in a sickening array of pathologies-crime, drug abuse, mental, and physical illness, welfare dependency (Joe Klein in Newsweek) and an unprecedented national catastrophe (David Broder in the Washington Post). Another columnist stated, before we can have crime control, we need to have birth control (Richard Cohen in the Washington Post). He also declared that illegitimacy is a national security issue.Studies that compare single-parent households and two-parent households of similar levels of education and income find few differences in the outcome of the children. The majority of children of single mothers dont become criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill, or security threats. An experiment that observed 23,000 adult men discovered that those raised by single parent mothers had both income and education levels roughly equivalent to those raised by two parent families. Also children of single moms have a tendency to advance better emotionally and socially than do offspring from high-conflict marriages or from those in which the father is emotionally absent or abusive. Exaggerations about the effects of unwed motherhood on children stigmatize those children and provoke teachers and police, among others, to treat them with skepticism. The teachers tended to rate the illegitimate children less favorably. Fathers are also a big issue in how the media misleads the publics view. A front page story in the New York Times stated, Over all, children in homes without fathers are more likely to be poor, to drop out of high school and to end up in foster care or juvenile-justice programs than are those living with their fathers. Washington Post: Growing up without a father is like being in a car with a drunk driver. To insist that children are essentially better off with fathers regardless of whom their fathers are or how they behave is to suggest that no single mother can adequately raise a child. Which is not true.Research on divorce sh...
