Well over 60 years of social science data have told us what we know – or should know – instinctively: children do best when raised by their own mother and father. The mountain of evidence on this is conclusive: overwhelmingly children raised in a two-parent home cemented by heterosexual marriage fare the best and have the best chances of succeeding in life.
Children do not need several male role models, or a couple of female adults, or bureaucrats, or a committee, or some other brave new world combination – what they overwhelmingly need is their own biological mother and father. I have been documenting all this for decades now.
Some of the earliest articles on my website have to do with this. Here are snippets from a few of them. In 1991 I reviewed a volume looking at the impact of mother absence. I said this:
A child’s self-esteem, security and sense of worth are all negatively affected as a result of separation from its mother, especially in infancy. Moreover, one’s view of motherhood and family is strongly shaped by the treatment one receives as a young child.
To illustrate this point, Hunter studies the early years of three leading feminist thinkers: Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan. Not surprisingly, all three woman were products of dysfunctional families. Hunter argues that their perverse views of motherhood, children and the family were in part formed by the poor nurturing they received as children. https://billmuehlenberg.com/1991/03/10/a-review-of-home-by-choice-facing-the-effects-of-mothers-absence-by-brenda-hunter/
I wrote this in a 1992 piece:
In the light of the above, Dan Quayle’s comments sound very sensible indeed. In fact, his words are worth repeating:
“Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong…. When families fail, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are testament to how quickly civilisation falls apart when the family foundation cracks.
“Children need love and discipline. They need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father. It is from parents that children learn how to behave in society; it is from parents above all that children come to understand values and themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/1992/06/13/dan-quayle-vs-murphy-brown/
In 1993 I reviewed a book released a year earlier looking at the economic costs of divorce:
In this volume 26 authors examine the social and economic consequences of divorce in a number of Western nations and in some Third World countries. Despite the differences which exist between these countries, the results of the studies undertaken show striking uniformity.
By the mid-1980s most Western countries had radically liberalised their divorce laws. In his Road to Divorce, the historian Lawrence Stone describes this transformation of Western societies from “largely non-separating and non-divorcing” ones to “separating and divorcing” ones as “perhaps the most profound and far-reaching social change to have occurred in the last five hundred years.” Consider the numbers. In the United States in 1960, there were thirty-five divorced persons for every 1,000 married persons. In 1990 there were 140 — a 400 percent increase in thirty years.
During that same period, the proportion of children living with only one parent jumped from 9 percent to 25 percent. Between 1960 and 1985, the percent of all childbirths occurring outside of marriage increased from 5 to 22; the percent of teenage mothers who are unmarried increased from 15 to 58; and the overall proportion of American adult life spent in residence with both a spouse and at least one child dropped from 62 percent, the highest in America’s history, to 43 percent, the lowest in its history. https://billmuehlenberg.com/1994/03/03/the-divorce-revolution/
A 1995 article I wrote on the impact of fatherlessness said this in part:
Halsey summarises the findings: “The children of parents who do not follow the traditional norm (i.e. taking on personal, active and long-term responsibility for the social upbringing of the children they generate) are thereby disadvantaged in many major aspects of their chances of living a successful life. On the evidence available such children tend to die earlier, to have more mental illness, to do less well at school, to exist at a lower level of nutrition, comfort and conviviality, to suffer more unemployment, to be more prone to deviance and crime, and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/1995/07/01/a-review-of-families-without-fatherhood-by-norman-dennis-and-george-erdos/
In another piece from 1995 I said the following:
Patricia Morgan, an English sociologist, here examines the social condition of the family in Britain and the US. She contends that government policy has directly and indirectly contributed to the growth of the mother/child household. While looking to the needs of sole parent families, governments have overlooked or ignored the needs of intact families.
Morgan states that the arrival of feminist advisers into governments has radically changed the way government benefits are distributed. The burden of taxation has increasingly been shifted onto married parents to the benefit of the single and the childless. As a result, lone parents can end up with higher final incomes from any given wage than two-parent families. Also, more mothers are tempted into the workplace, and more children are pushed into day care, in order for traditional families to stay afloat economically. https://billmuehlenberg.com/1995/09/12/a-review-of-farewell-to-the-family-by-patricia-morgan/
Back then there were not too many seeking to champion marriage and family. Thankfully today there are many individuals and organisations doing this. Just one of many can be mentioned: Katy Faust and Them Before Us. They state their purpose in these terms:
Them Before Us protects every child’s right to their mother and father by educating lawmakers, media influencers, and concerned citizens about the harm children suffer when those rights are violated. We center the child in every conversation about marriage and family including divorce, same-sex parenting, reproductive technologies, surrogacy, adoption, cohabitation. We take this child-centric message into the culture and courtroom and insist that all adults do hard things on behalf of children. https://thembeforeus.com/
More than just data
But as important as the facts and the research are on this matter, simply seeking to put a human face on all this is vital. The simple truth is, children suffer when they are raised without mom and dad. Sure, there can be exceptions, but exceptions do not make the rule. Real people are hurt when families fail, marriages disintegrate, and radical social experiments become the norm.
The human face of this can be presented in so many ways. Let me offer just one. I am not necessarily a huge fan of country music, but a song I recently learned about nicely makes my case. Merle Haggard passed away a decade ago, but the lyrics of his 1974 song “Holding Things Together” are well worth closing with here:
Holding things together ain’t no easy thing to do When it comes to raisin’ children, it’s a job meant for two Alice, please believe me, I can’t go on and on Holding things together with you gone
Today was Angie’s birthday, I guess it slipped your mind I tried twice to call you, with no answer either time But the postman brought a present I mailed some days ago I just signed it “Love, from Mama” so Angie wouldn’t know
Holding things together ain’t no easy thing to do When it comes to raisin’ children, it’s a job meant for two Alice, please believe me, I can’t go on and on Holding things together with you gone
Alice please believe me, I can’t go on and on Holding things together with you gone
