May 13, 2007
Married Mothers Matter
National Review Online: Children Are Best Served When Moms Stick To Their Wedding Vows
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Play CBS Video Video Mom Is 'Simply The Best' Dave Price awards a deserving mother with a musical Hallmark Card just in time for Mother's Day.
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Video Story Wins Mother's Day Prize Harry Smith speaks with the winner of "The Early Show's" Mother's Day contest, Sandy Kelps, and "For One More Day" author Mitch Albom about the story that won the judges' hearts.
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Video Fairytale Brownies For Mom Dave Price gives "The Early Show" audience members a live taste-test of a new Mother's Day gift idea, Fairytale Brownies.
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(AP)
This Sunday, neighbors, husbands, and especially children should lift a glass to the mothers who have managed to get and stay married to the fathers of their children. For, despite the fact that single motherhood never seems to go out of style with the media, motherhood typically works best — for our nation’s neighborhoods, children, and even most moms — with a wedding ring.
You will not read any of this in the New York Times, which seems to think sperm-donor-dads are just fine, but married mothers serve our nation's neighborhoods, children, and even themselves better than any of the dizzying array of alternatives to married motherhood. This truth was abundantly clear to me after surveying the social-scientific literature on marriage and child well-being with 15 other family scholars for a recent report, Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences.
Take crime. Mothers who manage to get and stay married are much less likely to produce boys who end up terrorizing playgrounds, parks, and little old ladies walking home from the grocery store. One recent Princeton study found that boys who grew up in an intact, married family were half as likely to end up in prison as young adults. After studying murder and robbery rates in our nation’s cities, Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson observed, "Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States." This is why neighbors should thank the married mothers on their block.
Or take psychological well-being. Children who are fortunate to grow up with a married mother and father are much less likely to find themselves in serious emotional trouble. By contrast, children who grow up without their father are significantly more likely to suffer from depression. And for some children, it gets much worse than depression. In the last half-century, suicide has more than tripled among teens and young adults; one recent Harvard study found the single "most important explanatory variable" behind this disturbing rise in youth suicide was the "increased share of youth living in homes with a divorced parent." This is why children should thank their mothers for getting and staying married.
Or take a mother’s relationship with her sons and daughters. No one is surprised to learn that divorced and never-married fathers typically have poor relationships with their fathers. After all, most nonresidential fathers do not even see their children once a week. But even mothers are much more likely to have poor relationships with their children when dad is not in the picture. One study found that young adults whose parents were divorced were nearly twice as likely to report that they had a poor relationship with their mother compared to young adults who were raised in an intact, married family (30 versus 16 percent). This is why mothers, who usually make great efforts to have good relationships with their children, should also make every effort to get and stay married.
This is not to say that mothers should endure abusive or adulterous relationships, nor is it to devalue the heroic sacrifices that many single mothers make on behalf of their children. (Full disclosure: I think my own mother did a wonderful job raising me and my sister all on her own.) Indeed, the best social-scientific evidence suggests that children do better when their parents part ways if their relationship is characterized by serious physical or emotional abuse.
But the sad fact of the matter is that most divorces — two-thirds, according to a recent book by Penn State sociologists Paul Amato and Alan Booth — do not involve such abuse. All too many divorcing spouses "grow apart," take an interest in an attractive coworker, or decide that their personal happiness is more important than the happiness of their spouse and children. And, according to Amato and Booth, these divorces are precisely the ones that are most devastating to the children who have to endure them.
Why does marriage matter so much for children? Typically, two parents bring more social and economic resources to the parenting enterprise than does one parent. Two parents offer one another mutual support, encouragement, and relief when a child is difficult, disobedient, or depressed. For instance, a husband can step in and relieve a wife who has grown angry or exhausted with her children. This, by the way, is one reason married moms are more likely to have children who report good relationships with them; because of the financial, practical, and emotional support they receive from their husbands, married moms are more likely to be affectionate and authoritative — and less likely to be abusive — than are single mothers.
Marriage also binds children to their fathers, who usually find it very difficult to maintain consistent and positive relationships with their children without the support and encouragement of their children’s mother. Finally, children who are fortunate to have married parents who are considerate of and committed to one another enjoy a measure of emotional security — not to mention a model of adult love that gives them hope for their own marital future — that their peers in broken homes do not.
So, this Mother’s Day, lift a glass to dear old Mom, and lift it especially high if she honored the vows she made on her wedding day.
By W. Bradford Wilcox
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
"the journalist didn't say that spousal abuse is acceptable or should be tolerated."
No one here has stated that he did. I believe that you can read and that your comment was a simmple oversight.
Too bad you don't get that the rest of these parents wanted to have good marriages but failed.
Failed due to reasons such as immaturity, lack of skills,ignorance, cheating, beating, and what have you.
Fix those and maybe you'll have something.
Too bad you don't get that the rest of these parents wanted to have good marriages but failed.
Failed due to reasons such as immaturity, lack of skills,ignorance, cheating, beating, and what have you.
Fix those and maybe you'll have something.
This is perhaps the dumbest article I have ever read. Here we have a man once again telling women what it means to be a good mother.
As a man, I can tell you that the reason there are so many single moms is because far to many men are simply pathetic partners.
And what's worse, right-wingers like W. Bradford here wants them to remember that they SERVE their husbands and the childern that he gave them. And they need to server without question.
If any single group understands parenting it women. And if any single group screws it up, its men.
For this fool to question single moms is an afront to EVERY mother raising a family, with or with out a husband. He all but declares that you MUST HAVE A MAN to do it well.
Clearly his father didn't teach him better. And his mother should smack him.
My first husband felt just because he was the major bread winner, he didn't need to make the emotional & spirtual effort towards his girls & wife. He took them for granted for 10 years. He still couldn't understand why we left.
My second husband, though, is totally engaged in our family. He works hard too, but his family & wife comes first, thats why we have been together over 12 years.
So to Mr. Wilcox, it takes BOTH spouses to make a marriage work.