Are single parent children worse off?

Single parent families deserve all our compassion: it must be difficult to provide for and nurture on your own. In fact it must be so difficult, that you can't be doing a good job, right? Not so. Let's skip the statistics and look at the seven most tenuous arguments.

Children need consistency. A sane single parent is always consistent, but most couples disagree sometimes. Being consistent for your children requires constant communication and attention. Not in the least because children will find and exploit any shade of disagreement. Much bigger things are at stake than the question whether or not they can have another cookie. How far is punishment constructive and does it become destructive. Few parents would agree totally on that.

Children need full-time vigilance. Suppose someone who cannot swim falls in the water. Would he be better off if there is a crowd or if there is one single person watching. The single observer knows that if she doesn't do anything, someone will drown, and is likely to act if she can. Studies show that people in a crowd are less likely to act because they assume someone else will. I would never leave a crying kid unattended, but if it's upstairs and I know my wife is upstairs, I'll assume she will handle it. My wife, who is looking for something in the attic, assumes I will deal with it because I'm downstairs with the children. A single parent will always go because there is no one else.

Children need full-time attention. Parents, couples, sometimes want to give attention to each other -- or there would only be single-child families, right? But also they need to go over important decisions, talk through the day, decide how to spend the holiday, etcetera. All conversations a seven year old gets bored with and is prone to end. By and large, single parents will give all the attention their children want, perhaps sometimes simply because there is no one else they could give it to.

Children need full time love. There are several things wrong with this. Firstly, it's untrue. Children need love only part-time. When they sleep, they couldn't care less. When they are playing happily, they have no need for it. Secondly, no one can offer full time love. All people need time for themselves to regenerate the love they can give. Singles do whatever singles do; couples do that and more. It is not the quantity of love that counts but the quality. The love of a single parent is total and unconditional, like that of couples.

Children need clear father and mother figures. I would say this is untrue. Man has evolved in larger groups than parent-child families. That particular constellation became dominant relatively recently. Also, many cultures exist where the role of aunts and grandmothers is very important, sometimes as important as that of the father. Children need clear roles which are relevant in their culture. Single parent families are part of our culture, and single parent families are very capable of offering their children clear roles to learn from.

Children need a same sex parent to tell them the facts of life. Duh. If I waited for that I wouldn't have children to begin with. The fact of the matter is that most parents (of my generation) feel uncomfortable with this, especially in the presence of their spouse. A single parent will generally feel less embarrassed than a couple.

Children need a provider AND a caretaker. It is true that a single parent going off to work and leaving the children in the care of others burdens that parent and the children enormously, as it is true of the less-than-wealthy in general. In many countries in the world income tax is in fact geared towards two-income families. If children can do with two providers and no care-taker, why would just one provider be such a problem?

In the end a single difference exists, fortunately mostly unnoticed by the children: single parent families are more vulnerable than most families. If the single parent is out of a job, becomes ill, or indeed dies, the consequences are to the bone. That is to say, the strongest point of two-parent families is that it is a double-redundant design, like having a spare light bulb around, just in case...