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Comment by RangerScience | Hacker News Reader

(edited) Are you claiming (1) that children from single-parent households have worse outcomes and (2) that left-leaning policies result in more single-parent households?

(Not going to argue about #1, that seems pretty well established, just pulling it out as a claim for clarity. #2 is what I'd argue against, and would want to actually see your example so that it's possible to do so in a constructive way)

> That’s just one example off the top of my head

It's not an example until you provide enough for information for us to find what you're talking about ourselves; ideally, a link.

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AFAICT, the poster is claiming that "left leaning orthodoxy" says "there's no disadvantages to children to being raised in a single family household."

I don't really know that that's true anyway. It doesn't seem to be a frequently discussed topic IME. There are related topics like "should divorce be available" and "should people be encouraged or discouraged from pre-marital sex" where I think they are extrapolating "if you support extra-marital sex then you also support single-family households and must therefore believe that they have no disadvantages" but I think that's a larger logical leap than I would personally make. It also doesn't seem to account for support for access to abortion which arguably counter-acts the support for experimentation with pre-marital sex...

The general "left leaning" mood is also to provide services that help single-family households to mitigate issues for children anyway, so I think it's much more of a nuanced "lesser of two evils" position to support things like divorce being available.

> mitigation

Yeah, one of the reasons I'd want to actually see an example is because I imagine those policies make the situation better but not good; like you say, they're mitigations; the causal arrow is bad situation -> policy, not policy -> bad situation.

> The general "left leaning" mood is also to provide services that help single-family households to mitigate issues for children anyway, so I think it's much more of a nuanced "lesser of two evils" position to support things like divorce being available.

That's a good way to put it. In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion, increase support that people have from families, neighbors, and so on, and decrease the impersonal, systemic "services" provided by some bureaucracy.

Not arguing, just describing. I see virtues and problems in both approaches.

> That's a good way to put it. In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion, increase support that people have from families, neighbors, and so on, and decrease the impersonal, systemic "services" provided by some bureaucracy.

In the American right all of those things are often promoted with heavy doses of religion; IMO this is the core crisis of American politics on the right: how to promote fixing those things through non-governmental, pro-Evangelical religious measures while also preserving the freedom to not embrace that religion? Or even to follow the religion but choose a less fanatical strain?

Religion is another category that seems to have all kinds of social benefits the left is uncomfortable talking about.

> In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion

Huh. Not the impression I get from what I see around me, not at all. What I see (from my bubble) is forced conformity and a systematic destruction of every form of support structure. Although, notably absent from my bubbles are religious support structures, so.

The OP means that kids raised by married parents have better life outcomes. The policy proposals that would follow from this (e.g. restricting divorce) are right-leaning positions outside the overton window.

But even beyond a specific policy proposal, there is a viewpoint in right-leaning circles that atomized individualism has caused lasting damage to the fabric of society and needs to be reigned in.

(NB: I can't speak to whether the claim that kids have better outcomes because their parents are married is actually true, as there are obvious confounders there)

> (e.g. restricting divorce)

I am so confused by the right. Aren't they usually in favor of things promoting freedoms, like freedom of association?

> Aren't they usually in favor of things promoting freedoms

Definitely not in a general sense. They place more importance on some freedoms than on others.

The funny thing is that I see complaints most about individualism from the left. It might be something more obvious on a non-monoaxis model.

How can you know what OP meant? The best any of us can do is guess.

#2 is false on its face. Conservative policies like abolishing gay marriage and regressive welfare reform - as well as the policies that result in outcomes like a disproportionate amount of men of color being sent to prison or having to take jobs far away from their families or being unable to afford marriage or a house - clearly predicate a large portion of the broken or malformed or unformed families that exist in the US. Left-leaning policies are not immaculate, but they don't carry the unspoken mandate of caring only about the stability of white, affluent, straight couples - which is a problem in a country where much of the population is some combination of not-white, queer, and working class, AND where many women (and men!) would desire the option to destabilize their dysfunctional marriages, if need be.

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