Daring To Suggest One Family Form is Better than Another

Well, the Idaho Family task force has come out with their proposal. We just addressed the substance of the Idaho Family Task force’s plan and I found it was a reasonable plan even if I didn’t agree with it in all places. Now, it’s time to look at the reactions to it. The major arguments against the plan can be broken down as follows:

1. How dare it be suggested that some family structures are superior to others.

2. How dare the government become involved in this issue.

3. The Task force is a bunch of dinosaurs.

4. It’s impractical to think a family can survive on one income.

5. It’s a fascist Mormon plot directly from Salt Lake City.

In regards to number 5, it’s quite interesting how the comments of this piece became a hotbed of angry anti-LDS screeds. One wonders where the Statesman’s tolerance lies for assaults on Jews and others. I would kindly suggest that Magic Valley Mormon and Bubblehead take a look at the comments and offer their own critiques.

Regardless, let’s move on to the other arguments. Argument 1 is advocated by my state Representative, Branden Durst:

Durst, the lone Democrat on the task force, bristles at suggestions that children from nontraditional homes face more troubles than those from two-parent households. Durst is married with a 5-year-old stepson, a 3-year-old son from a previous relationship and a newborn with his wife. He said he was personally offended by some of the speakers’ suggestions.
“What’s important is the quality of the family and the people in the family,” he said.

Well, Durst can bristle at the suggestion all he likes, but he may as well bristle at the suggestion that people who eat at McDonalds all the time are more likely to be fat. There are facts that have been established by research regarding families and what works and what doesn’t:

Compared with married people, cohabitors reported much higher levels of domestic violence, with 15 percent of the cohabitors and 5 percent of the married saying that they or their spouse hit, shoved, or threw things.

Cohabitors who were engaged were no more likely to report violence than married couples. However, cohabitors who did not have plans to marry were much more likely to report couple violence than either married or engaged couples. The probability of male-to-female violence for married couples was 3.6 percent and 3.2 percent for female-to-male violence.

Similarly, engaged cohabitors probabilities were 4.7 percent and 3.4 percent respectively. Cohabiting couples without definite plans to marry were more than twice as likely to experience violence in the relationship than either married couples or engaged cohabitors with a probability of male-to-female violence of 9.9 percent and a probability of female-to-male violence of 7.6 percent.

Married mothers were less likely to suffer abuse than never-married mothers. In fact, even when the very high rates of abuse of separated and divorced mothers were added into the statistic, the rates of abuse among mothers who had ever been married were still lower than the rates of abuse among women who had never married and those who were cohabiting. Among mothers who were currently married or had ever been married, the rate of abuse was 38.5 per 1,000 mothers. Among mothers who have never been married the rate was 81 per 1,000 mothers.

Higher levels of family disruption at the community level, as measured by the proportion of households with children headed by a single parent, were strongly and consistently associated with higher rates of juvenile arrest for rape, aggressive assault, weapons, and simple assault. An increase of 13 percent in single-parent households would predict a doubling of the overall offense rate.

The more hours children spent in daycare centers, the more likely care providers were to report such behavioral problems as immature behavior, attention problems, and aggressive behavior when the child was 54 months old. The same relationship between hours in daycare and behavior problems existed, with regard to center care experienced at any earlier period of the child’s life.

For the males in the sample, compared to those living with two biological parents, the odds of having had sex with a romantic partner were 80% greater for those in a stepfamily, 96% greater for those living with a single mother, twice as high for those living with a single father, and almost four times as high for those living in other family structures. For the females in the sample, compared to those living with two biological parents, the odds of having had sex with a romantic partner were 88% greater for those in a stepfamily, 81% greater for those living with a single mother, and 2.3 times as high for those living in other family structures. Females living with a single father were equally as likely to have had sex with their romantic partner as females living with two biological parents.

The above quotes come from actual studies, and there are dozens of more just like them for those willing to do the research. Does this mean that all children who grow up in non-traditional households are doomed? Certainly not. What it does mean is that it’s going to be a tougher road to hoe for the parent and require a lot more effort.

The third argument is an ad hominem. Because an idea is old or new doesn’t make it wrong or right.I don’t advocate a blanket “return to the 1950s.” In the past 60 or so years, we’ve made enormous progress in some areas, but we’ve also messed a lot of things up.

While I believe Branden Durst is a nice guy, it seems like he’s letting his personal feelings about his own situation get in the way of actual policymaking. A lot of people have made some poor family decisions about issues ranging from divorce, child rearing, sex, etc., and then rather than admitting we hadn’t done the best, we insist that others say that it’s equal to everything else. The ultimate test is to own up and figure out, regardless of mistakes made, what’s the best situation based on sound social science.

