Single parents cost taxpayers $112 billion

There's a shit ton of things government needs to do before it gets in the marriage business. Talk about misplaced need.

Oh...this is not suspect at all. I'll just take it at face value.

Education: Free Market!!!!!!! Fuck it!

Health Care: Free Market!!!!!!!!! Fuck it!

The Overall Economic System: Free Market!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck it!

Marriage: Give us some of that goody, goody Socialist style government subsidization Comrade!

What are these programs to "bolster marriages," anyway? They're being awful secretive about the details.

BJ classes? 15 million buys a lot of carrots and some happy husbands I suspect.

Sweet Jesus, if they try to lay this at the feet of poor, unmarried women with children rather than the fucked system that creates the conditions that oppress them or even for a second imply that they should have stayed in their miserable marriages just so they wouldn't be a burden, I - I... *sigh* I wouldn't be even a little surprised.

Wait, so now we're concerned about too many people being unmarried? Two years ago, we were concerned with keeping a certain group of people from being married. Make up your minds, conservatives!!!

Those selfish bitches! Don't they know there's a war going on??

Related: Every person recruited by the gay movement costs the government $1,200 in re-recruitment fees.

Key parties.

I doff my cap to you, sir!

The first goal of the programs will be to get Murphy Brown off the air.

Also: It'll probably just be more subsidies for middle-class married couples who own a home.

Waitaminute. "Single families cost taxpayers"? Don't single parents pay taxes? Don't divorcees?

You need a job to do that silly. Don't you know that all single mothers sit around their government housing, pregnant (AGAIN!) and collecting food stamps and other benefits while actually contributing nothing to society other than another mouth the taxpayers have to support!

And they all have Plasma T.V.'s and Hummers!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...we're gonna blame the men on this one, right? I'm not sure how, but that's what we do, yes?

Not too much of an assumption. Children growing up in single-parent homes have an increased risk of having serious psychological problems and addictions, being the victims of sexual abuse, and living in poverty. This means that these children are more likely to need government intervention or assistance. Also, those growing up in poverty cost the economy $500 Billion per year.

So, something that costs the government additional money is clearly something in which the government has an interest. It's just a question of what can be done and how we should do it. I'm not sure what government programs can do to "bolster marriage" and whether any of those programs would be a good idea. But when combating poverty, abuse, and other social ills, we can't ignore the correlation with single parent homes.

The problem lies with both parents, if not entirely with the parent who abandons his/her children and leaves them without financial and emotional support. But the simple reality is that children growing up with just one parent in the home have one less adult to supervise, discipline, support, teach and do all those things parents are supposed to do. This is not knocking all those single parents out there who have to work twice as hard to make ends meet and still need a little extra help at the end of the day. I have nothing but respect for them. But there is little doubt that, on average, children generally benefit more from having two stable parental figures in the home than one. If that is not possible, so be it. But we should be talking about what we can do to lessen the burdens that often arise from that situation.

Do you really think these religious outfits are concerned about taxpayer money and not, say, getting the US government to make their whims policy?

These people? They just want to push their own agenda, or whims, and are just using this study to justify it. Absolutely. In that capacity, very few of them will be part of the solution, whatever that solution may be. As far as I'm concerned, religious folk (of which I'm one) should stick to religion, charity, and private counseling, and stop trying to dictate government policy in ways that blur the line between church and state.

As far as the government is concerned, the solution clearly isn't to mandate marriage and outlaw divorce. But where a single parent home makes it more likely that a child will fall into that cycle of poverty, something needs to be done to break that cycle. A few things I've seen in my state on the government side come from requiring divorce education classes and mandatory mediation before a divorce can be granted. I've seen these requirements save a few marriages. More often than not, a divorcing couple will come out of the process less bitter and more committed to fully supporting their children, even if they are no longer living with their children in the home. Keeping that second parent involved is usually a great thing. Also, stepping up child support enforcement means that single parents might not have to struggle quite so much to make ends meet. These are areas where the government policies can have a positive effect on this problem.

Can't we just spend half that money to eliminate all the babies?


...not the living babies of course, the not yet conceived ones.

Rule of thumb--If someone works for an organization with the word "family" in its title, I immediately disregard his/her opinion.

Sly is very disappointed to hear that.

The answer is simple.....get rid of No Fault Divorce. That's right, if folks have to live together no matter how incompatible they are, or how much they hate each other, more kids will grow up in a household with two (2) parents.

I'm sure there won't be any adverse psychological or social consequences to that!

Hey now, you know that loving couples who happen to be of the same gender pose more of a threat to the nuclear family than, say, high divorce rates. But noooooooooo, we've got to keep them homos from marrying. Because they might come in your house at night and... and... redecorate! Gasp!
Correlation does not imply causation, though. There may be other factors at play here. You can't conclude that single-parent homes are more likely to lead to things like poverty and abuse (especially the latter) when you don't control for the other socioeconomic factors at play.

That's all fine and good, but consider the abstinence education fiasco. These groups aren't after laws that deal with people as they are like you suggest, they'll want laws that tell people how they should be. This is the Promisekeepers Lobby.

Well, it's certainly not as if things like poverty and criminal tendencies could lead produce higher rates of single-parent households, is it?

Family Values lobbyists cost the American taxpayer over Forfty Billion dollars every year. I base this calculation on the assumption that they are all mentally retarded and require a home care worker to keep them from drooling all over themselves.

Bingo. I have several friends (and one husband) who grew up in a single parent household. No one's in jail, no one's a drug addict, no one's on welfare. I believe that this has little to do with children being raised in single parent households and everything to do with much nastier socioeconomic issues. It'd be a much easier problem to solve if we just had to make sure every kid had two parents.

As all you neocons are well aware, those islamo-terrorists use breeding as a demographic weapon against our civilization!
Therefore every single mother is a soldier in the war against terrorism/islamo-fashism/whatever.
So what if freedom costs a buck or two?

Can someone give me a number on how much deadbeats are costing Americans?

I'd also like to know how much corporations that outsource and cut jobs to look good in front of the Dow is costing Americans...

How much have the profits of big oil cost Americans?

No comments about this section:

Sexist and racist.

I've known people who have had two working parents but still were in need of some sort of Government assistance program.

Zooey's right; this is more about socioeconomic issues than any issue of marriage.

How exactly do I get a piece of that 112 Billion? I've got four laywers to feed!