The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education. Moi blogs about education issues so the reader could be perplexed sometimes because moi often writes about other things like nutrition, families, and personal responsibility issues. Why? The reader might ask? Because children will have the most success in school if they are ready to learn. Ready to learn includes proper nutrition for a healthy body and the optimum situation for children is a healthy family. Many of societies’ problems would be lessened if the goal was a healthy child in a healthy family. There is a lot of economic stress in the country now because of unemployment and underemployment. Children feel the stress of their parents and they worry about how stable their family and living situation is.
Science Daily reported Single mothers much more likely to live in poverty than single fathers, study finds:
Single mothers earn significantly less than single fathers, and they’re penalized for each additional child they have even though the income of single fathers remains the same or increases with each added child in their family. Men also make more for every additional year they invest in education, further widening the gender gap, reports a University of Illinois study.
“Single mothers earn about two-thirds of what single fathers earn. Even when we control for such variables as occupation, numbers of hours worked, education, and social capital, the income gap does not decrease by much. Single mothers are far more likely to live in poverty than single fathers, and they do not catch up over time,” said Karen Kramer, a U of I assistant professor of family studies.In 2012, 28 percent of all U.S. children lived with one parent. Of that number, 4.24 million single mothers lived below the poverty line compared to 404,000 single fathers, she noted.
The single most important factor that allows single-parent families to get out of poverty is working full-time, she said. “A 2011 study shows that in single-parent families below the poverty line at the end, only 15.1 percent were employed full-time year-round.”Previous studies show that 39 percent of working single mothers report receiving unearned income, assumed to be child support. That means fathers are contributing only 28 percent of child-rearing costs in single-mother households, she said.
The pathway into single-parent households differs by gender, she said. “Single fathers are more likely to become single parents as the result of a divorce; single mothers are more likely never to have been married,” she explained.“Divorced single parents tend to be better off financially and are more educated than their never-married counterparts. The most common living arrangement for children after a divorce is for mothers to have custody. Single fathers with custody are more likely to have a cohabiting partner than single mothers, and that partner is probably at least sharing household tasks. Single mothers are more likely to be doing everything on their own,” she said.
Often single mothers have both the stress of raising children alone and crippling financial stress, she added….. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831163743.htm
Citation:
Single mothers much more likely to live in poverty than single fathers, study finds
Date: August 31, 2015
Source: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Summary:
Single mothers earn significantly less than single fathers, and they are penalized for each additional child they have even though the income of single fathers remains the same or increases with each added child in their family. Men also make more for every additional year they invest in education, further widening the gender gap, reports a new study.
A University of Buffalo study concluded pop culture influenced the decision toward single parenthood.
Science Daily reported in Pop-culture news helped destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirth:
Celebrity news reports over the past four decades appear to have contributed to the changing makeup of the traditional American family by helping to destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirths in the United States, according to a study by a University at Buffalo sociologist.
“Celebrities typically did not apologize for getting pregnant outside of marriage,” says Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, an assistant professor of sociology. “But the family model also changed over time. The early model dictated that you should marry by the time the baby is born. By the mid-2000s that had changed, and it became widely acceptable in the celebrity world to have a child without marrying first.”
With People magazine as her proxy for popular culture news coverage, Grol-Prokopczyk analyzed nearly 400 cover stories dating from People’s 1974 premier issue to the present to learn when the interest in celebrity pregnancies started and how the magazine’s presentation of family norms changed over time….
“I used People magazine because it’s reputable in the sense that it doesn’t publish fictional stories; it has been in continuous circulation for over 40 years; and it remains one of the most widely circulating magazines in the country,” says Grol-Prokopczyk. “It also has a strong online presence, with as many as 72 million unique views in a given month.”
Grol-Prokopczyk’s curiosity about the media’s fascination with celebrity baby news began when she was pregnant with her first child. She signed up for news alerts, expecting to get medical and nutrition stories relevant to expectant mothers, but instead received mostly news reports about celebrity pregnancies. “Academics often scoff at celebrity news, but in fact there’s evidence that celebrity culture is enormously influential in changing norms and has a very wide reach,” she says. “For example, after Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed after having her preventative mastectomy, a survey conducted weeks later found that 74 percent of Americans knew about her surgery and the decision.”
This became known as the Angelina Effect, and research on its impact was published in the journal Genetics in Medicine…… https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161028142108.htm
Citation:
Pop-culture news helped destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirth
Date: October 28, 2016
Source: University at Buffalo
Summary:
Celebrity news reports over the past four decades appear to have contributed to the changing makeup of the traditional American family by helping to destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirths in the United States, according to a study.
Here is the press release from the University of Buffalo:
Study: Pop-culture news helped destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirth
Celebrity news coverage can serve as an agent for social change, says UB sociologist
Release Date: October 28, 2016
“Academics often scoff at celebrity news, but in fact there’s evidence that celebrity culture is enormously influential in changing norms and has a very wide reach.”
Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, assistant professor of sociology
University at Buffalo
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Celebrity news reports over the past four decades appear to have contributed to the changing makeup of the traditional American family by helping to destigmatize out-of-wedlock childbirths in the United States, according to a study by a University at Buffalo sociologist.
“Celebrities typically did not apologize for getting pregnant outside of marriage,” says Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, an assistant professor of sociology. “But the family model also changed over time. The early model dictated that you should marry by the time the baby is born. By the mid-2000s that had changed, and it became widely acceptable in the celebrity world to have a child without marrying first.”
With People magazine as her proxy for popular culture news coverage, Grol-Prokopczyk analyzed nearly 400 cover stories dating from People’s 1974 premier issue to the present to learn when the interest in celebrity pregnancies started and how the magazine’s presentation of family norms changed over time.
She presented her findings at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. A more detailed study, including calculations of celebrity non-marital birth rates, is currently under peer-review.
“I used People magazine because it’s reputable in the sense that it doesn’t publish fictional stories; it has been in continuous circulation for over 40 years; and it remains one of the most widely circulating magazines in the country,” says Grol-Prokopczyk. “It also has a strong online presence, with as many as 72 million unique views in a given month.”
Grol-Prokopczyk’s curiosity about the media’s fascination with celebrity baby news began when she was pregnant with her first child. She signed up for news alerts, expecting to get medical and nutrition stories relevant to expectant mothers, but instead received mostly news reports about celebrity pregnancies.
“Academics often scoff at celebrity news, but in fact there’s evidence that celebrity culture is enormously influential in changing norms and has a very wide reach,” she says. “For example, after Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed after having her preventative mastectomy, a survey conducted weeks later found that 74 percent of Americans knew about her surgery and the decision.”
This became known as the Angelina Effect, and research on its impact was published in the journal Genetics in Medicine.
“That attests to the fact that decisions celebrities make reach us and affect our thinking,” says Grol-Prokopczyk.
Her research further illustrates that point.
The first People magazine cover that showed a celebrity pregnancy was in May 1976. Goldie Hawn was pictured and the text makes it clear that she’s pregnant and unmarried, but the caption reads, “She’s laughing with a baby and a new hubby on the way.”
“There aren’t many non-marital fertility stories in the 1970s, but when they do appear there’s almost always a promise that the parent will marry by the time the baby is born,” says Grol-Prokopczyk. “It’s like saying, ‘Don’t worry, readers. They’ll be married by the time the baby arrives.’”
The model was still the same when People magazine announced Melanie Griffith’s pregnancy in 1989, with a caption that said she and Don Johnson were “thinking about an April wedding.”
Beginning in the 1990s, the normative model began to change, and by the mid-2000s, People magazine regularly showed celebrity couples who didn’t marry by the time the baby was born, according to Grol-Prokopczyk. These non-marital births were almost without exception presented as happy, morally unproblematic events.
“This includes women who were partnered but didn’t plan to marry the partner, but it also includes so-called ‘single mothers’ who we now know were in committed same-sex relationships, in particular Jodie Foster and Rosie O’Donnell,” she says.
Seven covers about Foster and O’Donnell appeared between 1996 and 2002. None of them acknowledge that the women were in same-sex relationships, and two of them directly referred to the women as “single mothers.”
“Based on biographies of them now, we know they were in long-term, committed relationships at the time,” says Grol-Prokopczyk. “People magazine was slow to show acceptance of same-sex parents, preferring to present them as single parents. This example shows that while celebrity media coverage can serve as an agent for social change — by de-stigmatizing non-marital childbearing or transgenderism, for instance — it does not always do so,” she says.
Media Contact Information
Bert Gambini
News Content Manager
Arts and Humanities, Economics, Social Sciences, Social Work
Tel: 716-645-5334
gambini@buffalo.edu
This comment is not politically correct. If you want politically correct, stop reading. Children, especially boys, need positive male role models. They don’t need another “uncle” or “fiancée” who when the chips are down cashes out. By the way, what is the new definition of “fiancée?” Is that someone who is rented for an indefinite term to introduce the kids from your last “fiancée” to? Back in the day, “fiancée” meant one was engaged to be married, got married and then had kids. Nowadays, it means some one who hangs around for an indeterminate period of time and who may or may not formalize a relationship with baby mama. Kids don’t need someone in their lives who has as a relationship strategy only dating women with children because they are available and probably desperate. What children, especially boys, need are men who are consistently there for them, who model good behavior and values, and who consistently care for loved ones. They don’t need men who have checked out of building relationships and those who are nothing more than sperm donors.
Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com
Dr. Wilda says this about that ©
Blogs by Dr. Wilda:
COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/
Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/
Dr. Wilda ©
https://drwilda.com/
drwilda 