Single Mothers in Sweden

~ Laura

At the NRO, Reihan Salam pulls out a study that finds that children of single mothers in Sweden suffer from the same problems as children of single mothers in America. I think his conclusion is that we shouldn't help single mothers in America, because it doesn't seem to matter. Nice. 

Published by Laura

10 thoughts on “Single Mothers in Sweden”

  3. It seems to me that he is basically pointing out that the knee-jerk liberal reaction–“Single-parenting is bad in America because we don’t have a Swedish-style welfare state”–is false. Something about being in a single-parent household is bad for kids no matter where you are; the difference between us and Sweden is that they have fewer single-parent families, not that they’ve managed to eliminate the problems that accompany single-parenting here.
    Reihan is often somewhat ambiguous, but I don’t see where you got “let them starve” out of what he wrote.

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  4. Reihan sets up this proposition:
    1. Sweden throws a lot of money at social problems like single mothers in poverty.
    2. The US doesn’t.
    3. A study compares kids of single mothers in Sweden and the US and finds that both groups of kids have similar problems later in life, like fewer earnings and lower college attendance compared to kids from 2 parent households.
    His conclusions seem to be:
    1. The social welfare system doesn’t help kids from single parent households.
    2. The social welfare system may in fact create more single parent households.
    3. Therefore, all that social welfare is a waste of time and money.
    If I’m misreading him, well, he really needs to write more clearly. But that what I got out of it.

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  5. I have a vague memory of reading that unmarried Scandinavian families are much more functional than unmarried US couples, so it’s interesting to read that Swedish single mothers resemble US single mothers.

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  6. I don’t know. THe Swedish author notes that only 3 percent of Swedish kids grow up in single-parent families — unlike the thirtyish to fortyish percent we see in some communities in the US. This alone suggests that the group: Swedish single moms and US single moms — is probably not comparable. It’s such an unusual choice in Sweden that it would suggest that there might be something else going on with those Swedish single moms that makes them different from the US single moms. (Maybe they’re mentally unstable, have extremely poor relationship skills, are members of some ostracized minority that makes them unlikely to integrate in the mainstream). I’m not sure that you could argue that growing up in a Swedish single mom house would be comparable to growing up in a US single mom house. For one thing if it’s such an unusual choice in Sweden, then maybe those kids are much more ostracized and end up more socially or mentally maladjusted. Maybe these are the women who left abusive relationships. I don’t know. It just seems off to draw any comparisons from the two groups.

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  7. #3 is your conclusion, not Reihan’s. An alternative, which I would probably sadly agree with is: “Welfare may alleviate the worst material problems of being poor, but it doesn’t change the fact that raising kids with one parent is not good for the kids.

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  8. Yeah, Louisa. Also, Sweden is different from the US in so many ways that it is always difficult to make great comparisons.
    And, yeah to Megan, too. I also wonder about the variables that they examined in this study. They looked at the earnings and college completion as the variables that explain child outcomes. Kids of single parents in both countries had similar problems in that area. The researchers chose those variables, because they can be quantified and they are accessable, but maybe they aren’t the best variables to look at.
    Raising a child alone is very stressful, no matter how much help you get from the government. Single parents aren’t going to have enough time to support their children in school, compared to 2 parent famiilies. But the stress has to be considerably less if you aren’t worried about shelter, health care, and food. But how do you measure maternal stress levels? It’s possible to do, but that data isn’t readily available.

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  9. To paraphrase: “Is my conclusion unsound?” “I don’t see any conclusion at all.”
    In the last paragraph, there’s a swipe at “some quarters” and “some observers,” but not much else. The final sentence also contains a “fact that,” a “fact which” and a “This” with a very uncertain antecedent. None of them help make any point. It looks to me like the author reached the end of his intended word count and stopped, conclusion (or indeed argument) be damned.

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