Stop blaming single mothers

 I wish more LGBT groups would stand up for single mothers of all sexual orientations.  Instead I want to cry - and scream - every time anyone argues for same-sex marriage by aligning with the rhetoric that blames single mothers (and therefore not same-sex couples) for our social problems.  So I am grateful to Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund -- don't get me started on these types of name changes....) for consistently demanding that we look at wealth inequality, sex discrimination, lack of state and employer support for caregiving, etc as the causes of the disadvantages faced by children living in poverty, including those with single mothers. (I recently discussed this here).

Well Legal Momentum has just published a simple fact sheet on child poverty and births outside marriage.  Here it is.  By looking at the statistics from other countries, it is possible to see that births outside marriage does not cause children to be poor. The level of child poverty in the US is an outrage and a tragedy.  Other countries do much better, even with nonmarital births as high or close to as high as ours.

I think many gay rights supporters would be surprised to see how often the arguments against same-sex marriage turn out to be about single mothers.  For example, the argument by supporters of Prop 8, in their petition to the US Supreme Court to reverse the 9th Circuit's opinion in Perry finding Prop. 8 unconstitutional, goes like this:  Allowing same-sex marriage will contribute to the belief that marriage is about valuing adult personal relationships.  It isn't.  Marriage is about channeling the sexual behavior that produces children, often unintentionally, into the family structure that will give the resulting children two parents who live together and raise the children together.  The problem with decoupling marriage from providing for the consequences of heterosexual sexual intercourse, namely children, is that...more children will be raised by single mothers.  And that is the real problem.  So they claim.

Advocates for LGBT families usually respond to this by saying how silly it is to argue that letting same-sex couples marry will produce more children of heterosexuals raised by single mothers.  But, really, we need to be careful not to jump on the bandwagon of even hinting that children shouldn't be raised by single mothers.

Center for Economic and Policy Research publishes extensive critique of blaming single mothers

In response to the front page Sunday NYT piece I critiqued last week, the Center for Economic and Policy Research has published a multi-part analysis of what's wrong with blaming single mothers for income equality.  CEPR's title for the numerous postings by Shawn Fremstad says it all -- Family Structure is Overrated as an Explanation of Inequality. 

Part One criticizes how author Jason DeParle presented the data of respected sociologist Bruce Western in the NYT piece; turns out income insecurity bares more responsibility for inequality than family structure.  Part Two examines the role of gender inequality and poor compensation of child care workers and other paid caregivers.  Part Three refers to the NYT piece as "DeParle's Marriage Plot" and shows how the article overstates the significance of the decision not to marry; all mothers, not just married mothers, are having children at a later age, and married mothers as well as never married mothers have multi-partner fertility because they divorce and remarry.  Part Four reviews evidence that income inequality is a cause, rather than a result, of changes in family structure.  Part Five looks at the claim that children of single mothers have a harder time than children of married mothers moving up on the income scale; Fremstad points to data suggesting this is minimally true if at all, and that children born to unmarried mothers have an easier time climbing the income ladder than those whose mothers are married and then divorce.  (Given the problems associated with high conflict marriages, he also notes that telling women to stay married is not the answer.)

Given that the last post was yesterday, there might be a Part Six and beyond.  I would welcome that.  CEPR is a leading source of analysis about economic issues, including ending poverty and inequality.  I find I can turn to them for real answers when the right-wing pundits (and unfortunately some mainstream media folks like this NYT piece) are trying to distract the public from the policies that would lead to greater economic justice.

Renowned psychologist Michael Lamb publishes definitive article on child adjustment

Cambridge University Professor Michael E. Lamb has impeccable credentials as one of the world's leading experts on child development.  Among other things, he was Chief of the Section on Social and Emotional Development of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for 17 years.  His list of publications is about 50 pages long (that is not a typo!  check it out here).  He is credited with, among other things, determining that fathers, as well as mothers, matter to child development.  It is no doubt that early finding of his that endeared him to the "father's rights" movement and the fatherhood movement that sought to pathologize women raising children without father involvement.

