Contrary to AP Report, Single Parents Do Not Murder Their Children and Bury Them in Cement

Did you see the recent AP report with the ominous opening paragraph? Remember the 6-year old who was beaten to death then buried in cement? The 2-year old who was thrown across a room and died? It was a lengthy article, but the conclusion was up-front: "an ever-increasing share of American children grow up in homes without both biological parents," and "the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures."

Children in single-parent households are obviously in homes without both biological parents, and their family structures are nontraditional, so they must be the ones at risk for getting pummeled to death, right? Well, no, but don't expect to figure that out from the AP story.

The story was packed with scary statistics stigmatizing those "nontraditional family structures." There were also some suggested explanations for why the children in those nontraditional families are doomed. There is, for example, the "ABUSIVE-BOYFRIEND SYNDROME" and the problem of children and adults living together "who have no biological tie to each other."

I learned something important in doing the research for Singled Out: Read the original studies, not someone else's summary of them. When I did so, I found that most of the dire claims about the children of single parents (as well as the derogatory claims about adults who are single) are grossly exaggerated, misrepresented, or just plain wrong.

I'm going to go through the claims in the AP article, and compare them to what I read in the original articles. I think it is important to provide accurate, detailed documentation on these issues, so there will be nothing breezy in what follows.

AP CLAIM #1: "Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents."

Now here are some word-for-word quotes, plus some additional statistics, from the original report. (I've added some caps for emphasis.)

A. "Children in households with a single parent and no other adults in residence had NO increased risk of inflicted-injury death" (compared to "children residing with 2 biological parents"). [from page e687]

B. Who were the perpetrators of these fatal inflicted injuries? "Most were the child's father (34.9%) or the boyfriend of the child's mother (24.2%)." [from page e687]

C. Based on the AP story, see if you can answer the following questions:

a. Think about the children living with 2 biological parents (and no other adults) who were killed by inflicted injuries. What percentage of those children were killed by someone in their household?
b. Now think about children living with 1 biological parent (and no other adults). What percentage of those children were killed by someone in their household?

Here are the answers: In single-parent households, 36% of the children were killed by someone in their household. In 2-biological-parent households, 76% were killed by someone in their household. [from page e691]

D. So where did that 50-times-more-likely-to-die statistic come from? Let me explain. First, set aside all households that include just a single biological parent. Second, set aside all households that include a biological parent or two plus an adult relative. Third, set aside all households that include a stepparent or foster parent. Now you are left with two types of households. In one, there are 2 biological parents and no other adults. In the other, there are 1 or 2 biological parents plus 1 or more unrelated adults. In the latter, children are 47.6 times more likely to be killed by inflicted injuries. [from page e691] BUT, even after all of these qualifications, there are more caveats. The authors compared the inflicted-injury deaths in each household type to deaths from natural causes in the same household type. In the dataset they were examining (collected between 1992 and 1999 from Missouri households), they used 192 natural death comparison cases for the 2-biological parent households. But for the households with unrelated adults, there were only 2 natural death comparison cases. Because of the small numbers of unrelated-adult households, the 50-times-greater estimate is very imprecise, as the authors explicitly acknowledge [on page e692]. In other words, it could be very wrong.

AP CLAIM #2: "Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents."
What did the actual article in the professional journal report?

A. With regard to sexual victimization, physical assault, child maltreatment, and peer or sibling victimization, "single parent families and those with two biological parents did NOT differ significantly on exposure to these forms of victimization." [from page 286]

B. Children in single-parent families were more likely than children in 2-parent families to have experienced property crimes or to have witnessed a crime; that's because, on the average, single-parent households have fewer economic resources and live in neighborhoods with more crime. [from page 282]

C. Children in stepfamilies did experience higher rates of victimization than children in single-parent households or 2-parent biological or adoptive households. Still, the abuse was more likely to have been perpetrated by the biological parent (18%) than by the stepparent (11%). [from page 287]

AP CLAIM #3: "Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father."
Now here's a quote from the original law review article:

"the factor most decisive to a girl's increased sexual vulnerability was living in a household with adult males after her parents' separation. This increased risk held true whether that male was the natural father or someone brought into the family by the child's mother." [from page 105]

There IS such a thing as an abusive boyfriend. The solution is not to marry him, but to keep him far, far away from you and your children.

