THE EUROPEAN FAMILY DEBATE: Addendum from Maggie
I mentioned that a detailed response to Badgett/Kurtz requires a detailed knowledge of Euro-family statistics. (I know from this country how easy it is to post misleading figures if you are not familiar with the underlying categories scholars are using.)
Case in point: A note from Stanley Kurtz says that what
Badgett actually said is not that 90% of children in the Netherlands are living with married parents, but that "'90% of children of couples in the Netherlands were living with married parents.' But as I showed, her figures for both the Netherlands and Denmark
left out single parents and step families."
All this statistic means is that 90% of kids with intact families have married (rather than cohabiting) parents. Outside of marriage few kids grow up with their own mother and father. That statistics doesn't tell you anything about trends towards family fragmentation as a whole, or how well marriage is doing in general.
posted by Eve at
4:21 AM | link
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