(Hat tip to Monkey.)
Rush Limbaugh, it’s time to retire. Rick Santorum, hang up your sweatervest. Thor, return home to Asgard. The come-from-behind dark-horse victor Senator Glenn Grothman has achieved the coveted trophy Biggest Douchebag on the Entire Planet.
No, that’s not a parody. He literally does believe that single parents (which, to be fair, in Senator Grothman’s mind means “slutty slutty single moms who slut about the place”) are a contributing factor to abuse.
Senator Grothman’s beliefs may seem superficially pro-dude. After all, he believes that fathers should be involved in their children’s lives, via the institution of marriage; I also agree that (barring extreme circumstances such as abuse) fathers should be involved in their children’s lives, just like mothers should be involved in their children’s lives. However, a further examination of his beliefs will show that he’s just an asshole.
We will now play a game! It is called LOL, Senator Grothman, You Have No Idea How Numbers Work.
Now, it may be found that the children of single parents may be more likely to be found to be abused! However, does that mean that if we make all the single parents get married that we will solve the problem of abuse? No, because there is an exciting concept called the “confounding variable.”
For instance, stigma against single parents may make PEOPLE more likely to see them as abusive and not notice abusive parents in two-parent homes. Your law may actually make this worse. Or single parents may be more likely to come into contact with mandatory reporters, such as social workers or welfare! Or a couple that has just gotten divorced has one partner with an obvious incentive to report abuse, and a couple with one abuser has an obvious incentive not to!
It is disrespect to awesome single fathers and single mothers everywhere to de facto accuse them of being abusers.
Further study of Grothman’s family-related oeuvre shows that he is, indeed, very bad at numbers, in addition to being a sexist fuckhead. For instance, on page three, he argues that the state is making mothers want to get married less, because they collect all kinds of money from the state. However, this is pretty much only because he has the hypothetical single mom making $15,000 a year marry a man making $35,000 a year. If she married a man making $15,000 a year, she’d STILL get to keep most of the benefits. (Admittedly, they’d be less because he had more income, but they’d also be slightly more because of the more people in the household.) That’s because they aren’t benefits for being a single parent, they’re benefits for being broke and a parent, and many single parents happen to be broke. So he has proved that… being over the poverty line makes people not able to get benefits anymore? Shocking revelations!
So, since he has identified this problem, he wants benefits to be available to more people, right? I mean, broke married couples should also be eligible! In these hard times a lot of people need some help, right?
Of course not, because that would make him a decent human being. Instead he wants drug testing and restricted food stamps!
Please note: there are quite a few single-parent families who would not be able to afford birthday cakes for their children without food stamps. Food stamps restricted to only buy “healthy” food means that those kids wouldn’t get cake on their birthdays. I’m just saying! Once you come out against poor kids being able to have birthday cake, you are pretty much the worst person alive.
That was a fun game! Let’s play another game. It’s called What’s Not Appearing In This Picture?
Let’s see here… single moms, single mothers, single women… huh. Senator Groffman appears to be completely unaware of the fact that sometimes men are single parents. I mean, I checked, all of the programs he complains about are gender-neutral. (And most of them apply to married couples too, but sigh.) If you’re a dad, you can take advantage of low-income housing assistance, free daycare, earned income credits, food stamps, energy assistance, BadgerCare healthcare, and school voucher programs, just like a mom!
I mean, let’s be fair here. If Senator Groffman was forced to acknowledge the existence of dads, he would have to give up his precious narrative about the abusive single moms slutting it about the place and neglecting their children, all on the taxpayer’s dime. Even worse, he’d have to admit that men can care about their children, even when they’re not roped into it by the legal system! Astonishing.
Watch most of the population of Wisconsin sloooooowly trickle out. Perhaps that was the idea all along.
“Schala. Caloric intake for the average woman is about 2000 calories. Caloric intake for an average man is at least 3000, just to maintain an average weight.”
My caloric intake is probably around 1500 calories, just for maintaining my 160 lbs (which I consider to be a lot).