Perhaps because of the mischaracterization of his research, Dr. Lamb was drawn into the public conversation about the relationship of family structure to child outcome.  Turns out that his research supported the findings that when fathers are there, they matter; in other words that there is more to child adjustment than the mother-child bond.  What his research did not support was the assertion that optimal child adjustment demands that every child have a father in the home.

In 2004,  the ACLU, in a case litigated brilliantly by LGBT Rights Project attorney Leslie Cooper, called Dr. Lamb as a witness in a lawsuit in Arkansas state court successfully challenging the social services agency regulation against placing children with lesbian and gay foster parents.  The trial judge referred to Dr. Lamb as the "most outstanding" expert witness in the case (coming close to saying he was the most outstanding expert witness he had ever heard), who answered questions fully with no "animus or bias" to any parties.  He testified about what did (quality of relationships, available resources), and did not (gender or sexual orientation of parents), matter to the well-being of children. Since then, Michael Lamb has participated in other litigation, most notably the Perry case challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8.

Last month, Dr. Lamb published in the journal Applied Development Science a summary of many hundreds of studies over the last four decades elucidating the factors that contribute to child adjustment.  The article, Mothers, Fathers, Families, and Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children's Adjustment is available online here.  This means that Dr. Lamb's professional opinion is now widely available for anyone who needs support for the following propositions:

*Social scientists have reached consensus that the following factors matter most to healthy child development:  the quality of relationships with parents; the quality of relationships between the parents and other significant adults; and the availability of adequate economic, social, and physical resources.

*Family structure explains a "small (or even insignificant) portion" of differences in child outcomes.

*Children in one-parent families have greater adjustment problems than children in two-parent families, but the primary causes of this increased maladjustment are disturbed relationships with one or both parents, reduced resources when there is only one wage-earner and care-giver, and unstable living arrangments and conflict around parental separation.  "The mere fact that the majority of children raised in single-parent or divorced families are well-adjusted," writes Dr. Lamb, "undercuts the argument that children 'need' to be raised in traditional families."

*Mothers and fathers are important to their children "as parents";  "father absence" is not itself important to adjustment.  (emphases in original)

*There is no support for the notion that both male and female role models in the home enhance child adjustment.

*The same factors affect child adjustment whatever the sexual orientation of parents; children with same-sex parents suffer no developmental disadvantages when compared with children of different-sex parents.

*Arguments from "some politicians and advocacy groups, especially those who oppose divorce and same-sex parenthood" that children need to be raised by "biological" parents have no empirical support.

Dr. Lamb concludes that discrimination against individuals and families on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, and marital status -- which he refers to as "outmoded beliefs in the superiority of traditional families" -- are harmful to individuals, families, and children.

To me, this is what is most important about this article.  It places single-mother and same-sex couple families together and debunks the myths about both.  Too often, advocates for LGBT families (especially for same-sex marriage) distance themselves from single-mother families.  Those families, they say, are pathological, but not ours. I despise such arguments.  The Lamb article makes clear that circumstances often associated with single motherhood, such as exposure of the child to parental conflict and lack of resources, can lead to child maladjustment.  But it is not the structure of a family with children raised by a single mother that's the problem.

Time for Michael Lamb to get an "allies" award from some gay rights group....

Let's tell all children that their family structure is equal to all others

The Tuesday New York Times article on pending same-sex marriage legislation in Washington state highlights the politicians, including Governor Christine Gregoire, who have switched their positions and now support the bill that would authorize same-sex marriage there.  So far so good.

The problem lies in how the Governor explained her support. “Let’s tell the children of our same-sex couples," said the Governor in her State of the State address, "that their parents’ relationship is equal to all others in the state.”  In a similar vein, State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, a recent pro-same-sex marriage convert, said this: “I met the families, I met the children of those families, and I had the realization that it is our responsibility to protect all of our citizens against discrimination.”        

Now I understand the argument that denying access to marriage to same-sex couples sends a message that our relationships are not as valuable as those of different-sex couples.  And I certainly oppose discrimination.  But that includes discrimination against the families of children whose parents don't marry -- gay or straight.  I want the large percentage of children born to unmarried couples to feel that their family structure is equal to that of their classmates with married parents.  And what about the children raised by grandparents or other relatives (including those raised by gay or lesbian grandparents or other relatives)? or by single adoptive parents (plenty of gay and lesbian folks doing that as well)?

