherhood impoverishes some women, then marriages strengthen their positions. Why the heck are such women leaving men who kept their noses clean if that’s going to financially harm them and the kids?
You can read the Case for Father Custody by Dr. Amneus. I picked up where I left off on this sick time. Here’s the contents.
The bar today isn’t about being better than nothing. Divorce will generally bring the woman child support, social support, and remove any obligations on her. Also potentially welfare. He has to be better than that.
On that same note, women have the opportunity to be worse than nothing and still better for the man than divorce.
Kids are supposed to be raised by both, and there’s balance in that.
I’m not a single parent expert but a quick search shows that kids raised by single mothers are more likely to experience things like poverty, teen pregnancy, suicide and are more likely to run away from home.
Kids raised by single fathers are more likely to exhibit behavioral issues, show aggression, and there’s conflicting evidence around substance abuse and addiction across groups, but both see higher rates than kids in traditional households with two parents. Assuming, I’m sure, the relationship and environment are healthy.
It makes sense if you think about it. Fathers tend to provide protection, structure and ultimately wind up being the enforcers. We’re also more emotionally stable and can communicate why behind what more effectively as teachable moments.
The behaviors exhibited by kids with single moms all match loss of controlled guidance. Anecdotally, the most shithead kids I knew all had single moms. I grew up in the latchkey era and we were all shitheads but these kids didn’t have rails, because what was mom going to do? Screech?
And kids raised by single fathers probably are missing some emotional development that helps balance responses and reactions within guidance and protection.
I would be curious to see cross-gender info myself. Dads raising daughters alone and moms raising sons. I bet issues are exacerbated. Certainly were in my observation.
Structure is a real thing. Anecdotally my wife and I are pretty well aligned on parenting methods, but our approaches are different. At the age we’re in, I’m the authority, no means no because I said so first and foremost but I will explain for context and understanding. And I’m very deliberate to have a real reason for things vs just react.
My wife had the idea that introducing choice early would help develop effective thought patterns. What it did instead was create a terrible environment of wanting whatever the wrong decision is. Go to bed or stay up? I’m staying up. Eat broccoli or bread? Eating bread. Then I have to come around and be the bad guy, because she doesn’t have the knowledge to process good vs bad, but has internalized mom is easy. My wife doesn’t capitulate but she’s weirdly surprised the wrong answer was chosen and now we have to override, which becomes confusing.
We are a few weeks from 6 years old and our daughter will hold her own in a battle of wills with my wife and it’s the most “I told you so” experience I’ve ever been a part of. I show up and it’s over. Not angry, not loud, she just knows we aren’t bending and doesn’t try. At this point she expects and asks for the explanation, legitimately considers and will observably internalize, or ask some pretty intuitive follow up questions.
The teen years are going to be wild, and my wife would lose control by herself. I can already see it. Not for lack of caring, but she’s A) not strong enough to be the wall and B) has a level of empathy that can sometimes actually become a negative trait.
She’s incredibly feminine and is the absolute best care taker, can provide comfort and is always looking out for best interest as an intention delivered in a way that I don’t. I want all those things but she’s the better delivery system.
It creates balance.
But, I’m 100% confident if it had to be one or the other, I would be the best bet to keep her on track, moving forward productively and ready to win life’s challenges. And, she might even wind up aggressive. Heaven forbid.
Everything in this paragraph sounds very familiar. My son, whether he knows it or not, developed a pretty good divide and conquer strategy with me & wife. He would start crying over something while we were doing homework or something. She would rush to comfort him. Then she would “correct” me, which pissed me off. Then we would start arguing. Once the fur would stop flying we go in his room and he’s watching youtube, and homework is nowhere to be found.
After one too many episodes of that I pointed the strategy out to her. At first she bucked against it, but after it happened a few more times she came around. From then on we had to form a pact to back each others plays whether we agree with them or not. We can figure it out between each other later.
He (at 12) still tries to stump her on homework, but one look or a couple words from me and he’s a star student again.
Unity is really important there. And spotting the patterns as they emerge, but unity first.
We try not argue in front of her, and will talk through differences in an attempt to have a unified front, but it can be tough for sure when I can see our daughter winning before she even starts and my wife earnestly thinks she’s setting up a pattern of success. The issue is the good choices we’re supposed to be praising for positive reinforcement simply aren’t happening, lol. She’s 5 with a burgeoning frame of reference for decisions but still needs a lot of exterior input for now to compute with later imo.
All in all we are on track, and we got lucky with a well natured, smart kid who doesn’t quit. It’s only kindergarten but she just tested 97th percentile for math nationwide, 95th for reading comprehension and I think the wrong answers were questionable anyways because they’re phonetic (and we live in Texas), her art was selected to represent her campus in a district competition, she’s a black belt in the kids version of taekwondo and just graduated to the big kid class and so on.
But we definitely have to work to get a handle on how input is processing in a unified way.
I think we ultimately do balance, but need each other to do it for sure.
