Horses Thief Shot and Killed in Utah

[kenberg]

FWIW, the most intriguing studies that I have seen on the declining crime rates have focused on environment lead contamination.

 

http://www.motherjon...e-link-gasoline

 

I guess i find this plausible. Part of me wants os say wonderful, we have found a way to help, while the other part of me stews over how we could ever have been so irresponsible.

 

But then I recall that when I was in college I had a job putting mercury coated seeds in a package with my bare hands. I know, this explains a lot.

 

 

Sipping coffee again. We hear fo famous people who started life with not much, but there are many, many more who started life with not much and managed to live happy productive lives although without fame. And of course there are those, quite a few, who go wrong. Why? I expect genetic material plays a role, and I have always thought dumb luck plays an underestimated role, but these things we cannot do much about. We can and should attempt to provide a physically healthy environment. Not a paradise, but no lead paint. Nutritious food available in the schools. That sort of thing.

 

People speak of subsidized lunches at schools as if it were some sort of controversial idea. IN the 1950s we could buy a hot lunch at high school for not much. The scale of money was different and anyway I don't recall the price, but it was a very good deal. This was for everyone, no need to prove you were poor. That can be embarrassing for some.

 

So feed them, keep them away from lead paint, provide at least the opportunity for a decent educational experience and that's a start.

 

Some things are complicated, some aren't. A woman I know was working with a school system in a poverty area. She insisted, absolutely insisted, that every child must have his/her own textbook. She got her way. This helped. As in duh.

[mikeh]

Without delving deeply into it, I have always been wary of Freakonomics. My first thought on reading here about Roe v Wade and its effect on crime was "Rally? Has there been a reduction in the number of single mothers living in poverty since Roe v Wade?"

The Wikipedia has a long entry on the book and on this aspect of it.. Here is a part, admittedly only a part:

 

 

 

This excerpt touches a bit on what I give as my initial reaction. I'll phrase my question in a way that presumably could be answered: Count all mothers between the age of, say, 25 and 30 in 2014, count all single mothers in the same age group (whatever age group seems right, I don't care) living below some definition of poverty, say living below 1.5 times the official poverty line. Divide the latter by the former. Repeat this calculation for mothers in 1970. Which ratio is larger? I confess I do ot know, but my guess is that the 2014 number is larger. Yes, I am guessing. I don't know.

 

It seems to me that the problem of single mothers raising their children in poverty has gotten worse, not better. I can think of few things that I would rather be wrong about.

 

Added: Maybe compare 2010 with 1970 since these are census years. I'm not fussy as long as it is a good faith effort to get at the truth.

 

More added: Probably it is better to count kids rather than mothers.It's the kids who are at issue.

 

And another add: I see I referred to single mothers living in poverty and the stuff from Freak didn't. In the case of children having a tough time growing up, I do think that in poverty with one parent is tougher than in poverty with two parents, but I am ope to hearing about both.

Thanks for this: I will rethink my ideas on this :D

[Winstonm]

IMO, while economic impacts are severe, it is the emotional and psychological impact on children of broken homes and missing/absent parents that does the most long term damage. In some cases, a single parent can be such a forceful figure that he or she can imprint good ideas into the child; often, though, the single parent is following in the footsteps of their single parent and have no internal structure they can teach to their children.

 

We end up raising generations of quite broken people, psychopaths, sociopaths, and near-sociopaths, generations of individuals psychologically incapable of fitting into society.

[kenberg]

Thanks for this: I will rethink my ideas on this :D

 

The more I think about it, the more I believe it would be difficult to say with any confidence what the effect of Roe v Wade was on family structure and the pass through effect on crime.

 

As I mentioned elsewhere, I am reading The girls who went away, subtitled The hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v Wade. by Ann Fesler. The author has an agenda, but so do many authors so as long as we take her examples with caution, they are of interest. Anyway, it got me thinking.

 

I am adopted and in childhood I knew another adoptee, and I have known a few since. It has never been a big deal with me, but the book has stimulated my interest.

 

As I graduated from high school, I there were some girls who got married right after graduation and gave birht quite soon afterward.

 

I knew children of divorced parents. The parents of a petty close friend were divorced, and we had a mother with two daughters living in the (very space limited) of our house after she left her abusive husband.

 

 

As near as I can remember, I did not know any example of a woman who, starting from the birth of her child, planned to raise that child on her own. The woman got married, or she perhaps had an illegal abortion (not to my knowledge but I imagine it happened) or she gave up the child for adoption. Planned single motherhood simply didn't exist in my environment.

 

The author makes a strong case for keeping mother and child together. As we look at the effects of single parenthood, I want to ask, how is that working out?

 

I don't really know who, statistically, decides to abort, who decides to keep and raise the child. I get the idea that giving birth with the intention of placing the child for adoption is not a frequent choice anymore.

 

It seems clear that society has gone through a massive change in this regard. Somehow we have to come to grips with it. .

 

I learned long ago that it is far more effective to work on my own failures rather than to try to run the life of someone else. So I am not casting stones. But it seems to me that we have a problem.

[barmar]

The parents of a petty close friend were divorced

Is their pettiness a result of growing up in a broken home? :)

[Winstonm]

 

I learned long ago that it is far more effective to work on my own failures rather than to try to run the life of someone else.

 

If this one simple life lesson could be passed along and acted upon by everyone, the world, indeed, would be a better place.

[kenberg]

Is their pettiness a result of growing up in a broken home? :)

 

Ah yes, Freudian slip, no doubt.;)

 

I have been chatting with people about the book I mentioned. A woman today, on a walk, mentioned that when she was in the hospital in a shared room, soon to give birth, the nurse kept calling addressing her as Mrs [last name], She said "Oh don't be so formal, just call me [first name]" The nurse got in a little closer and mentioned that the young girl in the other bed was in the 9th grade class Brenda was teaching, so they kept up the formal pattern of speech.

 

Incidentally, the young girl kept the child, got a lot of help and support from her family, and all is well. There are times I think I just don't know nothin about how the world actually works.

 

I don't think I can be converted to think of ninth graders giving birth as a good thing, but I am glad if it is working for her and her child.