Friday, March 02, 2012

Attention All Cappy Cap Lieutenants - You Have a Mission

If you choose to accept it.

Forbes writes an article about a Wisconsin legislator aiming to bring some semblance of shame and responsibility to single parents deeming it a form of abuse or neglect. I wouldn't go so far as deem it "abuse" or "neglect" in today's legal terms, but it is at least damaging and is one of the biggest problems facing the US. Even the wording used said it's a "contributing factor" which I believe is quite accurate (and I believe statistically provable if we correlate divorce and single-parenting with crime, abuse, neglect, etc. etc. - but let's not let facts get in the way).

Of course the author and his readers mocks the Wisconsin legislator, presumably because they've never been brought up in a single family household and write off the damaging effects of single parent households as "bogus" or "hilarious." You know, all you latch-key kids, all you fatherless or motherless children who had to grow up in the 70's and 80's. You're morons if you think divorce or single parents were bad. You should be thankful you were brought into this world by two people incapable of bringing you up under a stable household. How selfish you must be. You want BOTH a mother AND A FATHER? Selfish little brat. Get in the car, I have to drop you off at day care while I get my degree in Cosmetology on the taxpayers' dime.

If there is a call to arms, this is it. Another aging journalist in the echo chamber media writing off and mocking somebody who has taken a politically unpopular stance. A stance for OF ALL THINGS (and here's the irony)

the children.

Not "the chilllllldreeeeeen" like the Wisconsin teachers union hide behind to steal more money from the taxpayer.

Or "the chilllllldreeeeen" like when politicians want to get you to vote for them.

Or "the chilllldreeen" when non-profit outfits like the UN or what-have-you milk you for more money and never seem to end child poverty because, well, their primary goal is employment, not solving hunger.

No, Senator Grothman is actually going to bat for the children and is putting his political career on the line for it. This is the type of guy you want in public office. Somebody who is not a politician, will hold his ground, make unpopular decisions, and is (GASP) altruistic and principled.

Lets see if we can get the old fogies at Forbes to realize there might be a generation or two younger than them that had to deal with their mistakes when they hooked up with somebody that they'd inevitably divorce, but NOT before bringing some innocent children into this world.

You can go make a comment. We'll see as they say over at SDA, "If SDA gets results!"

Oh, and PS - Rick, hope you like cheap nursing homes.

30 comments:

Unknown said...

OK I did it. I put my name and my opinion on a huge national forum.

Captain Capitalism said...

Which means you took against against evil and fought for what was right.

I hope you can sleep well at night.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Done. And done well, I hope.

Anonymous said...

I posted in all caps.

Steve said...

Great link - thanks. It was crazy to see the data and how much less poor treatment occurred with biological parents especially vs single parent with live in 'partner'. Logically I new it would be worse but that much worse is sad. . .

Bullitt315 said...

Also posted.

Jay said...

I don't know making it practically a crime to be a single-parent?

I was raised mostly fatherless my teen years, and it wasn't my mother's fault my dad died of cancer, but to basically say "You better marry another man b#^ch! or it's child abuse."
Trust me I know plenty of women who suffer the "Gotta Have a Man" syndrome and would hook-up with these dead-beats, who go on to do more damage to kids than the femnazi's could.

My view No Dad is better than a Dead-beat dad.

Still we should seek to curb welfare to "born-to" single-parents

Bill Powell said...

I'm in Captain. Posting my response right after I get done with this.

Izanpo said...

There's no such thing as a "single-parent family", silly!

It's single-moms and Big Daddy Gubmint.

(Is it safe to say the great social engineering experiment is drawing to a close?)

Bill Powell said...

This what I posted...


"The Senator is right. The majority of children born to single mothers are destined to a life of poverty, low education, live-in boyfriends who abuse them and their mothers, drug abuse and crime. The children have high probability to end up on welfare, be school drop-outs and have low self esteem.
The statistics and sociology studies confirm this. Go ahead readers, show where this is wrong.
We allow these children to remain with people unable an incapable of being parents because of a fairly recent belief that remaining with a natural parent is always best.
Meanwhile thousands of couples wait for years to possibly successfully adopt. In many cases they resort to adopting children from overseas rather than American children who need two loving parents."

^This^

The Senator is correct in his assumptions but trying to legislate such assumptions are always throwing the "baby out with the bath water". Think about it, legislating against behavior always has the unintended consequence of more misbehavior. Think the war on drugs. I feel the Senator has all the best intentions, but passing another law won't help things a bit. We're all criminals now, much to the delight to the criminal industrial complex that profits handsomely by incarcerating a larger percentage of our population than any country in the world.