@pillowinhell where does the amount for state support come from? It’s in the link in the OP. I don’t know if that 38K is really true but for now I’m assuming it is. http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/grothman/Documents/Grothman-families.pdf how does an absent parent contribute ALL their money to support their family I’m assuming there is some form of transfer(voluntary or not) in the form of child support from NCP to children. If the children don’t see much of that money, then the NCP is benefiting from a better lifestyle than he/she would have been able to afford if they were together, ofcourse at taxpayer… Read more »
Solo, how does an absent parent contribute ALL their money to support their family, and where does the amount for state support come from?
The problem isn’t with his numbers. He views it as
Parent#1(35K) + Parent#2(15K) = 45K over 4 people
vs
Absent-Parent#1(35K) coupled with
Parent#2(15K) + StateSupport(38K) = 88K over 4 people
The problem is that the legislator’s solution is to remove the 38K of state support.
The correct fix should be to add 38K to the intact family and apply a sliding scale instead of a hard cutoff.
Schala. Caloric intake for the average woman is about 2000 calories. Caloric intake for an average man is at least 3000, just to maintain an average weight. Put him in any sort of manual labour and watch the caloric needs skyrocket. Dungone, there was a study that involved how many meals a child was fed and reading levels/ grades. Even breakfast provided by the school saw poor kids increase at least one grade level in achievement. Its not just single parents that create the poor school performance and dropouts, its the lack of food. Poor parents don’t deny their children… Read more »
In Quebec province, 66% of children are born from cohabitating parents. And we’re doing fine. We even have less abortions than the US, less STDs, less AIDS and very low circumcision rates. And gay marriage is legal if they want it.
Dungone: “I’m not for marriage. I’m against marriage”.
And yet, you think single parenting is bad?
(scratches head)
So, you are saying children are best raised in an institution you are against?
@Schala, someone who performs physical labor, such as a construction worker or a field hand, can easily burn 3,000 calories a day, every day. That’s just everyday jobs. When I served in Iraq, I burned over 5,000 calories a day. Look, pillowinhell is right. For some of those families, even laundry money is a considerable expense, let alone food. This is why some men, even the ones who try really hard, earn a reputation as “dead weight.” When they’re around, everyone suffers a little bit more. The additional funds just aren’t enough. Besides, just do a little back-of-the-envelope math: single… Read more »
“2) Men need to consume double the calories a woman does, even more if he’s doing manual labor jobs. Welfare and food stamps do not calculate the actual dietary needs of a family. Which is why so many soup kitchens are still doing booming business.”
For everyday doing, men need to consume a bit more than women, on average, due mainly to height. If it’s more, it is due to lifestyle issues (going to the gym and wanting to maintain more muscle than the basic – which anyone would need, not just men). The difference is probably less than 30%.
Just come on-line here in England @Dugone “So you are a well-heeled educated rich person” Where DID you get that from? I said I was in a good job. Pays a tad over the national average, no way does that make me rich. I can talk about poor people ‘cos I was one for most of my life and I live, work and teach in one of the areas of worst social deprivation in this country. I maintain that a single parent, of either gender, can parent a child better than two if the other is emotionally disconnected from the… Read more »
There are several disincentives for women to remarry or cohabitate with men when they are poor and or on welfare. 1) The amounts given to anyone on welfare almost always fail to account for the actual costs of living in a given area. And it does not account for anyones need to keep a vehicle on the road to get to work if that person is working. The end result is that food allowances often go to paying rent or other non negotiable bills. 2) Men need to consume double the calories a woman does, even more if he’s doing… Read more »
There’s a concept in computer science known as unreachable code. It’s when you write a piece of code that is supposed to accomplish some task, but the rest of the program is written in such a way that there is no path for the program to take in order to ever get to that piece of code. This is a good way of thinking of many of the “gender neutral” aspects of our law and cultural norms that deal with the roles of men and women. You can look at all the little tiny pieces of code and say, “see,… Read more »
@pocketjacks, parts of TANF are just about designed to keep single parents single and in poverty. Are you kidding me? Not only does it include funding for “abstinence only” sex education, but it gives extra money to states that have a lower abortion rate. Ironically, this is supposed to be an incentive for people to create families. And don’t even get me started on the 60 month limits and various work incentives. I was trying to look up some information for this and here’s just one Orwellian statement on a government website: increasing child support for families while they are… Read more »
