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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

I was raised part of my life in a single parent household so I can speak somewhat do the question of single mother led homes. I'll be honest here...in some cases a single mother led home can be the preferred option if the father/husband is totally unfit as my father was. My mother remarried after 4 years of being a single mother. Her second husband had serious problems though he was an improvement on the first and that couple also split after 13 years leaving a younger child to be raised by a single parent through junior high and high school.

Here's the problem though...despite the claim about valiant single mothers carrying on despite a terrible man failing in his duties, the reality is that, except for actual widows, most single mothers are single mothers in great part because of their OWN actions. If the mother has gotten pregnant and had a child by a man who is unfit for the role of father, does SHE not have responsibility for making a poor choice in husbands? If the husband is not perfect (no one is) and the marriage breaks apart, how much of the responsibility for the break up is the mother's own psychiatric problems and stubbornness on issues where compromise is needed to blame?

My mother is twice divorced. Her 2 daughters are both divorced. My mother's first marriage was a terrible mistake made because she was strong willed and refused to listen to the advice of others NOT to marry the man she married. Her second marriage fell apart as much from her own failings as her husbands'. Her 2 daughters marriages failed because of completely unreasonable demands by the WOMEN in the marriages. The second of these is raising the 2 kids with the help of his own mother because their mother was found unfit to even share custody by the state of California...hardly a bastion of misogyny in government. So...perhaps its time we stop deifying single mothers and see them for the flawed people who heavily create their own problematic situations....and hold them accountable for their poor decision making instead of solely blaming fathers for these problems.

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Chesterton's Fence's avatar

Interesting that they are trying to "science" this belief in tabula rasa which goes way back. It's the philosophy I was raised with by my feminist mother in the 1970s who thought she could beat the masculinity out of me, sometimes literally.

I'd like someone to study the long-term effects on the boys. In my case, it made for a temper that was mostly fine but explosive when it did let off (fortunately mellowed with age and wisdom). Supression instead of healthy expression just made the "masculinity" worse.

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