[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/19/ifs-marriage-little-benefit-child-development[/url]
[release]
Institute for Fiscal studies research suggests parents' educational qualifications more influential on child development than marriage
Marriage confers "little if any benefit" in terms of a child's development, according to new research, challenging the rationale behind the prime minister's desire to offer tax breaks to couples who tie the knot.
New research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found "little or no evidence" that marriage itself has any effect on children's "social or cognitive" development. Before the election the Tories had made the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family a key plank of their "broken Britain" analysis.
David Willetts, the Conservative thinker on families and now higher education minister, argued that marriage in Britain was in danger of becoming an exclusive middle-class institution – and action was needed bolster it. The idea is still floated by key Tories, such as work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, but is opposed by Lib Dems.
The work by the IFS accepts that those who marry tend to be relatively better educated and relatively better off. But the institute points out: "differences in outcomes between children whose parents are married and those who cohabit may simply reflect these differences in other characteristics rather than be caused by marriage."
By examining data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a sample of children born in the UK in the early 2000s, the institute shows that children born out of wedlock are behind in cognitive development at three, five and seven-years-old but this is because "cohabiting parents tend to have lower educational qualifications than married parents". The same pattern is observed with "socio-emotional" development.
The thinktank said it had also repeated its work using another dataset to account for the idea that "getting married could itself lead to changes in some of the things we want to control for, like relationship quality, income and education". The results were the same.
Ellen Greaves, research economist at the IFS, and one of the authors of the report, said: "It is true that children born to married couples are on average more cognitively and emotionally successful than children born to cohabiting couples. But careful analysis shows that this largely reflects the differences between the types of people who decide to get married and those who don't." [/release]
Stay Classy right wing politics.
no shit?
They apparently needed a study for it.
Hey well, at least this can be used against the nuclear family spouting group.
It's not that marriage helps, it's that divorce hurts the child. Kind of obvious that dedicated single mom with a college degree will be better for a child than 2 parents with high school diplomas that don't try as hard though.
Ambition makes the kid smarter.
[QUOTE=dogmachines;31247563]It's not that marriage helps, it's that divorce hurts the child. Kind of obvious that dedicated single mom with a college degree will be better for a child than 2 parents with high school diplomas that don't try as hard though.[/QUOTE]
Sometimes, I think staying married is worse for the children. I do agree with you on your second point, though.
If a kid wants to learn and is willing to study hard and better themselves, they will get smarter. Regardless of who raised them. It's all dependent upon the kid.
Good parents make kids smarter. The only problem with single parents is they tend not to be able to spend much time with the children as they have to spend more time working to support the family, not to say there aren't exceptions of course.
[editline]21st July 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Propane Addict;31250491]If a kid wants to learn and is willing to study hard and better themselves, they will get smarter. Regardless of who raised them. It's all dependent upon the kid.[/QUOTE]
Your personality generally stems from the people you meet and spend time with, so parental influence can have an impact on the child's ability to work and study
[QUOTE=dogmachines;31247563]It's not that marriage helps, it's that divorce hurts the child. Kind of obvious that dedicated single mom with a college degree will be better for a child than 2 parents with high school diplomas that don't try as hard though.[/QUOTE]
Problem being that you're pretty much destined to be poor and have developmental issues when only one half of the parentage is present. If you think children who hate both parents and do stupid stuff to show how independent they are is bad enough, what do you think will happen when they only have one who's never around because she's working hard to keep from being thrown out on the street?
I don't think I recall ever having met a single mother (in particular ones who had at least one child they still had to take care of) who didn't live off of a pathetic wage. It's not exactly an optimal situation.
And, basically, what carcarcargo said.
The only news here is that there are people who actually believe married parents make kids smarter.
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