I would also say it’s important to encourage and help those who are parents in less than ideal circumstances with parenting education, etc.

The argument of how dare the government be involved is made by Chris at the Unequivocal Notion:

Rep. Steven Thayn is back again trying to inject himself and his cohorts into your home and mine. What I’ve never understood is that “Republicans” claim to be the party of “small government”, but I think some of them were out of the office when that memo landed on their desk.

The argument has not a little hint of hypocrisy. Democrats have little problem with government being involved in your health care decisions, nor in taking over the parental responsibility of educating your preschoolers, nor of providing health care to those who make poor decisions.

Government’s role in this comes down to the fact that the breakdown of the family has an impact on the whole society. However, I would agree that government involvement must be minimal as government really doesn’t do much well and is responsible for creating many problems. If you read through the actual recommendations, you see that most proposals are quite modest. They tweak existing programs to make them more family friendly and favor a few changes in divorce laws and the procedures for marriage. That’s it.

The fourth argument is that of impracticality and it’s made by Idablue who I give points for first acknowledging the laudability ofthe goals before explaining his issue:

There are only 4 ways to resolve this. Increase wages, lower prices, subsidize the families, or reduce consumption. I’m pretty sure Thayn doesn’t support raising the minimum wage. Initiatives to bring high paying jobs to Idaho seldom succeed on any scale, especially since one of the attractions to business here is the overall low prevailing wages.

The minimum wage is a fun canard here but has little to do with the issues. Given that only 2% of workers over age 25 earn the minimum wage and 9% of teenagers do, this has little to do with most families. As for high paying jobs, Alan does have a point about Idaho’s attraction being low wages, perhaps we should work on our business tax environment where we rank #32 in the nation because businesses clearly aren’t coming for the common sense tax laws.

Lowering prices just isn’t going to happen. If the legislature ponied up some incentives to get an oil refinery built here it could perhaps lower gasoline prices, but that’s almost silly to contemplate. In a national and global economy there just isn’t much Idaho can to to lower prices enough to allow a mother to forgo an income.

Families could cut back on cable TV, cell phones, internet access, up to date computers, and other non-essentials to save money, and live like people did in the 1950s. This actually can work. Unfortunately, few people want to return to that life. Cars in the ’50s had metal dashboards and no seat belts, but cost around $1,000. Cars now can save your life in a wreck, but cost $20,000. Which would you choose for your kids, mom? And again, how does government convince people to live, by today’s standards, such a Spartan lifestyle?

While Alan strains, there is a legitimate point here. There is only so much government can do and some of the issues that have mothers staying home are economic and lifestyle added values, coupled with obligations that must be paid such as gigantic student loan bills.

There are some things that can be cut back on. One needn’t go with a $1,000 car (though I found a nice $1500 car that’s done a good job) but there are reasonably priced used vehicles for $3-$5k. Also, it can be said that some of the extra income that some women earn is illusionary. As the USAA Educational Foundation points out:

Do not assume both you and your spouse must work for financial stability. Sometimes, a second income barely offsets the costs of child care and other work-related expenses. Take time to calculate the cost of maintaining two careers. Use the Work-Related Expense Work Sheet to help you.

Rarely is the type of calculation done when a decision for both parents to work outside the home is made. All that many couples know is that the one income is not making ends meet, so the assumption is that adding an additional income is the solution. Not always the case.

For example, many women drive from outlying areas like Mountain Home or Boise County to work in Boise. When all the costs such as Child Care, Restaurants and TV dinners for harried parents who don’t feel like making dinner after a hard day of work, extra taxes, etc. get added up, many would find that they were making little if anything. In a 20/20 report from the 1990s a shocked couple found they were losing money by the wife working. Most will find that rather than earning a solid income, when all the deductions are taken away, the working mother’s take home pay amounts to sweatshop labor.

That said, there are some families where needs and obligations require both parents to work. If that’s the case, you work through it and do the best you can. It still doesn’t change the ideal and the goal.

I also think that Idaho has a great opportunity to reduce the tax burden on Idaho middle class families that are being squeezed by absurd income tax system. It seems like every tax bill introduced in the legislature benefits either the very rich or the very poor, while the Middle Class is pretty much forgotten.

Last, subsidies. Rep. Thayn, did you support Bill Sali’s vote to defeat the S-CHIP bill? Would you support expanding the food stamp program? About about Aid to Families with Dependant Children? Did you support Gov Risch’s property tax relief and the matching 1 cent sale tax increase the negated it? Given the political philosophy of Idaho Republicans, subsidies are right out.

More socialism is not the answer. The oppressive weight of taxation is already high enough. Driving it higher is not going to solve problems for Idaho families. They need relief from high government spending, not more of it.