Monday, January 19, 2009

Those Damn Statistics

Coulter:

By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced.

A 1990 study by the left-wing Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared.

Various studies come up with slightly different numbers, but all the figures are grim. A study cited in the far left-wing Village Voice found that children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home."

With new children being born, running away, dropping out of high school and committing murder every year, it's not a static problem to analyze. But however the numbers are run, single motherhood is a societal nuclear bomb.

Whether they know it or not, MPS Admin and teachers have only to cite this column to deflect blame for the miserable performance in the schools.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Control for income and then get back to me. i'm betting a lot of that effect disappears.

But it wouldn't surprise me if some didn't. Fathers are essential in the life of every child.

Shoebox said...

Dad, if they did use this answer they would be accused of hating single mothers, no different than what Coulter has been for pointing out this information.

Dad29 said...

Scott, my vague memory of similar studies ('70's/'80's) is about the same as these. IIRC, income levels were significant only at the lowest income margins.

But psychopaties in upper-middle/upper income levels show up, too. My kids are acquainted with a number of that group in divorce/single mother situations and it's not pretty.