Saturday, October 04, 2014

Who'd be a single parent?

The Families Commission produced some research which compared one parent families with three other family types: two parent families, younger couples without children and older couples without children.

The following is a summary of what they discovered about one parent families:
 
› less likely to have felt satisfied with their life as a whole (77.8 percent)
› generally less likely to have felt calm and peaceful (66 percent)
› nearly a third were regular smokers (31.3 percent)
› fewer felt safe walking alone at night in their neighbourhood (55.7 percent)
› relatively high participation in study or training (32.3 percent)
› less than one-quarter hold a post-secondary school qualification (23.1 percent)
› less likely to be satisfied with their knowledge, skills and attitude (79.5 percent)
› significantly less likely to have an annual household income of greater than $70,000 (23.6 percent)
› much less likely to be involved in paid employment (46.7 percent)
› consistently less likely to be satisfied with their standard of living (64.3 percent)
› among the least likely to do voluntary work for a group or organisation (22.7 percent)
Today, thirty percent of all families with children are single parent families. This high proportion is the product of forty years of state subsidisation.

Any young person looking at the four groups, asked to choose which they would like to belong to 'when they grow up', is going to avoid the one-parent group.

It isn't 'compassionate' to continue encouraging the single parent lifestyle. It isn't kind to the mothers or their children. Any reasonable efforts to reverse the trend should be supported without question.

4 comments:

tranquil said...

"It isn't 'compassionate' to continue encouraging the single parent lifestyle. It isn't kind to the mothers or their children. Any reasonable efforts to reverse the trend should be supported without question. "

I agree.
I believe the government should axe the SPS (formerly the DPB).
Declare that no new applications will be accepted from date "x". The government's welfare policies are already very popular and this one would be as well. People are tired of supporting the feckless lifestyles of those who can't be bothered to be responsible.

Anonymous said...

Better still to just terminate the benefits outright. People must learn they cannot rely on society as there's no such thing. Terminating benefits outright is the only way to send this message.

Mike@nz said...

Absolutely. I agree with you both. It would be extremely difficult and probably violent through the phase-out process, but in time the excitement of finally being able to make ones own life choices would take over.

To quote the previous post, "there is no right to help yourself to the taxes of others."

S. Beast said...

It's not compassionate nor wise to encourage people to remain in abusive relationships either.