BROKEN HOMES HARM KIDS MORE
"Children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely as their counterparts to develop serious psychiatric illnesses and addictions later in life, according to an important new study... Experts say the latest study, published this week in the Lancet medical journal, is important mainly because of its unprecedented scale and follow-up - it tracked about 1 million children for a decade, into their mid-20s." The study used Swedish national registries to track the trends in the population of the Scandinavian country.

Of course, the study doesn't answer the causal questions. Do these children have problems because they grow up in a broken home or do their homes break up because of other issues -- issues that also cause the children to have problems? One other factor which makes the study unique is that it takes place in a country with an extremely wide social care net and thus even the poorest of people are living at a fairly high standard. Single parents are not poor! This suggests that the causes of psychiatric illnesses and addictions can not be directly attributed to poverty (at least in this context). It also calls into question the idea advocated by many in the States that if we could just eliminate poverty then other social problems would evaporate.

I'm not suggesting that we should become any less intent on eliminating poverty but we need to do so realizing that our problems run deeper than lack of wealth.