NIS-4: Children do best with married biological parents

[Jac3510]

An email I just received. I put it under CT because it directly relates to the Christian view of the family:

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A new government study came out which examined how family structure affects child abuse.

The study, released by the Office of Planning Research and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is called "Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4)."

This new study did not just compare married parents to single parents. Instead it compared married biological parents to four other family structures: solo parents, cohabiting parents, other married parents, and children living with no parents at all.

What family form best protects children from one of the worst harms of all--child abuse? The answer is: the child's own mom and dad united by marriage.

"Children living with two married biological parents had the lowest rate of overall Harm Standard maltreatment, at 6.8 per 1,000 children. This rate differs significantly from the rates for all other family structure and living arrangement circumstances."

It wasn't just solo parents who had problems.

Children living with one parent who had an unmarried partner in the household had the highest incidence of Harm Standard maltreatment (57.2 per 1,000). Their rate is more than 8 times greater than the rate for children living with two married biological parents.

The incidence of Harm Standard maltreatment also is significantly higher for children living with one parent and that parent's unmarried partner than for children in three other conditions: children living with other married parents (24.4 children per 1,000), those living with two unmarried parents (23.5 children per 1,000), and those living with a single parent with no partner in the household (28.4 children per 1,000). The risk of Harm Standard maltreatment for children whose single parent has an unmarried partner is more than 2 times greater than the risk for children living in these other living arrangements.

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For more:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/ab ... index.html
http://nomblog.com/723/ (conservative)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alvin-mce ... 45355.html (liberal rebutal to previous)

[DannyM]

Jac,

This does not surprise me one jot. In the UK over the years there has been study after study which has come out clearly in favour of the traditional family unit of married biological parents being the best platform for a child/children to function properly and achieve academically. Dysfunctional children are far more likely to come from broken family structures than from a fully functional family unit.

That successive UK governments have chosen to ignore these studies and turn their back on traditional family life and values is one of the all-time modern disgraces.

[Jac3510]

Do you happen to have links to a few of these? I know it's been widely studied and it always turns out this way, but it's nice to be able to provide people with hard data.

Thanks!

[DannyM]

Do you happen to have links to a few of these? I know it's been widely studied and it always turns out this way, but it's nice to be able to provide people with hard data.

Thanks!

Goodness me. Okay Jac I'll get on it right away

[DannyM]

Do you happen to have links to a few of these? I know it's been widely studied and it always turns out this way, but it's nice to be able to provide people with hard data.

Thanks!

I've been sifting through the many articles and studies done on this, Jac, and you can, if you or anyone else wishes to investigate further, conduct a (UK only) google search by typing in "married parents vs single parents" and you'll be presented with a wide plethora of info. But I hope what I have singled out will be okay for everyone.

The evidence:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/arti ... nk-tank.do

"Children do best when brought up in married families, Tony Blair's favourite think-tank admitted yesterday. A stable background means they are less likely to be out of work, live off the state, become single parents, or even smoke in later life, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. It said it also accepted that children are better off with married parents than with parents who cohabit. The report from the country's most prominent and influential Left-leaning policy group contradicts eight years of Government rhetoric saying that all families are equally good."

This is from an unlikely source to show I am fair to begin with. (Not the paper but the think-tank.)

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Labour opposition (or at the very least 'indifference') to the traditional family structure, and how people actually still WANT to marry- and why they "can't":

http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prcs73.php

"Labour must recognise the significance of family structure
Labour's misjudged resistance to acknowledging the importance of family structure is undermining its equalising agenda, perpetuating inequality between both the classes and the sexes. The significance of structure is imperative to:

1. Tackling 'structural poverty'
Lower marriage rates and greater numbers of cohabitating parents are strongly connected to what Anastasia de Waal terms 'structural poverty', that is, unemployment-related poverty incurring further poverty through parental separation. The relationship between unemployment and parental separation is hugely significant because child poverty in Britain is concentrated in single-parent households.

Child poverty is a central priority for Labour, yet the government is failing to acknowledge the circumstances giving rise to parental separation and subsequent single parenthood.

A child born to cohabiting parents is nearly twice as likely to see his/her parents break-up before his/her sixteenth birthday than a child born to married parents. The unmarried parent is therefore more likely to become the single parent.

Labour must finally tackle the issue of NEETs - young people not in education, employment and training - which is exacerbating family poverty. Almost a fifth of school leavers today are unemployed, a 15 per cent rise in the last ten years. The effect on families is an increased risk that young women and men enter into parenthood in unstable circumstances."

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Read this from one of Labour's militant feminists and shake your head in utter disbelief...

"The idea of splashing billions on doing something where there is no evidence that it is effective in keeping families together, but there is evidence that it stigmatises, is just wrong and they should drop that proposal. The fundamental thing is that it doesn't work.”

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/critic ... -marriage/

This is what you can only term head-in-the-sand politics. This is from the ruling administration in the United Kingdom. Read on from the link above...

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Skewed government thinking which comes from a visceral hatred of the traditional family way of life:

"David Cameron today attacked ministers' failure to protect the family after it emerged that couples with children can become more than £5,000 a year better off if they split up or choose to live apart."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... split.html

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Further evidence for the traditional biological family:

"Married parents are ten times more likely to stay together than cohabiting couples with children, according to research.
The study also showed cohabiting has become a less stable form of relationship compared with 18 years ago, with couples more likely to separate."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ether.html

[youngmatt]

Lol I live in biological parent structure, I'm glad do because i probably wouldn't love my parents as much if they weren't my real parents.

[jlay]

Newsflash:
Water is wet.

Sad, that our culture can't grasp the simplest truth.

[youngmatt]

Newsflash:
Water is wet.

Sad, that our culture can't grasp the simplest truth.

What exactly do you mean by that?

[jlay]

It means that Jac's post titled, "Children do best with married biological parents," ought to be as obvious to our world as the fact that water is wet. Sadly it isn't.

[DannyM]

It means that Jac's post titled, "Children do best with married biological parents," ought to be as obvious to our world as the fact that water is wet. Sadly it isn't.

Jlay,

YOU know it. I know it. The trouble is that (in the case of the United Kingdom) government IGNORES it. I don't know too much about US policy on this but let me tell you that over here this rock solid information is given a wide body swerve by government, who are firmly anti-marriage. I hope things are better over there I really do...

[RickD]

It means that Jac's post titled, "Children do best with married biological parents," ought to be as obvious to our world as the fact that water is wet. Sadly it isn't.

Jlay,

YOU know it. I know it. The trouble is that (in the case of the United Kingdom) government IGNORES it. I don't know too much about US policy on this but let me tell you that over here this rock solid information is given a wide body swerve by government, who are firmly anti-marriage. I hope things are better over there I really do...

Yea, things are a lot better here Soon anyone will be able to "marry" anyone or anything he/she chooses.

[DannyM]

It means that Jac's post titled, "Children do best with married biological parents," ought to be as obvious to our world as the fact that water is wet. Sadly it isn't.

Jlay,

YOU know it. I know it. The trouble is that (in the case of the United Kingdom) government IGNORES it. I don't know too much about US policy on this but let me tell you that over here this rock solid information is given a wide body swerve by government, who are firmly anti-marriage. I hope things are better over there I really do...

Yea, things are a lot better here Soon anyone will be able to "marry" anyone or anything he/she chooses.

Oh no! Not the US too...