Children Need Their Parents
For centuries, the biological family with mother and father was viewed as the appropriate and necessary structure for raising children and undergirding society. Indeed, both historically and universally, the natural family has been the norm. But today the two-parent family is not only viewed as a relic of a past age, but is even seen as hindering the development of a fully enlightened and liberated society. Radical feminists and the homosexual lobby are but two groups which are bent on demeaning or recasting the traditional family.
Society, especially the entertainment world, tries to convince us that the path to self-fulfillment and liberation lies in renouncing all moral and religious restraints. Freedom to choose, regardless of moral constraints, is the current wisdom. But does such license really produce freedom? And what about our children? Are all lifestyles of equal worth in their impact on children?
A number of recent studies would suggest that not all lifestyle options are good for children. Indeed, it is becoming clear that the overall well-being of children - and adults - is best served in the context of the traditional two-parent home.
Armand Nicholi, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard medical school who has studied over 40 years of research on the question of parental absence and children's well-being said this: "What has been shown over and over again to contribute most to the emotional development of the child is a close, warm, sustained and continuous relationship with both parents." Nicholi goes on to make this observation: "One other comment about this research. In addition to the magnitude of it, the studies taken as a whole paint an unmistakably clear picture of the adverse effects of parental absence. Yet this vast body of research is almost totally ignored by our society. Why have even the professionals tended to ignore this research? Perhaps the answer is, to put it most simply, because the findings are unacceptable.
"Attitudes which now prevail toward parental absence resemble those once prevalent toward cigarette smoking. For decades Americans ignored the large body of research concerning the adverse effects of cigarette smoke. We had excellent studies for decades before we began to respond to the data. Apparently as a society, we refuse to accept data that demands a radical change in our lifestyle."
Similar comments could be made about the situation in Australia. We are forever being told that all household arrangements are equally viable, and no ideal form of the family exists. The evidence for the two-parent family, which is substantial indeed, is simply not being heard. Whether there is a conspiracy of silence, or some other sinister reason for this, it is clear that the information, while not being reported, is there. Perhaps to argue for intact families would mean a fair amount of rethinking of lifestyle choices.
Several recent exceptions however can be noted. Social commentator Bettina Arndt has over the last few years publicly changed her mind on this issue. Also, Bryan Rodgers of the Australian National University has recently re-examined the Australian research. After investigating 25 studies, he found that some studies contained methodological shortcomings, and suggested that taken together, these studies do indeed show that children suffer as a result of parental divorce. Says Rodgers:
"Australian studies with adequate samples have shown parental divorce to be a risk factor for a wide range of social and psychological problems in adolescence and adulthood, including poor academic achievement, low self-esteem, psychological distress, delinquency and recidivism, substance use and abuse, sexual precocity, adult criminal offending, depression, and suicidal behaviour." He concludes: "There is no scientific justification for disregarding the public health significance of marital dissolution in Australia, especially with respect to mental heath."
John Embling, from the Melbourne-based Families in Distress Foundation, is well aware of the harmful effects on children of parental breakup. He has spent 30 years working with such children. He echoes Nicholi's comments that we do not want to face the facts on this issue: "A lot of people who set the social agenda and work in the media in this country are middle-class intellectuals living the lifestyles we are talking about. They do not want to address these issues because it makes them personally uncomfortable".
However it is the welfare of children that should be considered in this debate. But they are often the overlooked factor. Says Embling, "The children are in diabolical need. I could take you into these households and show you what it's like for kids to try to cope when mum is on drugs or drink, there's no bloke around worth a cracker and primary school kids have to get themselves up and off to school."
The adverse effects of parental absence have been demonstrated by a vast body of research. As Professor David Popenoe of Rutgers University puts it: "Social science research is almost never conclusive. There are always methodological difficulties and stones left unturned. Yet in three decades of work as a social scientist, I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable to single-parent families and step-families. If our prevailing views on family structure hinged solely on scholarly evidence, the current debate would never have arisen in the first place." Indeed, the evidence clearly suggests that the "traditional family" is not the only viable social unit, but it is the most viable unit.
Skeptics often claim that there is little evidence for the negative effects of fatherlessness and single-parent families. And if there is evidence, critics will try to explain it away. For example, they argue that if anything, the problems are caused by poor socio-economic conditions, not single-parenting itself. Therefore, they claim, if we improve welfare conditions, single-parent households will not be a detrimental experience for children.
Following this line of thinking, the claim is often made that perhaps kids suffer in single-parent families in America, but not here in Australia. This is because, they argue, America has a poor welfare system, so that kids in single-parent families there are worse off as a result, not so much because of the absence of a parent. But here in Australia and in other welfare states things are different, so kids do not suffer from single-parenting, or at least do not suffer as much.
This argument fails to stand up to the evidence however. Most of the studies available do take into account multiple variables, and adjust for economic conditions. And many different countries are cited in the evidence, not just America. Indeed, many of the relevant studies are Australian studies.
But the most persuasive piece of evidence to counter this contention comes in the form of a massive longitudinal study undertaken in Sweden. A sample group of over 65,000 children with single parents, and nearly one million children with two parents, studied for nearly a decade, has found the same conclusion: children from single-parent families do worse on a number of fronts, even when confounding factors, such as socio-economic status, are adjusted for. These children from single parents showed increased risks of psychiatric disease, suicide or suicide attempt, injury and addiction. The authors, writing in The Lancet, conclude that growing up in "a single-parent family has disadvantages to the health of the child". And bear in mind that Sweden is one of the most highly advanced welfare states on earth. Thus even with a comprehensive welfare net, children still suffer when not in two-parent families.
To conclude, here are two summaries of the available evidence. The first comes from Sara McLanahan (herself a single mother) and Gary Sandefur: "We reject the claim that children raised by only one parent do just as well as children raised by both parents. We have been studying this question for ten years, and in our opinion the evidence is quite clear: Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents' race or educational background, regardless of whether the parents are married when the child is born, and regardless of whether the resident parent remarries."
The second, from William Galston of the University of Maryland: "A substantial body of research suggests that family structure is an independent factor influencing the well-being of children. Even after correcting for variables such as family income, parental education, and prior family history, children from single-parent families tend on average to fare less well economically, educationally, and emotionally, and encounter more difficulties on the road to becoming self-sustaining adults."
Modern societies are tearing apart at the seams. A large part of the reason for this is the breakdown of families on a broad scale. As families break down, modern democracies become increasingly at risk. As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has said, "The family serves as the seedbed for the virtues required by a liberal state. The family is responsible for teaching lessons of independence, self-restraint, responsibility, and right conduct, which are essential to a free, democratic society. If the family fails in these tasks, then the entire experiment in democratic self-rule is jeopardized."
The urgent task of the day is to restore the institutions of marriage and family. Unless we do that, all efforts to prevent the disintegration of society are doomed to fail. For the sake of our children, we need to work towards the rebuilding of the beleaguered family.
Family Update, May-June 2003, p. 1