Click here for Part I of this ongoing series
WARNING! The following article may offend you…but only if you insist on taking math personally.
First, I must address the definition of “single mother” because many of you don’t understand what a single mother is.
If you have ever been married, had children with the same man to whom you were married and divorced, you are not a single mother. You are a divorced mother. Further, if you are a single mother who has never been married but whose children are thriving and not suffering any of the previously mentioned problems of poverty or the about-to-be mentioned problems of sexual abuse and more, congratulations! You are one of the minority of single mothers who escaped what most others will not. The fact that a majority of single mothers will harm their children or produce children who will harm others is not a reflection on the minority of single mothers who have beaten the odds or who are beating them every day. To you single mothers who have climbed seemingly insurmountable obstacles, just breathe and say a prayer of thanks to the Almighty for sheltering your children and blessing you with wisdom. No one is judging you. You have enough on your plate. I get that.
The purpose of this series is to shine a light on the serious problem a majority of single mothers are causing because of their choices to have children out of wedlock. (Again…majority does not mean “all”. In fact, Webster Dictionary defines it as “more than half” which leaves less than half who are not behaving in the described ways or who will escape the consequences.) If you saw a person standing on train tracks unaware that a train was barreling toward them would you not yell out or try to push them out of the way? If the answer is yes, then try to see this article (and the previous one) as such a warning and not a diatribe aimed to wound.
In this discussion of the price of single-motherhood, we will examine three more ways children and society will pay for the choices of baby-mamas.
3. Sexual Abuse
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
Sheriff’s detectives said child molester Nicholas Rocha didn’t have to go far to find his victim: he just had to turn to his girlfriend. Detectives said Rocha sexually molested his girlfriend’s 8-year-old daughter over a period of nearly two-and-a-half years before getting caught. [Alliance Against Family Violence] said 60 to 65 percent of single moms who come through their doors have children who have been assaulted by the mother’s boyfriend or ex-boyfriend.
The Department of Health and Human Services studied 156 children, and the majority of those who suffered sexual abuse did so at the hands of a live-in boyfriend or step-father.
An analysis of child abuse cases in a nationally representative sample of 42 counties found that children from single parent families are more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse than children who live with both biological parents. Compared to their peers living with both parents, children in single parent homes had:
77 percent greater risk of being physically abused
87 percent greater risk of being harmed by physical neglect
165 percent greater risk of experiencing notable physical neglect
74 percent greater risk of suffering from emotional neglect
80 percent greater risk of suffering serious injury as a result of abuse
120 percent greater risk of experiencing some type of maltreatment overall.
Those are horrific numbers. Anyone interested in stopping child abuse should start by launching a campaign to stop single motherhood or at least a public service announcement letting single mothers know how dangerous dating can be to the well being of her children.
2. Life of crime
An excerpt from Ann Coulter’s heavily researched book Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America explains the price society pays for hordes of fatherless children.
Here is the lottery ticket that single mothers are handing their innocent children by choosing to raise them without fathers: Controlling for socioeconomic status, race, and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers… A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.
The fact that the difference between black and white crime disappears when controlling for single motherhood is an unbelievable finding. All this time we were told that black crime is out of control because of poverty or racism or white oppression but the biggest factor is as simple as no father in the home. The only difference between the whites and blacks in this case is that more black families suffer statistically from absentee fathers. This is a relief, actually. There is a very simple solution. Our society needs to promote marriage more aggressively than it promotes the welfare state. Why should a woman have to wait to get married to the father of her children until she is finished with school because once married she would no longer qualify for the financial aid that was helping her get her degree? This is absurd! Why would a society punish a person for making a family unit which stabilizes society? Why not give incentives for good behavior and take them away for damaging behavior? We have it all wrong. (There’s a whole other argument here about welfare that we won’t get into, but there is room to debate who should receive help when they are truly trying to better themselves and who should not receive help when they have no desire to do anything but breathe in and out all day long.)
1. Suicide
Suicide is a blight on the youth of America. The loss of hope for a future is devastating to so many families. From Guilty,
According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent of all youth suicides…A study cited in the Village Voice produced similar numbers. It found that children brought up in single-mother homes ‘are five times more likely to commit suicide
These numbers are the canary in the coal mine. They cannot be ignored or swept under the rug or explained away by desperate feminists looking to hang onto some shred of relevance. The children of America deserve better than this. They deserve a chance at a life with hope and one in which they make it to adulthood. Other factors, of course, are present in suicide cases. It would be wrong to lay it all at the feet of their home-life. We know bullying, new social media and depression are big stress triggers for all kids. But what does it mean that 63% of youth suicides come from single-parent homes? Shouldn’t that concern us? Shouldn’t that send up a red flag that maybe that square Dan Quayle was right and Murphy Brown’s decision to have a baby on her own during prime time wasn’t such a hot idea?
Those of us raising the next generation of children have got to do a better job imparting this wisdom and making sure we instill a respect for marriage and healthy families in our kids. Without a strong nuclear family, society and children suffer. This can be remedied at home. Those of you who are single parents can right now start talking to your children about the mistakes you made and the choices they need to make to have a strong family of their own. Those of us with intact families need to model for our children a life they will want to recreate for themselves. The fate of their world may depend on it.
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