- Feb 5, 2002
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I (Josh) just finished Melissa Kearney’s The Two-Parent Privilege (book link), and I felt compelled to write. On the one hand, I’m genuinely glad to see her admission that two-parent homes are advantageous for children. On the other hand, she keeps stopping short of the obvious truth about why.
Kearney deserves credit for naming what she calls the elephant in the room: children generally do better when raised by two married parents. In a moment when even modest acknowledgments about family structure draw fire, saying so is a public service—and I applaud her for that. She writes
“Marriage is the most reliable institution for delivering a high level of resources and long-term stability to children. There is simply not currently a robust, widespread alternative to marriage in US society. Cohabitation, in theory, could deliver similar resources as marriage, but the data show that in the US, these partnerships are not, on average, as stable as marriages.” (p. 15)
Continued below.
Kearney deserves credit for naming what she calls the elephant in the room: children generally do better when raised by two married parents. In a moment when even modest acknowledgments about family structure draw fire, saying so is a public service—and I applaud her for that. She writes
“Marriage is the most reliable institution for delivering a high level of resources and long-term stability to children. There is simply not currently a robust, widespread alternative to marriage in US society. Cohabitation, in theory, could deliver similar resources as marriage, but the data show that in the US, these partnerships are not, on average, as stable as marriages.” (p. 15)
Continued below.
Three Parent Privilege?
Why “two” isn’t arbitrary—and why “three” isn't better