Family and Society

[Gabu]

Aspects of the nontraditional family that are essential ingredients for poverty:

1. Head of household is a female, of any age
2. The head of household is a teenager, of either sex
3. The parents (one or two..or ) are high-school dropouts
4. English is not the first language spoken at home

Even if only one of these factors is present, then the family is nearly determined to be poor. Lack of income, parental dysfunction (drug/alcohol addiction, physical violence, absenteeism, etc.) are factors that make home life miserable, but not necessarily poor.

Uh, I don't understand the first ingredient.  My mother has always been the breadwinner in our family and she's been very successful at it.  I don't see why having the mother be the head of the household is an ingredient for poverty.

[Gabu]

I thought I had meant sole head of household is a female of any age, but just in case...

I could go on to qualify myself further--an original two-parent household becoming a single-mother household through divorce, widowhood, separation and mutual hatred, etc.--but that seems to me to fall more under the "dysfunctional parents" catagory.

All the same, a woman, teenage or otherwise, who has a child with no intentions of including the father as a responsible parent (i.e., the "baby daddy") is almost condemning her child to poverty

My mother has been the sole head of the household since I was 12 or so; we haven't had any financial problems because of it.  I would agree that it is perhaps detrimental to the child's upbringing not to have a father figure to balance the mother (although it wasn't in my case), but I don't see how there's any correlation between the female being the head of the household and the family having financial troubles.

[Gabu]

Yes, it's wrong to care about my freedom and the freedom of others.

The correct way to go is to care about your freedom and to hell with everyone else's; just ask opebo.