A speaker compares outcomes for children raised by single fathers versus single mothers, citing higher rates of suicide, dropout, and crime among kids with single moms. He explores whether poverty, parental education, or differences in mental health prevalence explain the gap, and argues the legal system's default to award mothers custody ignores individual circumstances.
Chapters
Relationships fact and fiction. Here's one that I hear quite often in the comments of my videos, and that is that kids are better off with a single father versus a single mother. Men will often say such platitudes as men are better parents than women are, that it's in the statistics that show that if you had your choice, go with mom or go with dad full-time, the kids are better off going with dad. Well, is there any science or any math at all to back up that claim? Well, this is gonna piss some people off. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just quoting facts that I found via Google, like any of you guys can do. So let's dig into a little bit, shall we? Uh, studies have shown that children from a single mother household are 5 times more likely to commit suicide than children from both unbroken households and single father households. Ouch. Kids from a single mother household are 9 times more likely to drop out of school. They're 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances. They are 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home. Single mother households account for 70% of all teen pregnancies, 70% of all child murders. If you are a child living with your single mother, you are more likely to be murdered by your parent. This is not looking good. So the big question then is, why the disparity? What the hell is going on here? Some people will say poverty, that women are more apt to be poor, bad financial shape as compared to the dad. Well, even when taking into account the financial situation, we still have a pretty strong disparity. What about education levels? Maybe the mothers have a lower education level. They don't have a degree and so forth that the single fathers do, which, you know, has— causes a cascading series of issues, I guess, is the point some people are trying to make. You know, same thing as the economics and such. Well, When we take that into account, education level, still doesn't look good. Like anything, these issues are complicated. And it's not so simple, guys. I'm sorry, I know a lot of you wanna say, "Woman bad, man good." It's not that simple. Anytime you run into these kind of stats, it takes some digging to kind of figure out what the hell's going on here. I'm not saying I have all the answers here, but, you know, it took some time to do some Googling and do some research and so forth. And there are some things that may help shed some light on what exactly is going on here. One thing is, it is very difficult, much more so for women, to have a healthy partner who is willing to come into the fold, into the family, not necessarily at a full-time marriage basis. Could be just as, you know, serious boyfriend who visits from time to time. It's much more difficult for that woman to find a mate than it is for the man in that situation. Why? She goes out into the dating market. Would you like to be my serious boyfriend? Okay, let's learn more about you. She says, well, I have— I'm a single mother with 4 kids. The men in that situation are much more apt to say, see you later, I don't think so, no, uh-uh. Then if we flip the genders and a man goes out in the market and he says, I am a single father with 4 kids, Actually, the stats seem to show that for a lot of women, he is more attractive than if he didn't have the kids. Not for all women, but a lot of women say, "Oh yeah, the fact that he's a single father makes him more attractive." So it would seem that if you're a woman and you have, and you're out there searching for a man, you're going to attract some possibly not so good guys that want to, you know, join the fold and join your family of a single mother of 4 kids. Versus a guy, he goes out there and he's going to find a woman who says, "Yes, I'm willing to take on your children. I'm gonna be very nurturing. I'm gonna be very loving," and so forth, even if it is just on a part-time girlfriend type of basis. That's a more healthy environment for the kids to be in. For the purposes of this, the definition of single, when we're talking about single men, single women, single means not married. You could have somebody living with you and still be a single person. Technically. And in fact, when we look at the single men out there, 41% of them are living with a woman. And when we look at the women, only 16% of them have a guy living with them and helping out with the day-to-day life with the kiddos. So you can see the disparity there. Now, all that aside, here's the one that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And again, please don't shoot the messenger. Google yourself. Go to your local psychologist. Go to your local family doctor if you don't believe me. This is not a condemnation of women. This is not a condemnation of mental health disorders. But statistically, if you were to put a, you know, group of men and women together in a room, if you were to put your money on which group has more emotional and mental disorders, difficulties, whatever you want to call it, you probably should put your money on the women. Women tend to be higher in anxiety and depression. In psych terms, women tend to be higher in trait neuroticism, a propensity for negative thought, a propensity for anxiety, depression, et cetera, et cetera. And yes, that may very well have, in fact it will have, a detrimental effect on your ability to parent. Again, this is not a condemnation of mental illness, whatever, of any kind, anxiety. I've often said myself that I've had anxiety all through my childhood and young adulthood. I know many, many great people, men and women alike, who struggle with depression. It's a day-to-day struggle for them. They're not any less of people, but they would be the first to tell you that parenting is more difficult for them than it is for their very low neuroticism, low depression, low anxiety friend who just seems to just go with the flow and, you know, everything's hunky-dory for them. Another factoid that may impact all of this: when we have a divorce and we say, who do the little kids go with, mom or dad? More often than not, the courts say mother. They're now starting to say more and more it's a strict 50/50 custody. In a lot of cases, it's mother gets the majority custody, and dad gets the whole, you know, every Wednesday, every other weekend, or every other Wednesday, weekends, whatever it is. Dad sees them less time than what mom does. It just seems to be the default solution in a lot of places, a lot of states, and a lot of countries in the world, right or wrong. And again, that's slowly but surely changing. But when you say this person gets majority custody of the kids, Why? Because of their gender. It doesn't take into account whether or not they will be the legitimate better parent of the two. The person could be underemployed, so now they have the stress of, you know, not making a lot of money. The person could have anxiety, stress, mental issues that we talked about. That will make things more difficult. So when the courts and so forth just say, go with this one over here because gender, they're not taking into account all the other problems. That's gonna lead to some issues potentially. Yes, some mothers out there have no business being a parent, just as some fathers out there have no business being a father. So when a court system defaults and goes to this person just because of their gender, you're more apt to have issues, just the way the stats work. And in fact, when we hear situations where the man has sole custody of his kids, What do we all think? Oh, Mom must have something really bad going on. You know, Mom must have went off the rails or something, or Mom must be nuts, or something like that. More often than not, eh, you're probably right.
