In a new report, State of the Nation, 14 university-based and think tank scholars provide a look into how the United States is in relation to other leading countries around the world.
This study comes from a mix of conservative, moderate, and liberal contributors. The report examines 37 measures across 15 different categories. Topics like children & families, citizenship & democracy, mental health, life satisfaction, physical health, education and attitudes of trust in various social institutions.
The Daily Citizen will examine their measures on children and families.
In terms of family formation, they only look at children living in single-parent families. This is an important measure of child and societal well-being, but it is only one among others like marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation.
This report correctly admits that “growing up in a single-parent household is associated with a wide range of negative consequences during adolescence, including lower academic achievement, higher dropout rates, increased aggression in school, fewer social connections, risky behaviors (e.g., drug use), and a higher chance of teen pregnancy.”
They add, “When they become adults, these children tend to have lower incomes, higher rates of anxiety and depression, difficulty engaging in their own stable relationships (e.g., they have higher divorce rates), and increased rates of incarceration.”
This is a categorical denunciation of the “Love Makes a Family” propaganda of family-redefinition advocates. Married families where children are raised and loved by their own mother and father produce the strongest results in healthy child development.
This report finds that the rate of children living with a single parent has essentially remained stable overall from 1990 to the present, with numerous up and down rises and dips as shown here.
These scholars “saw rising rates of single-parent childhood in the 1990s” which “stayed at this level until the mid-2010s.” They continue, “This has been followed by a decline of three percentage points that offset the initial rise. For that reason, we now stand at almost exactly the same level as 1990.”
This report claims that the three countries in their global survey that have higher rates of single-parent families than the U.S. are Lithuania, Belgium, and France. This conflicts with a 2019 Pew Research Center report which states that out of 130 countries and territories, “The U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.”
This seeming conflict could be because of the three – percentage point decline this current report mentions, which might not have been reflected in Pew’s data. But Pew did examine the years 2010 through 2018.
This report also found that child mortality has been improving in the United States. Globally, child mortality has been almost halved since 1990. These scholars assert the “recent decline in US child mortality is almost entirely due to a decline in motor vehicle accident deaths.” They note, “The decline in mortality is also happening despite the rise in low birth weight, which increases child mortality.”
Low birth weight babies have been increasing slightly since the 1990s in the United States. Yet, it is still at a low level. These scholars offer an explanation for the increase:
Some of the rise in low birth weight is driven by the rising age at which women are having children. Also, the rising use of assisted reproduction (e.g., in vitro fertilization, IVF) leads to a greater prevalence of multi-child births where each baby generally has a lower birth weight.
They also state that mother’s obesity, malnutrition, sexually transmitted diseases, stress and substance abuse can contribute to low birth weights.
These scholars also report that youth depression is worsening. They state, “The US ranks second-to-last in the world of 112 higher-income countries – just behind Greece, Spain, and Portugal – and we have been falling further and further behind.”
Other sources have been reporting the same alarming youth depression trend. In April 2022, The Atlantic featured a major piece documenting increasing feelings of persistent sadness and depression among America’s youth. They show the trends this way.
Note that so-called “LGBT” youth have the highest levels of sadness and hopelessness. This trendline is sharply increasing at the very time our nation, and the rest of the developed world, is telling such children they have everything to celebrate in being sexually and gender divergent.
This State of the Nation report correctly recognizes that “the time that parents and other family members spend with their children shape children’s values, knowledge, skills, habits, beliefs, and emotional well-being.”
They conclude, “In the long run, no country can be more successful than its children.”
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