Get Schooled

By Jeff

August 13, 2007 2:25 PM | Link to this

I would say that while there are certainly exceptions to every rule, in the GENERAL case it seems that the statement would hold.

But the single BEST option for kids is that the parents be married and living together. Even if you have a rough marraige, it is better for the child to get AN idea of what both sexes are like as an adult than NONE. Cycles CAN be broken when you have one parent as a bad role model. My own dad is proof enough of that. (He broke the cycle that his father had given him of being an abusive alcoholic.)

So again: In the general case, I would think that the statement is TRUE.

By Blind Homer

August 13, 2007 2:42 PM | Link to this

Parent(s) have to send a consistent message that knowledge is valuable and academic achievement is important. I think an involved single mom could do that all by herself. What you can’t have is a disinterested parent, mom or dad. I’ve been divorced for about 10 years now but almost every conversation with my daughter begins with, “How is school going?”

By Ernest

August 13, 2007 3:07 PM | Link to this

I like the way Jeff put it, in general this is true. I’m involved with my children’s education because that is what I saw growing up. I didn’t know (or consider) that I wasn’t supposed to be a part of it. I can only hope and pray that when they come of age and become parents, they do the same because of the examples of involvement I set for them.

By jim d

August 13, 2007 3:20 PM | Link to this

185 and counting.

By ICS

August 13, 2007 3:21 PM | Link to this

Dads need to be involved. Moms need to be involved. Yes, a single heroic parent that is involved and who has his OR her priorities in order can manage—-but don’t gloss over how difficult that is to pull off.

It is better to have one good parent than two crack addicts or two emotionally unavailable corporate climbers.

By Jeff

August 13, 2007 3:22 PM | Link to this

Also:

While I know this is often not the case in the black community, as a white kid, I always looked at mom and dad like this:

If mom gets on me, it aint gonna be pleasant, but I’ll survive. If DAD gets on me, my very survival IS in question. Therefore, Dad getting involved in the situation is a VERY BAD THING. (Mom might occassionally get a switch out. Dad wouldn’t hesitate to get out his greasy, oily, sweaty work belt. And as strong as Mom was, Dad was FAR stronger. To the point that even now - as a 6’1”, 240 lb adult half his age - I don’t know that I could best him in a fight.

By Lee

August 13, 2007 3:28 PM | Link to this

With the black illegitimacy rate hovering at around 75%, it’s not a question of getting Dad involved in school, it’s a question of getting him involved in the child’s life - period.

What’s that quote: “The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother.”

So very true.

By Fulton County Mom

August 13, 2007 3:35 PM | Link to this

Single parenthood is TOUGH! Ask me how I know…..HOWEVER, I do not think I am one of the ones pulling off the Herculean feat.

I agree with Jeff that cycles can be broken…if the person breaking it wants to do so. However I do not agree that a rough/bad marriage is better than a divore (Jeff, we may just have to disagree on this…as unusual at it may be). For instance, being married to someone who ran around, was abusive, alcholic,(unknown to me drug addicted too) and very irresponsible…was not something I decided to keep myself or children in.

It came down to what behaviors did I want my children to see and later model.

Now I do believe the above is part of that exception caveat that Jeff put in with the ‘general’.

As I told my ex-spouse and his family: you are always welcome to take an active role in these children’s lives….as long as you are clean, sober and modeling good morals.

By Jeff

August 13, 2007 3:52 PM | Link to this

FCM:

When it comes to drugs/abuse/otherwise flagrantly violating the law, I tend to let the individuals in question sort it out and hope for the best.

If the divorce comes more due to non-abuse/illegal means (such as an affair, “we grew apart”, “I don’t love him”, “she sucks in bed (and not in a good way)”, etc), THEN I’m not quite so lenient.

Believe it or not, BOTH of my parents are children of divorce (coincidentally, each is the second to last child in their family as well…), and they have been married for nearly 27 years now. Again: breaking the cycle. Not because it was easy, but because it was the right thing to do.

By Stacey

August 13, 2007 4:03 PM | Link to this

My husband went with me to drop my son off at school on the first day but only because it was a Wednesday. Had he started school on a Monday, his schedule would not have permitted him to go. I’m sure that I will attend the majority of the parent/teacher conference, PTA meetings, Open House meeting, etc without him because my schedule is more flexible than his.

My son knows that his education is just as important to his father (my husband) as it to me. My husband’s job doesn’t allow him to be as visibly involved as I am but he is involved. People probably assume that I am a single mother or that he has an absentee father as well. Just because dad isn’t visible doesn’t mean that he’s a deadbeat.

By Janine

August 13, 2007 4:03 PM | Link to this

RE:…“Stallworth said. “Moms are great. But research shows when dads are involved in their child’s lives they go further.” Does that mean the same as …research shows that children who live in two parent families are likely to go further than those living with just the mom??? … Or does it mean that if a child lives with only one parent , he will go further if it’s the dad instead of the mom?

By Jeff

August 13, 2007 4:10 PM | Link to this

Stacey:

I’ll see how things shape up in a few years, but it is likely that your situation and mine and my (then) wife’s will be quite similar. I work 100+ miles from away from home (one way). So if it happens between roughly 6:30a and 6:30p, I ain’t gonna be able to be there.

