The Think Tank

The other night we were playing cards and listening to something on the TV about a young woman from a “normal, healthy family” – i.e. a home with married heterosexual parents and one or more children – who killed her newborn child.  It started a small discussion around our poker table about the “normality” of families, given that greater than 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce, which in turn led to whether or not singe-parent homes are more likely to produce children who commit crime then “normal” two-parent homes.  Being the only child from a one-parent home at the table, and given that I am a fairly upstanding citizen (and further given that I personally know several other one-parent kids who turned out respectable), I of course took the side that it didn’t really matter how many parents were in the home, and that poverty had a greater impact on whether or not you were likely to commit a crime.  Given the great range of infractions covered by the word crime, we agreed to limit ourselves to violent crime, severe drug addiction or distribution and habitual breaking and entering.

The discussion was short lived and offered no real conclusions aside from the fact that most everyone thought I was wrong, and while they conceded that kids from single-parent families weren’t doomed to be criminals, they felt the chances were significantly better.  So, I looked into it.

What I found was that we were all a little bit right.

According to all of the studies I could find, whether it was conducted by the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation, or the somewhat more liberal NAACP, there most certainly is a link between single-parent families and the likelihood of a child to commit the types of crime we were talking about.  The numbers vary wildly from one survey to the next, but the gist is that if you come from a single-parent home you are 5-10 times more likely to commit crime.

Chris: zero, everyone else: 1.

I would counter with the argument that if you come from a single-parent home where the mother is the only parent and has never married (which is roughly 75% of single-family homes) you are 20 times more likely to live below the poverty line then if your parents are married.  Add to that the fact that if you live below the poverty line you are 5 times more likely to commit a crime then if you are from a middle- or even working-class home, and it would appear that the score is 1 to 1.

Furthermore several studies conducted in England and Australia showed very conclusive evidence that increases in poverty lead to increases in child abuse (or neglect), and that those two factors have a linear relationship to juvenile crime rates.  When neglect and abuse go up, crime rates go up equally.  (Oddly enough, crime rates seem to jump higher for neglect then abuse).  Add in the fact that single parents tend to be less educated and therefore work for lower wages and are often forced to work multiple jobs, which in turn leaves the child unsupervised and free to associate with the less desirable peer group offered by the impoverished neighborhood the family is economically forced to inhabit, and you begin to see the vicious circle of poverty that I was talking about.

Call it 2 to 1 in my favor.

Here’s where my theory tanks.  When looking at single-parent families where the numbers have been equalized to account for socio-ecnomic discrepancies, married couples produce kids with fewer addictions, fewer mental disorders and who commit fewer crimes.  And it doesn’t seem to matter how many studies you look at, that results are the same.  While the numbers vary wildly about how much of a difference it makes, it is still undeniable.  Even when single-parent families are moved to better neighborhoods, the criminal activities of the kids are still higher then those from two-parent families, albeit by a lower percentage.  It even holds true for kids from homes where the parents are married but unhappy.  At this point you may think I might as well give up and go home, because I’ve lost.

But I haven’t.  At least not entirely.

While coming from single-parent homes might indeed cause greater instances of criminal behavior and mental anguish, the greatest link to raising happy, well adjusted kids who stay on the right side of the law is not being married to the child’s other parent, or even having another parent-figure in the home: it’s simply having access to other people.  A grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a step parent, even neighbors who have strong positive relationships and spend a reasonable amount of time with the kids produce statistically identical results to those children who come from married homes.  In fact, studies that are currently ongoing seem to suggest that kids who have large extended families beyond the “traditional” nuclear family (mother, father and 2.5 kiddies) are smarter, get higher paying jobs and have better social skills.

So what the evidence seems to prove is this: raising kids isn’t a single player sport, but the other players don’t have to be biological parents.

Almost any village will do.