Having come froma two parent modest family but attended a upscale school, but also spending years working in poor cities and bad neighborhoods, I think there is so much variety that any time you see one of these “studies” with such sweeping generalizations you just have to figure your being hoodwinked. Really.

Is it possible for a single-parent household to not also be a poor one? Of course. Is it possible for a dual-parent household to be poor or to have other problems? Also yes. But I do think there is sense in recognizing that in general, single-parent households lack some of the benefits that– in general– go along with dual-parent households. There are a lot of things in life that are easier if you don’t have to do them alone, and raising a family is one of them.

I hope that was tongue-in-cheek, or that you were proposing another facetious correlation-not-causation argument. Forgive me for speaking anecdotally, but I and a number of friends have three or more children and are doing just fine. Of course, having said that, I must acknowledge that all of us are one-income households, married, with a stay-at-home parent, so the sick child thing wouldn’t be a big problem for us.

But perhaps that’s Glenn’s point. There are a lot of things that are easier in a two parent household, assuming that the parents get along. The very example that you gave lends support to the idea that a nuclear family is more likely to be well-off than a single parent home.

Putting on my engineering hat, it’s simply cheaper (more money efficient) to house and feed a group of people in a single house than to divide those people among several homes — particularly given the cost of housing in places like the San Francisco area. This is particularly the case when the members of the household are working toward a common goal, like a happy family.

I applaud EnoughWealth’s idea of creating multi-family units. When we moved into our new home, we had to sign an agreement that our home would not be used as a multi-family dwelling. I think that’s ridiculous. We could easily house another (small) family in our home, once we finish the basement this summer. However, I think that implementation of such an idea would inevitably result in frictions among the families living in the home. Arguments over details like payment for utilities usage, food, cleaning, and personality issues would reduce the effectiveness of the idea. But it’s worth trying.

There is nobility in raising your children the best you can with what you have. Accidents happen, but to continue to have children out of wedlock or not improve your earning potential once you have a child depending on you is shameful and selfish. This shameful behavior is compounded by the self-righteous attitude of those who think that parenthood in and of itself relieves them (or others) of responsibilty and self-sacrifice.

Part of a can-do attitude is believing that you can always do more. Any decent person wants more for their children than they have, but a good parent continually works and sacrifices to make it happen.

Perhaps the root cause of being poor is having children!! It’s very difficult to be a star performer at work when you have a child who is sick and isn’t allowed to go to expensive daycare. Perhaps instead of suggesting that people get married, we work harder on making sure young people get the right contraceptives and education on sex and birth control.

I would rather see a child grow up in a poor single-parent home than in a two-parent family where the father abuses drugs, the mother or the children.