Dungone, I’m afraid you’re going to be rather alone with that stance. I hear all the time that welfare incentivizes single parenthood, but I don’t see how. Both intact couples and single parents can access TANF, for instance, it’s just that single parents disproportionately do because they’re more likely to be poor – which is precisely the problem. Even if their parents made mistakes, which is hardly a given, I don’t see why the children should suffer for that. @ Developers^3, An audit of a company’s finances does not violate bodily autonomy in a humiliating way. Don’t be dense. (Not… Read more »
Dungone’s posts got deleted, but I still saw them. In case it needs to be clarified, me sharing my personal story was meant only to shed light on the fact that the experiences of actual people are different than what the statistics might say, and that when one makes sweeping generalizations they are often wrong and offensive. Also, an assessment of an individual’s ability to pull their own weight in a family unit equals man-hating? I said nothing about men in general, I only criticized a single man whose character I have a lot of experience with, him being my… Read more »
See also victim blaming, quintessential examples of
Hey dungone! I was a poor child. Stop fucking speaking for me and my life experience. Would I have done better if I had a father who stepped up to his responsibilities and did his part? Maybe! Who knows? Things would certainly have been less stressful for my mother. The fact is I didn’t, he was dead weight dragging her down, and if she had listened to idiotic statements like “The worst kind of single parent is the kind who cheats his or her children by being so conceited as to think that they can provide just as good childcare… Read more »
Well, if you want to get technical about it, corporations already do submit to something very much like a drug test. It’s called an ‘audit’. I’m not for marriage. I’m against marriage. Well educated, secular, well-to-do people are moving towards cohabitation and having a better time of it than marriage. But what’s good for the middle class is not necessarily the place where poor people find themselves at. The poor are more likely to prefer traditional family structures where their community can support it (jobs, crime rates, etc). The thing is, the stats seem to suggest the exact opposite is… Read more »
Yeah, my family has used a lot of those incentives and we had a two parent household. I wanted to rage pretty hard as Florida’s gone through this whole drug-testing fiasco. I thought the idea of making corporations submit to drug tests was a great idea.
Also, I’d side with Ozy re: the issue of Thor’s doucheyness. Especially Ultimate Thor. He comes off alright in the new Avengers cartoon tho.’
So by creating financial disincentives against keeping poor fathers in their children’s lives, our government’s policies actually deprive poor children from some of the most valuable contributions that those missing parents could make.
The worst kind of single parent is the kind who cheats his or her children by being so conceited as to think that they can provide just as good childcare by themselves as two adults could. That is where most of the problems for single family children come from. Ignorant single parents. I appreciate those single parents who wish they had a partner but for whatever reason can’t. But I don’t appreciate those who would tell another potential parent that it really makes no difference either way. What exactly is it that helps people deal with poverty and ill health?… Read more »
So you are a well-heeled educated rich person who presumes to speak for the poor. Poor people still do better with both parents. Rich people with two parents still do better than other rich people. Comparing apples to oranges is useless.
@Alison Bushell: Actually it’s not. If the other person is an idle oik who doesn’t engage in any meaningful way with the children, even if he’s not actually abusive, life is easier without him. Methinks you misinterpreted the intent behind my statement. But of course you are correct: if the other person/people involved is/are a hindrance, that obviously doesn’t hold. The problems seen in so many single parent families are consequences of poverty and ill health not the lack of a second parent. Agreed. If the parent(s) is not doing well, then the child is more likely to suffer for… Read more »
@Xakudo “I do think that raising a child (or children) on your own is more difficult and stressful than doing so with other people involved” Actually it’s not. If the other person is an idle oik who doesn’t engage in any meaningful way with the children, even if he’s not actually abusive, life is easier without him. @dugone “You can’t make emotional appeals to hero-parents struggling against all odds.” I wasn’t a “hero parent”. I was a single parent who, successfully dammit, raised two kids from 3 & 5 to healthy adult life, successful education and good jobs. But I… Read more »