Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

MEN ARE, IN FACT, BETTER PARENTS

by Greg Hamilton

This one will really upset the apple cart.

The statistical horrors of single parenting we hear about: lack of school success, drugs, crime, etc are actually associated with single motherhood.

Single fathers raise children that statistically no different from two parent households.

Generally speaking women raise great children, men raise great adults …

–UPDATE–

Y’all aren’t thinking this thru.

The data suggests that single fathers produce the same rates of negative outcome as double parent households, and that single mother households are worst of all – with highest rates of negative outcomes. Or stated inversely: single mother households produce nearly universally bad outcomes across the spectrum.

As far as I know this is correct.

What Y’all are doing instead of trying to explain how this data is true, is not explaining the difference between single father and single mother households.

And you’re doing this because of ignorance, the common cognitive biases (errors) in which you assume you are average, the people you know are average, and you are extrapolating your limited knowledge (extending a curve rather than limiting a distribution).

So, Single Mother Households:

Black: 66% Hispanic: 41% White: 33% Asian: 21%.

Once you face the uncomfortable fact that 50% of women will experience a psychological problem, that 40% will have some problem of some duration, and that at least 33% of women have ongoing psychological problems, (neuroticism, +estrogen and -serotonin is a bad combination), then we see one of the causes.

If we add the fact that single mothers are more likely to work in lower income jobs, and ‘go thru multiple mates’, and have unstable emotional and economic lives, and they externalize their emotions to their children, and the kids are NEVER fooled, and they almost always feel and demonstrate guilt for it, we start to see a picture developing.

And the we add the fact that single fathers are far more likely to be white.

And then when we see that only stable males tend to take the role of single parent, and that almost half of those males will find a stable female to cohabitate with, and that they won’t rotate females.

We can explain the data. Stable, white males are better parents regardless of whether they are married, ‘cohabitating’, or single, than single mothers of all races.

And Y’all are typical … well intentioned fools … because you don’t know the most trivially obvious data. Or stated more pejoratively: that you hold opinions on matters about which you are so ignorant you’re little better than superstitious children. Ok?

But something else is interesting: The evidence is pretty clear that (a) women are better suited to the majority (center-distribution) of occupations in modernity (service economies), but those jobs pay less, because we are paid by scarcity, risk, and loyalty; and (b) men are better suited to parenting in modernity because of our temperaments (and want of order), in particular our lack of projection, lack of guilt, and tolerance for children taking considered risks. And (c) there is a reason that historically (for almost all of human history) girls were available for wifehood (motherhood) as soon as they were fertile (13-14) and boys were transferred from women’s governance to men’s governance at fertility (12-14).

This role reversal is what I’m interested in exploring. Because I’m not sure it’s a role reversal. Fathers have been stronger in households for all of history, and women have been more caretakers and feeders for all of history, and as far as I can tell women have moved from the kitchen to the work force, and women are more dominant as grandmothers while men are more dominant and influential as fathers.

That’s what I want to explore.

—ANSWERS—

Riku Soikkeli:

—“The explanation, if this is true, is probably that only very, very responsible fathers get selected to single fatherhood. Whereas that selection pressure is lower for women since they are viewed by society as the default caretakers. Pretty much the same statistical artifact which makes it look like gays are better parents than straight couples.”—-

There we go.

Took a while. thank you. 😉

Now, this might be a problem….. Because it sure looks like poor fathers get the kids because mom is a ho and a drug addict, and not poor fathers get the kids because mom is a ho and a psycho and an addict.

What I think is more important is simply using the data to show that single mother hood is the worst of all possible options.