And she’s a teacher, so if it happens at school while she has something at her school, SHE aint gonna be able to be there!

FORTUNATELY, grandma (her mom) lives about a mile away and doesn’t do much outside the house! (And is overly involved in our lives anyway, but it CAN be a good thing, as in this case…)

By jim d

August 13, 2007 4:40 PM | Link to this

So does throwing the kid the keys to the car and saying have a good day count as involvement?

By jim d

August 13, 2007 4:43 PM | Link to this

Mr. Marcus Stallworth is full of dung.

I think my My mom did a pretty damn good job.

By jim d

August 13, 2007 4:48 PM | Link to this

Jeff,

I’ll tell ya this only once.

Ya don’t want granny raising your kids. Do what you must to be available anytime you are needed. Spend as much time with the kids as you can and enjoy them—they grow up way to fast.

If you have to change jobs and take a cut in pay—DO IT!

By Jeff

August 13, 2007 4:57 PM | Link to this

jim:

Aint too many programming jobs in Albany. (Though a few of my companies’ clients are in that area.) Plus, I genuinely love the company I’m with now and REALLY don’t want to risk getting a job I’ll be miserable in.

Granny won’t be raising the kids - her style and mine are FAR too different. (If anything, I will be overly controlling. She is not controlling ENOUGH with kids. Also, she is much more into appearance, whereas I emphasize honesty at all costs.)

By Stacey

August 13, 2007 4:58 PM | Link to this

Jeff…You are correct that our (potential) situations are somewhat similar. My husband’s commute is apprx. 50 miles each way (mine is 12 miles). His work schedule is generally 8:00 until the work is done. He is salaried and while he is scheduled to work 48 hrs/wk, it’s usually closer to 55.

I had to take a substantial pay cut to work closer to home. I use my lunch breaks and PTO time for daytime school functions, 1/2 days, no school days, etc. I miss the money but working for a company that allows me flexibility makes up for it. I am the one who has to leave if he gets sick at school or misses if he is too sick to attend. Scheduled Dr appts (check ups, follow ups, dentist, etc) are Dad’s department. We just make them far enough out so that my husband has time to arrange his schedule around it.

By Lisa B.

August 13, 2007 6:40 PM | Link to this

In an ideal world, all children would live in homes with both a caring, involved mother, AND father. It’s not an ideal world. I’ve see single parents sometimes do fantastic jobs raising children, while the “ideal” married mom and dad were horrible. I think fathers can be involved with their childrens’ lives, even when not married to the mother. Of course, when people end up with too many kids, with too many partners, there is only so much time, money, attention and love to go around. I’ve also seen situations where an uncle, grandfather or family friend stood in as an excellent male influence in a child’s life.

All families are different. It is impossible to hold up one type of family structure as better than another. The main thing is that kids need to know they are loved and cared for. They need to know someone is teaching them to be productive members of society and monitoring their behavior. Being raised in a white, middle-class household with two biological parents doesn’t guarantee a proper up-bringing, nor do other family structures negate that.

By SET

August 15, 2007 4:40 PM | Link to this

There was a time when any child born in this country had decent odds to grow up in a family with a mother & father. As recent as 1961.

Over time the government was pushed towards the nanny state. Personal responsibility and penalty for failure would not be allowed. By 1960’s both the state and federal governments decided that the Feds would concentrate power and set policy for the nation. Then it was decided that women shouldn’t need a man, so the Fed created “entitlement” to welfare for women holding children as long as they didn’t have a man’s shoes in the house. This was done so women wouldn’t need to strike any deals with men - and could live as they pleased with $$ coming in the mail.

Just to finish the job the states enacted divorce on demand laws to destroy any security in marriage. Then they repealed the alienation of affection laws to make it possible for single women to date married men without punishment. Likewise adultery sanctions for both sexes were repealed as were fornication and cohabitation prohibitions. It was stressed that marriage wasn’t required for sex or procreation - or for anything really.

So by 1970 there was not only no security in marriage, a man could be rejected by his wife for another lover (without cause) and have to pay child support and watch the wife and her lover move to the other side of the country with his kids to boot. My memory of the legislative actions is that they were enacted by democratic legislatures with feminists at the helm. After all, everybody should be free to do whatever they feel is right. Although the Democrats were the major boosters of the new world the Republicans wanted it also, albeit on their own terms.

So by 2007 the only stable nuclear family society are the Mormons? A black child is unlikely to have an intact family and as a result is unlikely to create one upon adulthood. The other races line up after that with the Asians still having relatively stable families. Check out the socio-economic power of the Orange County (CA) Vietnamese colony.

This damage is apparently permanent, people. The results can be seen in the mortality tables and in the education and earning tables. It is now self fulfulling. Education and economic power is tilting in favor of the remaining nuclear family societies. AIDS, institutionalization, premature death, low IQ and poverty is neatly sliding onto the lesser orders. And that is all without suspending trading on the stock exchanges.

Follow the trend lines out even 2 or 3 generations. This country will in no way resemble the America of 1960. It will almost certainly become a popularly elected facist state because you’ll have to have one to keep any kind of functioning society in the chaos we are incubating.

And where do the schools fit into this? The same place they did in the Soviet Union, Red China and Nazi Germany - Indoctrination factories with rewritten (false) history books.

And we thought it couldn’t ever happen here.

Brave New World.