OFF: "musicians made drug use look tempting?" ^_~ =koff=

[Dave Berry]

At 14:55 24/11/99 , M Holmes wrote:
>I hadn't meant to imply that divorce or separation was the wrong action
>for the welfare of kids in each and every instance, but a quick glimpse
>at the statistics in the US might make even the most hardened cynic
>wonder whether such solutions were perhaps pursued with some
>over-enthusiasm. In terms of kids in, and causing, trouble, boys are far
>and away a larger issue than girls. Research in the 90's seems to be
>heading for such unanimity on the conclusion that boys need fathers to
>put them on the straight and narrow that only the most committed
>"alternative family advocates" would take issue on the matter.

Research?  By whom, and funded by whom?  I've seen various newspaper columnists trumpet the idea, but I'm sceptical.   There's also suggestions that kids are more influenced by their peers than by their parents.

One of the reasons that I'm sceptical is that organisations such as "families need fathers" are mainly composed of men who are trying to get custody of their children, and are hardly neutral in the debate.  Joined with the general attack on "single mothers", I spot good old-fashioned misogyny.  Many single mothers are single because their husbands left them, or were violent, yet the image peddled by the right-wing press is of scroungers out to defraud the taxpayer.

Is there any research on how drug-use affects parenting?

Dave.

"stalking Scotsmen at HW gigs with a 10" boning knife - there's a lot of it about" -- Chris W.
Dave Berry,  www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~daveb