So thanks for being so glad to talk about yourself. You wouldn’t be able to say these things in the abstract.

I understand the hypothesis of which Fred is speaking. And on paper it sounds like it makes sense. The problem I have is using variable A (married/unmarried parents) to prove variable B (children’s life satisfaction). Unfortunately, there are too many other variables that factor in to a “happy life.”

As Hugo stated above, many that live in poverty may be more likely to have out of wedlock children. And let’s not forget that children trapped in their parents’ unhappy marriage are learning by example, as well. So to say that children learn to divorce by watching their parents divorce has a flip side. Children learn unhealthy relationships by being bystanders to one. Staying together for the kids’ sake just doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me.

Social research is important, especially now in an election year where morals will be judged and weighted by this evidence, but we must realize that it is not the “end all” of proving causality.

Wealth tends to lead to marriage. It is the great conservative failing that reverses that, seeing marriage as a vehicle for attaining and husbanding (!) wealth. And wealth tends to lead to all sorts of other positive outcomes for the kiddies.

Social science research on family structures has found most of the misery for children in the homes where the parents are not married.

A child born to cohabiting parents has more than five times the chance of seeing their parents separate than a child born to married parents. Controlling for socioeconomic status and psychological health of the parents, children growing up in broken families compared to those in intact families were twice as likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders, diseases, suicide attempts, alcoholism, and drug abuse.

Those whose parents divorce have higher rates of academic difficulties, such as getting lower grades, failing a grade, and dropping out of high school, and greater externalizing behaviors, such as opposing authority figures, getting into fights, stealing, and using and abusing alcohol and drugs. Children and adolescents who experience the divorce of their parents have higher rates of depressed moods, less ability to make friends and interact appropriately with others, and lower self-esteem.

Compared to children of undivorced parents, children of divorce are more likely to experience poverty, educational failure, unhappiness, emotional problems, risky sexual activity, nonmarital childbirth, earlier marriage, cohabitation, marital discord, and divorce. Children of divorce are one-and-a-half to two times more likely to divorce at some point in their own lives.