Hurting Kids

As a society we tend to get pretty bent toward someone who physically assaults or emotionally damages children. And we should! But a huge hurt that comes into children’s lives has little to do with the physical per se  – rather, with the reality that the only really good environment in which to rear a child is a stable, lloving, working, worshiping two parent family. That is not to say that other child-raising environments are always bad, just that we need to “prefer” and “perfect” the former.

A recent study reported in Associated Press which determined that 25 percent of children in the United States (highest of all developed Countries) are reared in single parent homes (mostly single mothers)  helps us to see the issue –

Experts point to a variety of factors to explain the high U.S. figure, including a cultural shift toward greater acceptance of single-parent child rearing. The U.S. also lacks policies to help support families, including childcare at work and national paid maternity leave, which are commonplace in other countries.

Of course this study leans toward the concept that it “takes a village” to raise a child. We have chosen as a society, by in large, to accept that single parent homes only need greater Government involvement to resolve the problems.

But in the same article we are told:  . . . public spending on child welfare and education is higher in the U.S. than in other countries — $160,000 per child compared to $149,000.

One would expect that the National Organization for Women would weigh in for being able to provide the solution –

“Single moms do a brilliant and amazing job raising their children,” said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. “It is also true that single moms in this country are systemically underpaid, and systematically under-resourced and systemically unrespected. It’s not the fact they are single moms that makes things difficult.”

Maybe one of the reasons single moms are “systemically underpaid” is because they are often uneducated, unskilled, immature, with a poor work ethic while constantly overly burdened with child care. It is difficult to resolve that they are “systematically under-resourced” when one reads the figures quoted above regarding expenditures. As for being “unrespected” – when will we learn that respect is earned, and while many single moms deserve respect, there are multitudes who have yet to earn it. I confess I don’t understand Ms. O’Neill’s last statement quoted above. It is exactly that they are single moms that is the major part of the overall problem.

God’s design is for children to be reared in a stable, lloving, working, worshiping two parent family. Because we are unwilling to accept that as the standard, overlook at best, and support at worst, another life style, the problem will remain and grow worse with time.

For most children, single parent homes are hurtful, damaging, sometimes destroying, and create a more difficult environment for achieving success in life. It hurts children!  It ought to be a crime and punishable by law.