That being said, the tone of this article on a supposedly free market publication like Forbes is telling. It's amazing how deep the tentacles of the anglosphere elites reach. This article only confirms why I quit reading Forbes almost a decade ago.

Done

Anonymous said...

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1908#comic

Rick Ungar said...

"aging' Journalist? Wow....low blow!
So, tell me exactly how the senator is helping chlldren with this piece of legislation. And do me favor..see if you can can, for a short time, control your moral superiority and focus-as I did - on what this legislation is doing for children specifically. I'll be really curious to hear the answer. If you are honest, you have no choice but to acknowledge that it will do nothing. Do you imagine Wisconsin will form the single-parent police? Do you imagine that Wisconsin social workers charged with being aware of child abuse so they can respond do not know the factors? What will the legislation do beyond bring scorn to people who are single parents. And you seem to want to pretend that single parents only include those who had children out of wedlock, news flash- many of these single parents were married and were forced into this situation by circumstances they may not have wanted like a cheating or dying spouse. What about them? You apparently think they too should wear the red badge of shame for their difficulties. And why you are busy moralizing, my wife was a single parent before we married and I took on the role of parenting the children. My kids are fantastic and I resent you suggesting that they were,, in any way abused or neglected during the years my wife was single before I came into the picture. She did a fantastic job. Your smugness is offensive to single parents who work hard to give their children the best - a lot harder than you do supporting a politician who is scoring cheap points at their expense. And I have no idea what the cheap nursing home line is supposed to mean. If you want to be funny- it pays to have understandable material.

Anonymous said...

Forbes is right the government has not business slandering a group of parents this way.

Anonymous said...

http://i.imgur.com/y15UY.jpg

Unknown said...

Here ya go, Captain! I hope you don't mind being defended by a girl!

"“You apparently think they too should wear the red badge of shame for their difficulties.”

Shame is a VERY good motivator. It always has been; it’s a big part of what has kept society functioning throughout history. If shame pressures people into making responsible decisions, then by all means, let’s have some more of it.

“what you are doing is suggesting that my own children (and even though they are my step-children they are very much my own chldren) were more likely to be abused and neglected during the years my wife was a single-parent.”

Don’t you get it? He’s not “suggesting” it, he’s stating it as a statistical fact. Your stepchildren WERE more likely to be abused an neglected during the years your wife was a single-parent! You may be the very thing that saved them. Talk about moralizing! Do you really believe her good intentions and hard work were the only things protecting her children from disaster? She was LUCKY! If she relied on public aid, she was lucky that the stigma didn’t hamper her children’s opportunities. (She was also lucky it exists.) If she didn’t rely on public aid, she was lucky that she didn’t have to. If she relied on voluntary help from good friends and family, she was lucky to have them. If she relied of child support payments, she was lucky her ex had an income. If she relied on her own income, she was lucky that it was adequate.

The presence of two parents DOUBLES the positive effects of good circumstances, and HALVES the negative effects of bad circumstances.

Yes. Her children were most certainly at risk for abuse and neglect."

Captain Capitalism said...

Steve, funny you mention that. LONG ago back when I was a freshmen, I was in freshman psychology, you know, one of those classes they force you to take. One of the few things that stuck in my mind was how biological relationships were, on average, better than adopted or non-marital ones.

Captain Capitalism said...

Rick, yes, aging.

Yes, scorn.

For the rest of it listen to some Tom Leykis.

grerp said...

Done. I posted:

"Anecdotal. For much of Obama's life he was raised by his (married) grandparents while his mother was off finding herself or some such. He's written a whole book to deal with the mixed emotions he has about the father who abandoned him to go off to...wait for it...find himself.

Paternal investment is key. KEY. Without paternal investment, kids' outcomes nosedive. They are more likely to fail at school and drop out, to get into trouble and eventually commit crimes, to have sex at early ages and make more babies. They are more likely to get depressed, to commit suicide, to do drugs, to develop addictions. They are less likely to marry themselves and create functioning families. This has been fully established by study after study. Single motherhood is a ticket (one way, most times) into poverty. We should be banging on and on about this, night and day, to save both kids and their single mothers from the poverty and unending hardship that single parent families most often produce.

What's more fathers deserve to be treated as the critical part of the equation they are. We should not be deeming them dispensable, as long as the money keeps on flowing. Kids NEED fathers to succeed, to be happy, and to learn how to make healthy families themselves someday.

The best thing you could do for children would be to re-stigmatize choosing single motherhood and make divorce much harder to get. Women need to choose better men to father their babies and then stick with those men. All of the problems children are experiencing today result from the breakdown of the family and the safety net that family affords. Of course, people will do neither of these things and will resist with all their strength any attempts to curb personal behavior, and we will continue to wring our hands and dither about which idea is the best one to throw money at to "save the children."

