The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Monday, June 27, 2005

alone together

Statistics from the Herald a few weeks back talked about the increase from 10% sole parent families in 1973 to 29% today (which is still less than the 31% of families in the USA, where the DPB is a third what it is in NZ).

This has led me to wonder about the solo parents who are actually in marriages or relationships, and who live in the same home as their partner, at least on paper.

Because it is possible to basically be the only parent to a child but be with someone else, even the other biological parent of that child. I suspect that this was more the case in the past, when divorces were torturous to get, and I wonder if that has in part led to the increase in sole parent families - they were alone in all but name before, but they stayed married, sometimes for the sake of the children, maybe for financial reasons, but the reality for the couple and the kids was the same as if they had been divorced.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is also New Zealand's female-weighted gender-imbalance. There are 9% more women than men in the 'peak childbearing age' band of 30-34 year olds. See:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10331380

Anonymous said...

I do not know for sure but it seems unlikly to me
I certainly do not know of people living like that which is not to say it doesn't happen
What I do know about is women who get a protection order against their partner and then invite him back
Next time he gives trouble the cops are round and he is in Court,
in one case it happened three times, someone is a slow learner here

Span said...

i don't think people do live like this so much now Ray, my point was that before divorce was no fault and relatively easy it may have been, resulting in statistics that make it look like sole parent families have increased. i know of a very unhappy marriage within my own family where the mother basically raised the children totally alone, but they never divorced - the way things were measured in 1973 they would not have been counted as sole parent although in a practical sense they were.

tm - perhaps more proof that us XXers are destined to take over the world? ;-)