If we're talking about validating and affirming the equal value of all families, let's really do that.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger -- week three preview -- the defendants will make it about gender

The argument that children need to grow up with a father is not an argument aimed primarily at lesbian couples raising children. It's the argument at the core of the right-wing "marriage movement" whose agenda includes federal funding for a "marriage promotion" industry, restrictions on no-fault divorce, and increased stigma for births outside marriage. The primary tenet of this movement is that the decline of life-long marriage is responsible for all our social problems, a point of view that deliberately ignores poverty, income inequality, poor education, and inadequate health care, for example, as root causes of poor outcomes for children.

This movement gained traction throughout the 1990's, before any state allowed same-sex couples to marry or even enter civil unions. As the movement for marriage equality grew, it challenged opposition from these "marriage movement" organizations by saying, essentially, if you think marriage is so important for children then you should support same-sex marriage as better for the children those couples raise. To continue opposing same-sex marriage, these groups had to shift their argument from "marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society" to "heterosexual marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society," and to do this they had to talk about how much gender matters. It's not marriage, they now say, but marriage between a man and a woman. And then they refined the argument even further to stress the importance to a child of being raised by his/her married biological parents.

So as the defenders of Proposition 8 present their witnesses this week, expect testimony on gender differences to play a significant role. That makes the study published last week by Tim Biblarz and Judith Stacey especially timely. In How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?, published in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family, these two sociologists review all the research used to support the proposition that families headed by married, biological parents are best for children, and they reach a different conclusion. They conclude that the best scientific evidence shows instead that "compared to all other family forms, families headed by (at least) two committed, compatible parents are generally best for children." This is true, they conclude, "irrespective of parental gender, marital status, sexual identity, or biogenetic status."

They write, "Current claims that children need both a mother and father are spurious because they attribute to the gender of the parents benefits that correlate primarily with the number and marital status of a child's parents since infancy. At this point no research supports the widely held conviction that the gender of parents matters for child well-being." (emphasis mine). This is exactly what renowned child development expert Michael Lamb testified to last week at the Prop 8 trial. Expect pro-Prop 8 witness David Blankenhorn to testify how much gender does matter, although I wonder how he will qualify as an expert. He is certainly a writer and an advocate, but he is not a social scientist or mental health clinician or researcher. I am truly looking forward to his cross-examination, and I expect this latest Biblarz/Stacey article -- from a peer-reviewed professional journal -- to play a prominent role.

No mention of family structure in the analysis of the Columbine shootings -- remember this for next time

There's been some thoughtful reporting about the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings, like the NPR interview with Dave Cullen about his book, Columbine. The subject that fascinates the most -- still -- is what caused the two shooters to unleash their torrent of death and destruction. I'm as interested in this as the next person.

But I've been struck while listening by a simple fact. No one mentions the family structure of either young man. I don't mean that no one mentions their families. Of course the questions about what the parents knew, what they did and what they didn't do have received enormous scrutiny. Lisa Belkin reflects on this in today's New York Times.

But no one even asks the question about whether the family structure in which these children were raised contributed to their terrible actions. And that's because both were raised by their married, heterosexual, biological parents.

Imagine any other family form -- never-married mother, divorced parents, gay parent, same-sex couple parents, raised by a grandmother or other relative, raised by a step-parent, adopted -- the list is long. You KNOW that everyone would be asking about the impact of that family form on the children. Some would dismiss it, but still, everyone would feel the need to comment. I assume there would be some lengthy and serious feature reporting on the subject. Was the child reacting to the shame of a gay parent? Was he trying to get the attention of the mother who placed him for adoption? Did he lack a positive male role model in the home? The list of questions would be long.

If you add race to the mix, the questions would become a frenzy. Raised by a single black mother? Raised by a Latina grandmother? Many commentators would find both pathology and causation.

Should we be asking whether a culture of married, heterosexual, biological parents helped turn these two young men into killers? If not, then the next time there is a tragedy of similar proportions and the killers have a different family form, let's remember Columbine and look somewhere other than family structure to understand what happened.