Being A Foster Child Made Him A Conservative, He Says
Rob Henderson served in the Air Force before going to Yale, where he majored in psychology. He graduated on this past May.
Rob Henderson was a foster kid, and it led him to understand some things about what children need in order to thrive -- things that aren't fashionable to think or talk about. He writes in The New York Times:
How people raise their children is a matter of preference. But it is not really up for debate that the two-parent home is, on average, better for children.First, two parents can provide their children more resources, including emotional support, encouragement and help with homework. One conscientious parent, no matter how heroic, cannot do the work of two. Second, single-parent households have a lower standard of living, which is associated with lower school grades and test scores.
Here is an example of the success of intact families from one of my psychology classes. The professor asked students to anonymously respond to a question about parental background. Out of 25 students, only one student besides me did not grow up in a traditional two-parent family. It's no accident that most of my peers at Yale came from intact families.
Outcomes are worse for foster children. Ten percent of them enroll in college, and 3 percent graduate. To my knowledge, among more than 5,000 undergraduates at Yale my senior year, the number of former foster children was under 10.
...My skin crawls when people use me as an example of a person who can shoulder the burdens of a nontraditional upbringing and succeed. They use my success as an argument for lax attitudes about parenting. But I am one of the lucky ones.
Many people have asked me how I turned out to be relatively successful, given my turbulent childhood. My answer is simple: During adolescence, I had the benefit of two parents, my adoptive mother and her partner, and I believed I had control of my future.
My adoptive mother and her partner raised me from middle school through high school in the early to mid-2000s in a rural California town called Red Bluff. They made a stable home for me. We had dinner together every weeknight. We talked about minutiae. They would ask me, "How was school today?" And I would respond with the usual "It was fine." They gave me unsolicited advice. I was sarcastic in response. And we loved one another.
I experienced a stable family, if only for a few years. Though they experienced homophobia and struggled financially, they never let it get in the way of doing the right thing for their son.
Ordinary adults taking responsibility made all the difference for me. I maintain that the agency of individuals will lead to fewer impoverished childhoods.
As I've noted before, children in single-parent families aren't the only ones affected by this. Kay Hymowitz, at City Journal, notes how a whole community is affected:
Children growing up in an area where single-parent families are the norm have less of a chance of upward mobility than a child who lives where married-couple families dominate (regardless of whether that child lives with a single parent or with married parents). The evidence that the prevalence of single-parent households poses risks to individual children and communities goes on and on.
Now, I don't want kids. (I joke that I find them "loud, sticky, and expensive" -- all of which they are.) But if you decide you want kids -- or just aren't that assiduous with the birth control -- your life, to a great degree, stops being about what you want and starts to be about what's best for the kids. Or, at least, that's how it should be if you'd like to run your life as the small moral universe of you and not put more broken, struggling people out into the world.
> But […] your life, to a great
> degree, stops being about what
> you want and starts to be about
> what's best for the kids.
Hear hear.
(I nonetheless don't regard myself as selfish because I want life to be about what I want. Those parties who might take offense at my concern with other interests do not, in fact, exist. There's a certain kind of woman who gets upset about that: OF COURSE you're supposed to want kids!… Or at least you're supposed to help women have them and make tremendous sacrifices without complaint!)
Crid at January 8, 2019 6:58 AM
A lot of sources lately have suggested that parenting doesn't have that much to do with life outcomes, though parenting itself can be critical… i.e., adult/lifetime character is determined mostly by genetics and "unshared experiences" rather than playing football the way Dad taught you to or dating the guys Mom wanted you to date.
People who are parents should be enthused about it, and not be casual with children's spirits. Says me.
But let's keep both our pride and our regrets under control, because nobody knows anything.
It's an all-purpose sentiment.
Crid at January 8, 2019 7:07 AM
What is it about telling the truth about the two-parent model that bugs lefties so much?
It's not denigrating single mothers to say that having two parents would be a better model. If most of the neighborhood is a two-parent model, the herd immunity gives her child a fighting chance. However, if most of the neighborhood is a one-parent model, then her child is starting out behind the eight-ball. Per Hymowitz, "Children growing up in an area where single-parent families are the norm have less of a chance of upward mobility than a child who lives where married-couple families dominate (regardless of whether that child lives with a single parent or with married parents)."
Even if you're a single parent and proud of it, you want your neighborhood to be a two-parent neighborhood, just to give your kid a leg up. It's a better model.
Conan the Grammarian at January 8, 2019 7:11 AM
"What is it about telling the truth about the two-parent model that bugs lefties so much?"
1. It is an alternative explanation to racism/sexism being the only possible cause of every problem.
2. It is an explanation that they, with pushing "women need men like a fish needs a bicycle" "no fault divorce" "no shame on divorce or out of wedlock births" directly caused.
3. It clearly shows that can be negative effects to your personal choices, which runs counter to every leftist societal change.
Joe J at January 8, 2019 7:33 AM
4. Shows that substituting dad with Uncle Sam isn't the cure-all it is said to be.
I R A Darth Aggie at January 8, 2019 9:54 AM
Not only do kids need 2 parents, the 2 need to be a mom and dad. Sorry this may offend the writer of the article, but men and women parent differently and give different advantages to the kids. Girls raised without fathers tend to be more promiscuous and more likely to get pregnant while single. Boys without fathers have more trouble in school, are more likely to drop out, more likely to go to jail. Dads help provide structure and confidence for the kids and moms help provide comfort and security. Not the same thing.
The comment above that parents don't determine their kids personality is not the same as saying that they don't influence life outcomes (see above).
cc at January 8, 2019 11:56 AM
cc: Girls raised without fathers tend to be more promiscuous and more likely to get pregnant while single. Boys without fathers have more trouble in school, are more likely to drop out, more likely to go to jail.
I'm surprised that wasn't Crid who said this, in a far more enraged tone, like he usually does.
But in a word, bullshit.
Dollars to doughnuts says that those kids referred to in whatever study you're citing were from single parent households, and the comparisons were made of single-parent households to mommy-daddy households.
I doubt seriously that these comparisons were made of mommy-mommy or daddy-daddy to mommy-daddy.
Because, surprise-surprise, the children of same-sex couples actually do somewhat better than children in traditional marriages. And, unlike you, I have a source.
So, before you open your sanctimonious semin-receptacle and preach about how awful it is that kids don't have mommy-daddy families, how about you actually use the computer that you use to spout your ignorant claptrap, and do the tiniest modicum of research?
Asshole.
Patrick at January 8, 2019 2:18 PM
> Dollars to doughnuts says that
> those kids referred to
So you haven't done the reading.
Crid at January 8, 2019 9:53 PM
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