Comments

[glitzqueen]

Oh, and -- here's another goody for you:

Robin Williams, cited in AP merely as a family law professor, turned out to be a member of a nutcase group calling themselves The Council on Family Law, which put out a report on the so-called "Marriage Crisis", which argues against recognition of nontraditional marriage and "marriage-like relationships" -- and even predicts that any laxity in this department will result in pressure for marriages among more than two people!

She doesn't like no-fault divorce, either, as was clear in an op-ed she wrote after her marriage broke up because the guy assaulted her.

I expect equally interesting nuggets to turn up, if one searches the other names cited in that lying AP piece.

[glitzqueen]

Great job of exposing these falsehoods, Ms. DePaulo; many thanks. Looking beyond their presence to the WHY, I'm concerned about the many references in the AP article that point toward increasing violations of single parents' privacy, some clearly linked to ultra-conservative causes (like Shrub's Healthy Marriage Initiative and Dobson's scary Family Research Council) and others linked to the same loonies but not so clearly.

Did you realize that the Casey Family Programs hired a Bushite as their managing director of public policy early this month? A little further research turned up that gem. Their Regina Schofield is a former White House liaison for the Health & Human Services Dept. (where Susan Orr and Andrea Sedlak, quoted by AP, operate) and Schofield more recently was assistant attorney general for Office of Justice Programs, overseeing activities related to various major Bush administration and Department of Justice enterprises.

Obviously what we see here is -- whether or not they paid the journalist to produce this travesty -- case-building for demanding all sorts of details about how single parents live. Terrifying stuff! I appreciate your calling it to our attention.

[Over40]

I found the AP article very suspect also! Thanks for the additional information.

[suesista]

I thought the article leaned towards abuse by unrelated adults, more often found in households with a boyfriend or roommate. I never took this as a 'slam' against single parents.This post seems a bit defensive.

[loril]

When I became a parent later in life, I finally understood what amazing stamina and effort it takes. You are constantly sleep deprived for the first couple of years. You are never 'off the clock". If you are sick, you have to pretend you are not and just keep going because your toddler does not have the developmental ability to tell you to "just go lie down, I'll take care of myself for awhile".

It can be exhausting, mentally as well as physically. To me, the "benefit" of having two people in charge is that you have some backup. In my case, my primary backup is my husband (although his workload often means that he cannot be home). We happen to be a "traditional family"...but we got married and had our child later than the norm. So, I relate as much to single people as I do to my fellow marrieds (perhaps moreso at times.)

When you are exhausted, stressed, ill and have nobody around to help you, I can see that there would be a somewhat higher chance that you would lose it...whether you are single or married. For most of us, "losing it" means yelling or slamming a door...not beating a child into the ground.

If I were a single parent, I would have been a lot more proactive about engaging other people to help out when my daughter was very young. It does not have to be dad, or even a relative. Your help can be a good trusted friend or a professional you employ. But parenting is a huge job and I firmly believe it is too much for some people to take on all by themselves. However, I don't see why the caregivers need to be married to one another to make it work out.

[Robert59]

It wasn't a perfect article, but you're being a little too analytical. What I took from the article and what the evidence supports is children are at greater risk when their parents divorce.

And the reality is these moms who end up having custody date and marry and the presence of those boyfriends and stepdads increases the risk of something bad happening to their children.

The children at least risk, those living in a household with a single mom who doesn't date and doesn't remarry and doesn't have other adult male relatives in the house.

As for biological fathers, having an adult female in the same household reduces their chances of committing sexual abuse and without an adult female being present one would logically conclude the risk of abuse would increase. This is probably a tough one to stop because a woman has to be pretty poor at parenting before she loses custody in a divorce case. I'd almost conclude the kid never had a chance, two crappy parents.

[Thorn]

Really an eye-opening post. I never knew how incredibly lucky single-parent kids were.