A Good Childhood

There has been some discussion about the study on divorce and children referred to on the CBMW blog. I would rather talk about the content of the study but first one has to track down the source.

Here is a reference in the Telegraph which contains the text from the CBMW blog,

Female empowerment has contributed to the break-up of the traditional family, leaving a generation of children emotionally damaged, according to a controversial report on the state of British childhood.

The Telegraph names the study as A Good Childhood by The Children's Society, which is affiliated with the Church of England. The article then goes on to cite the text which appears on the CBMW Gender blog. This text is not found in the study, and I can only guess that since the study had not been published at the time of the Telegraph article, that the Telegraph was citing text provided to them from a previous draft, perhaps a longer form of the same study. I cannot otherwise explain the variance.

I would like to make a few comments on this. First, the Keith and Amato research, which I cited yesterday, is old now and has variable methodology, and the results do not accord with the longtitudinal research I have seen since. (But I don't have time to find this right now.)

Second, the Telegraph also makes this telling comment,

It will draw on a Unicef study published in 2007 which showed that children in Scandinavian countries appeared happier than their British counterparts despite similar levels of family separation.

And finally I would like to reference this work done in Canada, cited here,

While more changes in a child’s life are associated with more negative behaviour, lone parent or stepfamily status is not necessarily associated with more negative behaviour in children.This more positive view emerges from a Canadian study investigating the impact of mothers’ employment patterns on children.This study shows that mothers’ employment status is a factor affecting children’s behavioural outcomes, but also that changes in maternal employment impacted on children. But, crucially, children in stable lone parent families or stepfamilies did better (and indeed, better than those in two parent families on several measures, when control variables are taken into account) than children who change family status, either ‘entering or exiting’ lone parent status (18).

Hence, it is perhaps useful to view change and disruptions as risk factors for children (like poverty) that have negative impacts on child outcomes. Family type per se provided it is stable, does not result in negative impacts on children.

While there may be some negative impacts, I can't say, it is clear from the research that family disharmony, instability, poverty and coercive parenting are other significant factors. Another finding worthy of note is that countries with similar rates of single parent families have vastly different scores on the child well being assessment, with the US and UK being near the bottom, Canada in the middle and Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands at the top. See Table 2 Child well-being in rich countries: a summary table page 11 in the same study, which provides some interesting details.

This is similar to the issue with abortion, rates, which are consistantly much lower in countries with freer access to abortion. One of the reasons that I am concerned about the impression given by the Gender blog is because my former church, still in some sense a home church to my family, is influenced by this stuff. I have suggested in the past that CBMW hire someone to proofread the posts on their blog. It is very disappointing.

Now, finally, here is the point. The study itself did not say, "Female empowerment has contributed to the break-up of the traditional family .... ," it was the Telegraph that said that. Read the study yourself.

(I am increasingly finding that people mention studies without proper references and really just move gaily along. I have not seen anyone retract the statement that John Gottman recommends a "men need respect, women need love" model of marriage therapy. It is tiresome. )