It's a little buried. For the record, I'm not convinced what this legislator wants to do will make a bit of difference, but I applaud him for at least addressing the issue. KIDS NEED DADS.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Well, I'd repost my comments here but it would fill up the place. I realize, through the idiosyncracies of Facebook login, that "Joan Varga" is what appears in Ungar's comments.

But it was just me. Little ol' me.

C_Miner said...

Jay - you're listing a different case. You weren't a ball bouncing between two homes. You never questioned what you did to make mommy and daddy part, or why daddy doesn't want to know you. I would presume that you have no doubt that both parents loved you, and each other. Few single-parent kids have that knowledge.

Half of my cousins are adoptees. Given the circumstances I know of the background of 2 of them, they would likely be in jail or dead before they were 30.

Sean said...

Done. Blasted progs making me angry again. I needed to wash my eyes after reading that piece.

Anonymous said...

Democracy as a generational ponzi:

Each rule passed into law has a cost associated with, be it a cost to enforce it, or a cost trough taxation. Each welfare program likewise has a cost associated to it, usually trough taxation.

Each generation comes at a point where old men die off and they make up the majority in a democratic system. Therefore they can elect leaders to pass into law laws that are beneficial to them. They might even themselves supply the majority of these leaders.

Thus each generation has the option of voting themselves laws that cost the future generations money while benefiting the current one.

Each generation will therefore get paid from the next generation's pocket, following the definition of a ponzi scheme where the dividend of earlier clients is paid out from the money of later clients, you can see that democracy is indeed a ponzi scheme.


Note: the definition of 'paid' here is abstract, it goes for both non monetary and monetary benefits. Intellectual property laws being an example of the first.

Unknown said...

I may have pissed him off worse than you did - I inadvertently insulted his apparently superhuman wife. Sheesh!

Captain Capitalism said...

I don't know the guy. But when you say "super human wife" I'm willing to bet if he's born in 1950, and is swallowing whole the leftist tripe, his wife constantly nags him and sh!t tests him and he is freaking pwnd. Again, admittedly, speculation. But seriously, no girl I ever dated would have tolerated such pansified BS. And I learned. And I made sure any girl I dated henceforth knew who the man was. This guy I'm just writing off as another pansified baby boomer hippie whose wife tells him what to do. Hell, probably doesn't even know what a sh!t test is.

Captain Capitalism said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

He just deleted two of my comments (not the ones that make me look like a heartless bitch, of course)and I'll eat my shirt if he doesn't delete the one I just left, "calling him out." Bet I'm banned within the hour.

Captain Capitalism said...

Unless you were cursing or something, then what would you expect from a leftist, burnt out hippie?

Paul said...

Well, all I can say is that this Ungar fellow is as dumb as a sack of hammers. I know first hand how bad it is to be a single parent as far as the kids are concerned, I am one.

I've been raising my kids alone since they were 1 and 5, because their physical safety was at risk from mom, due to both outright abuse and neglect, which once lead to a broken leg at three years old. As a guy, getting the right thing done was difficult and expensive, but that's another story.

My daughter, the eldest, still has lots of crap to deal with seven years on due to her mom. Still, there is also a definite and noticeable impact on her from the fact that she doesn't have both parents together. In fact it's probably what bugs her most. And she is very fully aware of what kind of person her mom is; when she was old enough I let her read the court-ordered psychological assessment made of her mom.

So in a rather extreme example, where mom is literally a sociopath with no maternal instincts, the fact of divorce and single parenting as a negative is extremely obvious. Unfortunately in my case, I had to choose the lesser evil. But that doesn't mean I can't recognize that it isn't good, or that I failed my children in terms of the mother I provided them with.

Given my experiences and the knowledge I've accumulated over the past seven years, I would say that depriving children of a parent because someone's not haaaapy, had to go find themselves, or some other bullcrap, is an act for which words like abuse and neglect fail to capture the absolutely devastating impact on kids that this has.

And I'm hopeful that adding something like this could have an impact, something that can affect custody decisions, because someone who destroys their kids' family on a whim should lose all rights to them.

Mr. Bob said...

My concern is the crusader's tendency to criminalize anything they don't like. The senator looks suspiciously like a right-wing crusader.

I can also easily picture some stupid teen getting into an argument with their mother, then reporting her for divorcing her abusive, worthless husband.

anon dude said...

"What will the legislation do beyond bring scorn to people who are single parents."

That's the point. Society needs to bring back slut-shaming. Single moms and their bastard spawn fuel the need for an ever expanding welfare state. Slut-shaming is a cost-free solution to this problem.