Making America Great

I'm not arguing with the statistics, I just find it ironic that you make an emphatic statement that a two-parent household is better for children, followed by an admission that you and your wife failed the kid and it was her fault, which implies that you probably would have done better on your own.

 

Those aren't "my" conclusions, that's just the way shit works. Marriages that work tend to have those things in common. Just like winning race teams seem to usually follow the same basic patterns. You don't build a successful partnership by being a dumb, unstable, selfish asshole. Marriages that have those kinds of people in them usually FAIL, leading to the correlation that kids raised in stable marriages are usually in a better environment than kids raised in broken homes.

 

My eyes glazed over and refused to let me participate in this discussion about two pages back, but I'll take a stab at defining a "better" outcome. In simplest terms, I think that we could all agree that becoming a productive citizen is better than not doing so. Again, the presence of two parents is one of the biggest single indicators for that outcome. That is, quite simply, an inarguable fact. Statistical outliers do not negate a basic premise. I don't have the numbers to prove it, but I would wager that being the only male child in an otherwise all female household is one of the biggest indicators of the future ability to change the parameters of an argument rather than concede a point.

 

I don't know that. I'd say that our "two parent home" rarely, if ever, actually functioned like a two parent home. So when I say "two parent", I actually mean two involved, responsible, caring adults.

 

They're not your conclusions. You're parroting what you've read and passing it off as gospel.

Sarchasm claims another victim...

Like the Great Pumpkin said, so her daughter wouldn't have been better off with you, solo, than she was with you two together?

And here's where I shut my mouth

 

Why does your marriage work Mongo?

 

Do the statistics make that distinction?

 

I put the cashier and the educated on equal levels when financials are excluded from the question. One cannot work without the other. When I worked, we have a front receptionist that was truly amazing welcoming everybody. I heard Rex Tillerson speak of her at one time because she took her job serious and everyone felt welcomed when they walked into the building. If the cleaning crews don't do their job, then someone has to restock the bathrooms, make the coffee, clean the breakrooms, etc instead of doing their own work. It takes a team.

 

Mine, as with most disfunctional marriages, ended in divorce, knocking it out of the discussion.

 

Yes and no. If they're conscious enough to "stay together for the kids" or even to stay together because they're better off financially, that's usually a sign that they're decent enough people to be good parents.

You guys are free to nitpick, anecdote, and question all day, but the truth is, we're talking about millions of kids, from millions of relationships, over decades, all filtering down to one generalization.

 

I didn't change any definition. Two "parents" means two people involved in the parenting. Everything else is an extrapolation based on societal norms.