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The Spectacle Blog
University of Virginia social scientist W. Bradford Wilcox takes a look at new federal data on child abuse, and comes up with some alarming findings about child abuse in households in which the caretakers aren’t a married couple:
According to the report, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents. Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself in is a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend-especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.
But children living with their own father and mother do not fare much better if their parents are only cohabiting. The federal study of child abuse found that children living with their cohabiting parents are more than four times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than their peers living in a home headed by their married parents. And they are three times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, a child is not much safer when she is living in a home with her parents if her parents’ relationship does not enjoy the legal, social, and moral status and guidance that marriage confers on relationships.
This latest study confirms what a mounting body of social science has been telling us for some time now. The science tells us that children are not only more likely to thrive but are also more likely to simply survive when they are raised in an intact home headed by their married parents, rather than in a home headed by a cohabiting couple.
Big Jim| 4.22.11 @ 2:38PM
I would make that "headed by a married father" for a man is the head of a household.
All American American| 4.22.11 @ 3:38PM
To whoever funded this study: I coulda told you the same thing for half price and in less time.
One word: Duh!
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 12:09AM
It's useful to have the data properly placed when dealing with Aaron Goldsteins and crazed Liberals, triple A.
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 12:11AM
Yes, but the study also gives guidance for change, Triple A. It's free to download and print, and very good reading.
Floyd Looney | 4.22.11 @ 3:57PM
None of that surprises me.
PattyMor| 4.22.11 @ 6:08PM
Well, it always comes down to God's way are the right way. Anytime we try to circumvent God, it leads to distruction. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is littered with fallen people and fallen kingdoms. It seem man (or woman) never learns.
Seek| 4.22.11 @ 7:53PM
Articles like these always downplay the importance of race. Blacks are far more violent than whites; everyone knows that (even the blacks). Their marriage rates are a good deal lower. And they have children earlier. It's a combustible mix. It follows, then, that data indicating higher rates of family violence heavily reflect black behavior. Even white couples who live together without the benefit of marriage aren't as violent, especially with a decent male partner.
As an aside, I resent the implicit motive in articles like these -- that somehow that married-couple families don't have violence, except at negligible levels. Facts speak loudly, however: Being married, or being the offspring of a married couple, isn't inoculation against against violence.
Tish | 4.22.11 @ 7:53PM
We've know this for a long time, but the truth doesn't suit progressives and their goal of making the individual dependent on the government for survival.
NotALibertarian| 4.22.11 @ 8:20PM
This study will be used to push for gay marriage, even though it appears same-sex parents were not studied. ("See?! YOU are harming children because you will not let us marry!") And this will be done in spite of the fact that two of the most important factors in marriage here are stability and committment -- things the promiscuous gay community-at-large openly admits it does not value.
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 12:10AM
You know, they probably will do that, NAL. I like the devious way you think.
Oldefarte| 4.23.11 @ 1:42PM
No one will like what I'm about to say, but it is the truth [sadly] and I dare anyone to factually prove it otherwise. I am a born, raised and [for 16 years] educated Catholic who favors abortion being provided by the government. If there was a way to the government to force birth control upon society and for same to be truly effective in purpose, I'd be against abortion; but since ther is not such a way, abortion as birth control of the last resort is the only available effective option. I say this because as this editorial states, children born to povertous, temporary human sexual relationships are targets of physical/sexual abuse, toiture, and deplorable conditions. It's bad enough that such activity is inflicted upon adults, but when vernable, innocent children are its victims, it simply makes a rational human being want to get down upon their hands and knees and cry their eyes blind. Children can be a pain [as any parent will testify to], but they are same mostly due to their innocents and ignorance, and only need the steady hand of loving adults to guide them into adulthood. Any/all phychological/psychiatric problems with adults can always be traced backed to some abuse that they received at the hands of adults when they were children. The vernerability of children do not need to suffer this abuse, and for an adult to inflict same is beyond cruelty and savagery. Children would be better off not being born than having to suffer this painful abuse when they are not emotionally/intellectually capable of understanding it or dealing with same. This cruelty could/should be prevented by the governmental providing of abortion services, where warranted IMO!!!!!
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 3:40PM
We can't afford anymore to murder our children, Oldefarte. We are being outbred by an ideology that hates freedom. Europe is already falling, and will have fallen by 2030. We are losing the Demographic war, sir. I respect your opinion greatly, but I must disagree with you here. Please spend a few minutes going through the CIA factbook, examining the average age and percentages of populations in the effete West and the land of Dar-Es-Islam. Wars are fought by young men, not us.
May I refer you to Kipling? Note, specifically, his comments on relations between men and women.
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"
Oldefarte| 4.23.11 @ 3:49PM
OT: I have mutual respect and admiration for your learned commentary, but we will have to agree to disagree I guess on this dreadful subject. As I stated earliar today ('For ever Beethoven, there are thousands of beaten, raped, sexually assaulted, mentally damaged children that are daily trapped in the misery of their particular/miserable environments. Please don't give me that exceptionality BS [which typically is put on the table by foes of abortion at the drop of a hat]. I, nor any sane person, favors abortion's ugliness, but the fact remains that abused children are forced to suffer unimaginable indignities ALONE [with no one to stand by their side and help them, and certainly not the anti-abortionists who daily scream against it but are nowhere to be seen when the bullets, fists etc are flying against these abused children]. When anti-abortionists begin stepping up to to plate and completely/100% arranging for the adoptions etc of these damaged children, instead of simply mouthing off about the evils of abortion from a political standpoint, then at that time I'll join their verbal bandwagon of protesting against abortion, okay?'). Have a good Easter!
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 3:56PM
I avoided exceptionality. I prefer to win my wars in the American way---overwhelming mass and firepower. I fear we don't have it. By the way, The World's Two Cutest Children (TM pending) are both adopted from Guatemala. So, I have put my money and mouth together on this subject, personally, especially as my beloved son was born with microtia of his right ear and therefore partial deafness (he's unbelievably handsome despite this---when we lived in New Zealand, Ike was a rockstar at his preschool as the little girls lined up to greet him. This NEVER happened to me in my childhood, nor adulthood.)
Our focus should be on encouraging marriage and stigmatizing men who abandon their children, severely. G-d Bless.
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 3:51PM
The other problem with state sponsored abortion is that it is the other side of the euthanasia argument---as an MD who had to assess capability to make decisions (legal equivalent, competence---I hope RCV notes how neatly I delineate this) of my patients, it occurred to me that if there was legalized euthanasia, then there would be decision making capacity assessments for this. Given the number of times Depression is found in terminal illnesses and its potential effect on decision making, I found that the prospect of doing these evaluations was both frightening and sickening.
I've also had to do a decision making capacity evaluation for an abortion, and I found that emotionally scarring, as well.
It was at this point that I began to realize that abortion and euthanasia are just different stations on the overall worldview of the Culture of Death. I decided to opt out, and became a vociferous opponent of both euthanasia and abortion (I highly recommend the novel A Canticle for Liebowitz for a brilliant discussion of the topic of the Culture of Death).
So, therein rest my arguments, Oldefarte. A very pleasant Easter Sunday for and to, you.
Oldefarte| 4.24.11 @ 10:29AM
If ALL human beings werE as charitable as you are OT, the world would be a much better place in which to live and exist; but sadly it is NOT [since we all were created with FREE WILL, which can incorporate the meanness/cruelty towards children]. May the Almighty bless, keep and guide you in your life of charity [and again, HAPPY EASTER to you and your family]!!!!