Meet Your New Daddy
The News & Observer reported last week on a study from the Journal of Marriage and Family, which found that stepdads and stand-in pappies often make better parents than married biological dads:
Mothers reported that stepfathers were more engaged, more cooperative and shared more responsibility than their biological counterparts did, according to the study, published in this month's issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Lawrence Berger, the study's lead author, cautioned that the findings applied only to "fragile families," defined as low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.
Could this be good news for DC kids? (I'm thinking of the middle school misfits who lollygag around Jefferson and 7th, and occasionally interrupt my stoop reveries to ask if they can "get some peanut butter on that cracker.") The numbers say it should be great news. In 2006, the most recent year for which the Census Bureau has data, 4,093 unmarried DC women gave birth to screaming new DC residents. Even if we dismiss half of those births as intentional (i.e., the offspring of well-off domestic partners)–and I suspect those numbers are laughably optimistic–that still leaves quite a few unwed moms and daddy-less kids, many of whom I'd place in the category of "low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births."
Unless one wants to contend that unwed, low-income dads have a tendency to stick around and act as good role models, here's to the possibility that at least a few of DC's single moms will cease to fret over the significance of a flesh and blood connection between their kids and the men who raise them. And why were at it, let's hope that biological dads have enough pride to compete with the Prince Charmings who might usurp their roles at home.
12:10 pm
Where do I even begin..."middle school misfits", "...births as intentional (i.e., the offspring of well-off domestic partners"...I could go on but the toxic fumes spewing from this article are coming through my computer screen and burning my eyes
12:23 pm
woah, women intentionally having children outside of marriage? i think you just killed my grandmother, Riggs.
1:17 pm
To Single Mom By Choice,
I used the word "some" intentionally. I don't think all of DC's moms (or all single moms elsewhere) should--or need to--find an in-house father figure for their kids. Many single moms do amazing jobs (mine included) without one, but for others, the socioeconomic realities aren't quite so...sunny.
And I stand by the phrase "middle school misfits," and would've used it if the situation were reversed, and I had heard a group of white tweenage boys insulting a black man in a mostly-white neighborhood. I don't think it's crass or reactionary to assume that such attitudes are informed, at least in part, by what kids hear at home.
2:10 pm
I think the problem has less to do with race and more to do with your characterization of the lifestyles of both the unmarried and the "low income." With your assumption that low-income, unattached women (seems that you're conflating the two here) are incapable of "intentionally" having children, you call the kids whose neighborhood you've gentrified "mistakes." To think, if those women hadn't made so many "mistakes," you wouldn't have those darned kids interrupting you as you sit on your stoop, making lofty assumptions about the neighborhood that you live in. But all is not lost, poor, single gals - as long as you can snag a Prince Charming to help make all these childbearing decisions for you.