Agreed completely.

It might be that the sort of people who get married are just better parents (on average) than the sort that don’t get married.

It may also be that richer and well-off people are more likely to get married because marriage is an expensive exercise.

I also agree. This is from the same vein of false logic as the argument that children do better with a father and a mother, therefore we shouldn’t allow lesbians to have IVF treatment and co-parent. Going through a marriage ceremony doesn’t automatically turn you into a better parent, and it’s patronising to suggest it does to the many people who are quite capable of making a long-term commitment to their partners and families but who choose not to marry.

Sunny, are you saying that richer and more well-off people are also likely to be better parents?

Bang on with the parallels to IHT.

However, this absolutely isn’t from the same vein of logic that we shouldn’t allow lesbians to have IVF treatment and co-parent. I believe the logic of that one goes: that by genetic necessity children have a father and a mother, that lesbians absolutely should be free to have IVF and co-parent, that however they should do so at their own expense. I don’t see a parallel to marriage tax breaks.

But that’s for another thread, obviously…

I agree it’s really for another thread, Donald. But very quickly what I meant was the causality argument is similarly flawed: the reasoning against IVF for lesbians has been that ‘children need their fathers’ (Melanie Phillips), as though all children would have devoted dads if only lesbians weren’t allowed to raise a family. But preventing the one doesn’t lead to the other, as the single parents stats show. What’s important is that parents provide a loving and supportive environment for children – whether they’re male or female, married or otherwise.

Madeleine Bunting also has had much that is useful to say on this topic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2127105,00.html

The claim that “children need fathers” is investigated in this hefty recent paper – one bottom line is that boys (not girls) who spend lots of time with dad as toddlers do worse academically:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp175.pdf

To be clear, I wouldn’t argue that “children need fathers” in some sort of absolute sense, simply that they undeniably have them.

POLITICIANS IN BRIBING THE ELECTORATE SHOCKER

I’m not sure that it matters if marriage produces better outcomes for kids (although it undoubtedly does), or if tweaking the tax system is an effective way of encouraging it – even before the married persons allowance was scrapped by Gordon Brown I doubt if many people got married purely for fiscal reasons.
On the other hand, what replaced the married tax allowance (the tax credit system) is massively inefficient, take tax with one hand and – via a hugely complex, bureacroatic and fraud prone system – give some of it back with another. It would be so much easier and cheaper to just change individual tax codes, but that wouldn’t give any opportunities for government data gathering and would “stigmatise” people who don’t pay tax anyway.

No, the point of a married tax allowance is to signal government endorsement for the institution of marriage, nothing more.

DonaldS. Surely it’s common sense that if children have fathers and mothers “by design” then they (the parents) must serve some adaptive purpose beyond the biological reality of reproduction and, given that it’s impossible for either to reproduce independently, both must be around to serve that purpose .
Even a basic understanding of evolutionary theory exposes the contrived “children need fathers debate” as about as meaningfull as a “children need ears” or a “children need feet” argument. Biology doesn’t provide things you don’t need, children have fathers and mothers, therefore they need them.

11. Define “by design”? Preying Mantis’ mate before the female eats the head of its partner. In many animals throughout the kingdom the male plays no part whatsoever in the “child’s” formative years, only the mother does.

If we were going “by design” then single mothers would surely be the most likely for being the best family, however given that it is economics that cause the problems in that particular situation it pretty much shows that any argument as to what is “natural” and “normal” is defunct in these debates.

Children have fathers and mothers because biologically that is how they are created, nothing more, and it certainly doesn’t define a need for a child to specifically have a father and a mother.

>>>Children have fathers and mothers because biologically that is how they are created

*cough*

‘how they have evolved’, dear boy… evolved.

Actually, I think that arguments about whether kids do better if their parents are married are somewhat misplaced.

What is absolutely clear is that children do better if they are not in poverty.

If you accepted Cameron (et al’s) argument that marriage is a better environment for kids, you’d still be left in an extremely uncomfortable position in terms of the idea of incentivising parents to get married.

The children of ones that don’t get married will be doubly worse off: they won’t have married parents, and their parents will have less financial resources. By Cameron’s own logic, marriage tax breaks will increase social division.

Not that I actually believe marriage is better for kids, of course.

Jeez, Matt (#11), for all you or I know, we could be the gender equivalent of the appendix. The fact that a father exists, necessarily, is evidence of no more than that he is necessary for reproduction. Everything else is just surmising.

Agree with you on tax credits, though.

Lee @ 12 – I only used “by design” to avoid offending any creationists who might be reading. By evolutionary design is what I meant. To answer your other points

a) Maybe that why praying mantis’s are are still crawling around in the dirt while we are building space ships, not exactly a sucesfull strategy so far, is it ? .
b) Yes the male plays no part in many species and arguably “by design” shouldn’t in humans beyond about 18 months. But try getting a woman pregnant and then disappearing like some latter day hunter gatherer. The whole world will suddenly become very interested in your whereabouts and your bank account. This is the contradiction at the centre of left thinking on parenthood, you want “dependent independence”
c) Saying that economics “causes” the situation is conjecture. If you are poor, a good way of staying poor is to have kids, whether you are single or not. The fact is most single parent families will never be financially viable, that’s why they get welfare.
d) 70% of kids are born to first married, heterosexual parents. By any known statistical measure that represents a norm which realtivist arguments will not change that any time soon. It’s a myth that families are “diverse”.
e) Follow your argument through – If parents are only there to mate and give birth you are effectively saying that kids could be left to fend for themselves. I think there may be a tiny flaw in that logic

In general terms I agree with the premise that marriage is a symptom of a lasting realtionship, if you like, rather than a cause. But I think this debate is always approached from the wrong angle, the real question shouldn’t be about incentivising marriage, it should be about disincentivising single parenthood.

Donald S – Yes, the appendix metaphor occured to me too, straight after posting. You still wouldn’t chose to have your appendix taken out unless it was causing a problem though, would you ?

>marriage is an expensive exercise.

People who spend lots of money on getting married may have missed most of the plot.

Or at least missed that part of the plot that is responsible for marriages lasting longer and being better for children than cohabitations.

“The claim that “children need fathers” is investigated in this hefty recent paper – one bottom line is that boys (not girls) who spend lots of time with dad as toddlers do worse academically”

God that’s depressing. Have you got anything else in your seemingly endless supply of goddam pdf papers that might cheer me up a bit? Like boys who spend lots of time with dad as toddlers are less likely to become serial killers? Or estate agents?

Boys who grow up in single parent families, whatever the gender of parent, do worse academically than those that grow up in 2 parent families.

Chris # 7 – Worse than what though ? As men rarely get custody of children, the subject group have probably experienced a mother either dying, walking out on them, or having some chronic mental health/addiction issue, so hardly surprising they do worse academically.