Living Single

You can find the data and references in "Singled Out"

Two loving parents are important - however, just because someone is a parent does not mean they are loving. Do stats on families with two parents determine first if the parents being studied are loving or abusive? How would they know?

I agree- self-reports of health are hardly to be trusted. 92% of single people may think they are healthy and god bless them for thinking that but that does not mean their self-reports are accurate.

Also regarding the statement that married people are less involved with family and more focused on each other than single people-it's interesting how Bella compares the time that singles spend with their parents to the time married people spend with their parents to come to the conclusion that, and I quote "So while married couples are focused primarily on each other, single people are the ones who are holding together families and communities." Umm...I guess if you are defining "family" by "parents." Why not compare and contrast the amount of time marrieds versus singles spend on family and community, as defined by the sum of children, parents, siblings, relatives, and friends and then come to a conclusion? Why privilege one definition of family (parents and siblings) over another? Are children not family?
As for delinquent kids, I agree that Bella could actually examine evidence from prison statistics and court statistics to analyze the family backgrounds of those kids, instead of pointing to a statistic on substance abuse only. If the evidence is there that kids of single parents are really better off or equally well off as those of coupled parents, why not list that evidence right here on this blog??

And this is simply anecdotal, but having worked with kids with conduct/behavioral problems and often legal problems stemming from those, I haven't yet met a kid with such issues who came from a stable family background (ie, two parents who had been together throughout the kid's childhood, whether with a marriage certificate or not).

Bella's research methods are superficial and selective...just like a traditional literature review tends to be. You can support your point with just the literature that supports it, while conveniently leaving out the rest, or examining only certain areas of the topic at hand, which happen to have literature that supports your point. It's no coincidence that her research is published in the form of a pop psychology book instead of an actual peer-reviewed psychology journal-it just would not hold up under the scrutiny of her peers in academic psychology...and that has nothing to do with "singlism."

I'm curious why "Anonymous" is so bothered by the prospect that single people may be just as happy, healthy and vibrant as married ones? Why do you care so much? If you're married and happy, GREAT! What does that have to do at all with people who are single and happy? Yikes! Chill. There's more than one road to happiness and it's different for each of us...

I'm not certain exactly what you mean by "lowest functioning". However I and all 6 of my siblings were raised by a single mother, and every last one of us graduated from college. I'm not sure where that rates on the "functioning" scale, but I think she did a bang up job. And what is even more surprising, almost ALL of the children in our neighborhood were raised by a single parent and I haven't heard about ANY of them getting into trouble. Neighborhood stats arent' all that hard to check out either, it's just that no one goes into these neighborhoods, unless they work for the Census Bureau. All of these people went on to be productive members of society, so I'm not sure what you're saying.

As someone who works not only in academia but also in The Real World (in several inner-city ERs), I can tell you that "single parents" are not a homogenous group. When academics think of single parents they may be thinking of their well-educated cousin who got divorced after having children. However, by numbers I believe low-income, not-well-educated African-American women are overrepresented in this group. There is a matriarchal culture in U.S. inner cities- young women have kids, raise them with the help of their own mother and sometimes grandmother, and don't seem to really expect to marry, which I believe is well-reflected in the marriage statistics by race. These women and their children have a host of challenges unrelated to them being unmarried, and often their children have plenty of loving adults and parental figures in their lives; if more of them end up in prison it likely has more to do with what they were up against from the beginning. If there are studies showing that the children of well-educated, middle-income single mothers have worse outcomes, please let me know about them.

As someone who works not only in academia but also in The Real World (in several inner-city ERs), I can tell you that "single parents" are not a homogenous group. When academics think of single parents they may be thinking of their well-educated cousin who got divorced after having children. However, by numbers I believe low-income, not-well-educated African-American women are overrepresented in this group. There is a matriarchal culture in U.S. inner cities- young women have kids, raise them with the help of their own mother and sometimes grandmother, and don't seem to really expect to marry, which I believe is well-reflected in the marriage statistics by race. These women and their children have a host of challenges unrelated to them being unmarried, and often their children have plenty of loving adults and parental figures in their lives; if more of them end up in prison it likely has more to do with what they were up against from the beginning. If there are studies showing that the children of well-educated, middle-income single mothers have worse outcomes, please let me know about them.