I don’t know much about it, but I did skim through the National Incidence Study on Childhood Abuse and Neglect. The thing that stood out to me the most was the massive difference in abuse rates between different family structures:
Married biological parents: < 3 per 1000
Single parent with partner: > 55 per 1000
Obviously we can’t say this is all causal—in general all good properties are correlated, so it’s likely there are shared genetic etc. causes.
I think it’s worth noting what the report says about family structures that fall in neither category—both married and unmarried parents where one parent isn’t biologically related to the child but still takes on a parental role as well as single parents without a partner fall somewhere in between married biological parents and single parents with partner in terms of child abuse rates.
(I was a bit confused and thought ‘single parents with partner’ included cases in which the partner takes on parental responsibility so the high rate seemed off to me.)
There are non-political ways to address this, such as better contraceptives like Vasalgel.
EA already has semi-official positions on intractable political issues like immigration. If stable two-parent families are indeed an effective way to prevent child abuse, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a semi-official position on promoting those as well. It could help address conservative underrepresentation in the EA movement. I think if some positions are taken publicly on both sides, that increases our credibility as an independent source of truth. Otherwise we might be seen as “EA-washing” the political positions that we already held as coastal liberal types.
But really I think stable two-parent families are a bipartisan issue. For example, abortion probably helps reduce the incidence of single motherhood (though of course the ethics of abortion itself is another can of worms). I don’t think your average liberal person is actually against fatherhood or stable households, they just prioritize other outcome measures (perhaps incorrectly if the data here is right).
In this sense I think the govt should create appropriate incentives for long term committed relationships where children are concerned—perhaps like a no claims bonus (an increasing yearly benefit of not crashing a car in the UK) for each year parents with children who stay together until their last child is 18?
Maybe. I think some interventions here are more apolitical than others.
e.g. MDMA therapy for PTSD has bipartisan support & veteran support, and plausibly resolving someone’s PTSD reduces the likelihood of them being abusive to their own children.
I don’t know much about it, but I did skim through the National Incidence Study on Childhood Abuse and Neglect. The thing that stood out to me the most was the massive difference in abuse rates between different family structures:
Married biological parents: < 3 per 1000
Single parent with partner: > 55 per 1000
Obviously we can’t say this is all causal—in general all good properties are correlated, so it’s likely there are shared genetic etc. causes.
I think it’s worth noting what the report says about family structures that fall in neither category—both married and unmarried parents where one parent isn’t biologically related to the child but still takes on a parental role as well as single parents without a partner fall somewhere in between married biological parents and single parents with partner in terms of child abuse rates.
(I was a bit confused and thought ‘single parents with partner’ included cases in which the partner takes on parental responsibility so the high rate seemed off to me.)
oof, this speaks against tractability due to politics.
There are non-political ways to address this, such as better contraceptives like Vasalgel.
EA already has semi-official positions on intractable political issues like immigration. If stable two-parent families are indeed an effective way to prevent child abuse, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a semi-official position on promoting those as well. It could help address conservative underrepresentation in the EA movement. I think if some positions are taken publicly on both sides, that increases our credibility as an independent source of truth. Otherwise we might be seen as “EA-washing” the political positions that we already held as coastal liberal types.
But really I think stable two-parent families are a bipartisan issue. For example, abortion probably helps reduce the incidence of single motherhood (though of course the ethics of abortion itself is another can of worms). I don’t think your average liberal person is actually against fatherhood or stable households, they just prioritize other outcome measures (perhaps incorrectly if the data here is right).
In this sense I think the govt should create appropriate incentives for long term committed relationships where children are concerned—perhaps like a no claims bonus (an increasing yearly benefit of not crashing a car in the UK) for each year parents with children who stay together until their last child is 18?
Maybe. I think some interventions here are more apolitical than others.
e.g. MDMA therapy for PTSD has bipartisan support & veteran support, and plausibly resolving someone’s PTSD reduces the likelihood of them being abusive to their own children.
Reminds me that MDMA was originally used for marriage counseling.
“Obviously we can’t say this is all causal—in general all good properties are correlated, so it’s likely there are shared genetic etc. causes.”
Possible causal mechanism: