As everybody probably knows, the post-wired Ann has a chapter in her new book (Guilty) called “Victim of a Crime? Thank a Single Mother.”
While Ann as been making the rounds crowing about how her writing gets people to “read what I have to say,” you’d think that someone–anyone–would call her on her misleading use of statistics.
But no, on a recent Today show appearance, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb came off sounding like a bunch of moms reasoning with a nasty teenager:
. . . but Ann, oh, don’t say it like that because you’re not going to win anybody over that way.
Yeah, Ann Coulter’s mean. But you’re not gonna counteract her by wheedling or whining.
So here’s Coulter’s take on single moms:
Yes, actually, that’s the first time — this is the chapter that I thought ought to get the most attention. It is basically that we have, you know, 30 years of numbers on this. This is just numbers crunching in a somewhat innovative way — that single motherhood is responsible for — I mean, they are victimizing their children by raising their children without fathers. It’s about 70% of the prison population, 60% to 70% of future unwed mothers — of murderers, of rapists, of juvenile delinquents, of teenage runaways. You could — you could, you know, you could solve many of the world’s problems, reduce all of these problems by 60% to 70% if women would just get married before having children.
Unbelievably, Kotb replies, ”But I think the point’s valid, but I think it’s when you read through it, it’s all about tone.”
All about tone, eh? We’ve already dispensed with that particular statistical canard here (references included) but here’s a recap.
When people claim that 70% of the people locked up grew up without fathers, they are talking about a correlation–and a weak one–and not an effect. The greatest predictor of criminality is having a parent or other close relative who also exhibits criminality or anti-social behaviour or who is already locked up.
Thirty years of research has not shown that children growing up without fathers are so much more likely to wind up in prison. On the contrary, children whose fathers are in prison–thereby making those mothers “single”–are much more likely to wind up in prison themselves.
Media Matters has already documented several other falsehoods in this book. It’s quite the line-up. Think I’ll pass this one on too. Note: I’ve heard this stat being passed around on “mommy” [read: married] boards too, where you can barely hear yourself breathe over the sound of the tsk-tsking. So if this makes your blood boil, pass it on.
Valid point my tush.
Filed under: critical thinking, fatherlessness, solo life , Ann Coulter, criminality, Guilty, Hoda Kotb, Kathie Lee Gifford, prison, single mothers, statistics, Today Show, Victim of a Crime? Thank a Single Mother
Why does anyone even debate that shrill harridan as if she actually had something meaningful to say? Coulter isn’t about issues: she’s white noise. Like the sound of nails on a blackboard.
That woman is just plain awful! Her statements (and lies) make me so angry! Thanks for the link to that site, I will most definitely pass this along.
I know–and I don’t care how awful her tone is. I care about all the lies she recycles.
Coulter has about 12 days until she’s relegated to complete obscurity, so she’s out trying to sell that book while there’s still time.
Funny, she’s demonizing single mothers, but is against reproductive freedom.
She also doesn’t think women should have the right to vote.
She is a colluder. Simple people have simple answers and make simple conclusions.
What’s creepier than Ann’s food plan is the rest of the public buying this garbage. Oh, you have a real point, Ann, but your tone is sooo, oooh. . . MEAN. Bollocks.
I know I should be really angry about this. I know I should be seeing red. I know I should be saying that it’s not the single mothers that are the problem, but the MALES who do not stand up and act as MEN and FATHERS that cause the children to be raised without a father present. But you know what? Screw her. She doesn’t deserve my anger. She wants it, and I’m not goign to give it to her.
She isn’t going to fade into complete obscurity, because she is already a well-established writer, right? And she is getting what she wants, which is to piss people off enough to buy her books. Aarg. Yes, this makes my blood boil. More than that, even.
Oh, I don’t think she’s going anywhere.
Anne Coulter is an example of what is wrong with this world. She’s got enough people backing her to make lot’s of money, so sadly, she represents a large segment of the population. Maybe not a majority, but enough that you wonder just how many people are judging, hating and blaming you for all of their woes.
The fact that she gets off on this nonsense makes me question if she is even human.
Seriously? Can we quit talking about this bee-hatch? Every time we do, she gets what she wants: ATTENTION. Oh yeah, and sales for her book.
I still think a whole chapter devoted to–literally–blaming single mothers for every ill in the world shouldn’t pass without comment. Also her reach (author, public speaker, columnist with the Universal Press Syndicate, commentator and frequent TV guest) is just too long to ignore. But this is the first time I’ve blogged about her. And Coulter didn’t really bug me as much as the way Gifford and Kotb dealt with her. . .like finger-wagging mommies.
[...] Our resident single mom Blogger, Jessica Pegis wrote an interesting account on her blog, complete with an excerpt from the the interview. Click here. [...]
Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that I really can’t stand Kathie Lee Gifford either; what a pair.
You know, the biggest thing Coulter is wrong about is not that single moms are responsible for crime (she’s wrong about that, too, of course, but its not her biggest mistake). The biggest thing that she’s wrong about is that people read what she writes because of how she writes it. In reality, the people who read what she writes does so because of how she looks. Think about it. If a short, over weight, older brunette were writing and saying these things, she wouldn’t get the time of day. Because Anne Coulter’s audience is a bunch of shallow sexists and self loathing women with low self esteem, they will only listen to her as long as her looks last.
That being said, she could have just as easily titled the chapter, “Victim of a Crime? Thank a dead beat dad!” She acts as if all single mothers are single mothers by choice. I’ll bet that 99% of all those violent children of single mothers are not children of single mothers by choice. They are the children of women who get pregnant, unknowingly, by some dead beat ass hole who abandons the woman and his child.
Single mothers are doing the best they can to raise their children with twice the work load of dual parent households. If anyone is to be blamed for any negative results of single parenting (which are not universal), it should be the parent who ran away, not the parent who stuck it out and raised the child.
God, that woman is a moron. No wonder she has such shitty self esteem.
Jessi, I agree with you on the Ann Coulter looks phenom. All you have to do is go to her home page and look at the covers of her books. I won’t link it here in case April throws up or never posts here again.
Nobody is to blame for children who grow up in single-parent families. It’s a fact. Being single is not in itself a factor in children growing up to be criminals. Neither motherhood nor fatherhood exists in the abstract to be added or subtracted away with magic results because the success of each depends entirely on the people involved and how they behave. Both single moms and dads can raise kids well. Some couples raise kids badly. If they fight or attack their kids, it’s going to be even worse.
Kori,
on the KLG subject.
I’ll accept that not all fatherlessness is the fault of single mothers, and that there are irresponsible fathers out there too. It may be the mother or the father at fault; often it will be an irresponsible government promoting anti-family policies and paying single parents too much welfare. They are all at fault. Denying a child a relationship with one of his parents is as irresponsible and anti-social as drink driving. Albeit controversially, Coulter is prompting an important debate.
Ann Coulter is bizarre.
Just bizarre.
Nick, thanks for stopping by. I know you’re a research director for one of the fathers’ rights groups. My heart goes out to any dad who is being unfairly deprived of seeing his kids. I can’t imagine how angry this would make me. However, it’s a fact that some families are constituted without fathers, or even mothers, as far as that goes, if one considers two dads raising a child together. With a broad stroke, Coulter not only dismisses all single moms as bad, she distorts the research and promises something completely ludicrous: that the world’s ills would go away if these damned people would just get married. It’s a bunch of crap.
In general, I think people should sing for their supper too, but things like universal child care and free health care would be on my list if I were queen for a day. Universal health care has made a huge difference to me, as my daughter has severe asthma. I’d probably be bankrupt without it.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you drop by again.
I wasn’t saying that dead beat dads ARE responsible for crime, sorry if it came across that way. What I am saying is that she could have just as easily came to that conclusion. If she’s going to blame crime on single parent households, why target the mother? Why not target the father?
Of course, crime is not a result of single parenting at all, but if she’s going to point fingers and misuse data, why in god’s name would she try to pin it on the person who’s actually standing by their responsibility to raise their child? It boggles the mind. The woman really is stupid.
Rather than target the mothers or the fathers, perhaps Coulter should examine more closely the social policies which lead to single parenting. I find it hard to believe that many parents really think single parenting is a good thing. A second parent is a free baby sitter, apart from anything else!
Here in the UK the welfare state was introduced in 1947 by well-meaning people for all the right reasons. There’s little doubt now though that it has had some unintended side effects. The UK supports single mothers very generously, and that, as US researcher Libertad Gonzalez has shown, contributes to the numbers. A recent increase in welfare payments led to a corresponding rise in fatherless children, and someone has to pay for that. The poorest groups in the UK are not single mothers, but couple families on single incomes.
However you present it, the children of single parents don’t get as good a start in life as the children of two parents, and they feature more prominently in crime statistics. That doesn’t mean single parents are deliberately breeding criminals, but it is a fact, so let’s deal with it.
If we really care about how our children are brought up we urgently need to have this debate, and maybe it takes a Coulter to cut through the political correctness to kick-start it.
Nick, I understand where you’re coming from, but the fact of the matter is that single parent households do not cause crime. If you look at the statistics Ann is talking about, you will also find that the vast majority of those criminals from single parent households were also extremely impoverished and that they lacked quality education.
You will find that impoverished and poorly educated children from dual parent households are just as likely to become criminals. Likewise, you will find that the children of well to do and well educated single parents are far less likely to participate in criminal activity.
All that the statistics show is that single parent households are more likely to be poor and lack access to quality education. It is the poverty and the poor education that makes crime more likely, not the single parent household itself.
No one is going to argue that a dual parent household is ideal (and that does not necessarily mean a father/mother household). Not only because it cuts the work load of parenting in half, but also because most people need that comfort of a loving partner to help keep them sane. I am a single mother, and I would like to get married one day for that reason alone. Just because I had a child out of wedlock doesn’t mean I don’t want a partner, the same as any single woman does. But none of that has anything to do with whether or not my son is going to grow up to be a criminal.
I don’t know what the welfare system is like in the UK, but you’re not the first person I’ve heard that argument about it encouraging people to have children out of wedlock. People make that same argument here, but I would hardly call the $19 a week single parents get to spend on groceries living in the lap of luxury. Whatever. I still find it hard to believe that the welfare system encourages people to be single parents. In most cases, it takes TWO parties to create a single parent household, and usually the choice to create a single parent household is made by the people who don’t get any welfare at all. It is the man who chooses not to stay and parent, and I doubt if they’re getting any welfare money to impregnate women and run, so you can’t very well say that welfare motivates their actions.
To say that welfare encourages women to be single mothers is to assume that all single mothers are single mothers by choice. Many, if not most, of us single mothers are women who thought we were in lasting relationships, only to find out otherwise when we accidentally got pregnant. Do you think that was a choice? If I had my choice, my son would have a loving father in his life right now, but I didn’t get to choose. What I get to do is work twice as hard to raise my son on my own, and my son’s biological father gets to go to bed every night without a care in the world.
Single mothers by choice are very rarely on welfare, because most women do not make the CHOICE to have a child unless they are financially secure. Ask those single mothers who are poor enough to qualify for welfare if they planned their pregnancies and you’re not going to get many affirmative answers.
It is absolutely ridiculous to assume that any large number of women would rather have welfare than a loving partner to raise their children with. Humans evolved to want intimate relationships with their mates. I have never met a woman, or a man for that matter, who doesn’t long for romantic love. They may exist out there, but they are certainly not the majority.
You work for a father’s rights group? That’s awesome. Fathers deserve just as many rights as mothers. But rights exist in conjunction with responsibilities (that goes for fathers and mothers), and judging by all of my experience with single mother groups, I just don’t see a lot of fathers taking responsibility. I see a lot of sperm donors running away. Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’ve just seen way too many of the few bad apples. But I know too many women who are left picking up the pieces after the men in their lives ran away from their responsibility. These women come from all walks of life, I can’t see any pattern to explain why the same thing happens over and over again to such vastly different women.
This issue is far more complicated than any of us have made it out to be. There are many different kinds of single parents, and many different ways to become a single parent, and to say that any one thing is the cause or result of it is unscientific, misleading, and downright stupid.
As a single parent NOT by choice, who tried to make things work with my ex and keep a father in my child’s life, I am very, very offended at the notion that I was somehow encouraged to be in this situation, or that I somehow asked for this to happen to me. I am also very offended at the suggestion that my son is somehow more likely to become a criminal just because I did not marry his father. You don’t know me, you don’t know my situation, but yet you paint me with the exact same brush you paint every other single mother. We’re not statistics, you know. We’re not a debate. We’re not black and white. We’re people. Our lives, situations and histories are all as different as every married parent’s are.
Great post, J. Actually, I would go out on a limb and say that for some people, bypassing *relationship* and going straight to parenthood may be ideal, even with the attendant challenges of single parenthood. Frankly, some people do parenting better than relationships (would probably count myself as one of those people). I was older when I came to parenting and when people find out I adopted Sim in my 40s the reaction of many is you-know-if-it-doesn-t-work-out-for-me-relationship-wise-I’m-gonna-think-about-it.
It’s quite different for someone who is parenting solo in her 20s. It would be natural to think of partnering with someone eventually. So age may have something to do with it too.
Thank you for your very thoughtful post!
Ann Coulter may want to read the news more often, considering that a child of a single mother is about to be sworn in as our next President of the United States! Blaming single mothers for rotten kids is not the answer. After all, I think that Ann Coulter should get a life. The woman is over 40 and unmarried, so how can she write comments about something she has no clue about. I wonder what Janine Turner thinks about Coulter’s comments.
Welcome, Mary. You are right! I have often wondered what Coulter does in her leisure time. Please drop by any time.
Anne Coulter is unmarried? I always figured she was married to some extremely wimpy excuse for a man. I guess I did wonder why she wasn’t barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, as she seems to feel a woman’s place is.
So glad you called out Kathie Lee and her side kick. They make me sick. So does Ann Coulter.
[...] “Ann Coulter says thank a single Mom if you’re a victim of a crime.” – by O’ Solo Mama. [...]
[...] Ann Coulter says thank a single mother if you’re victim of crime … [...]
I can’t stand Ann Coulter, but she does have statistics on her side in the single mother argument. The problem is that she lumps all types of single mothers into one group. For example, a woman who is divorced, a woman who waited until she was older and financially secure before becoming a single mother by choice, and a 15 year old who got pregnant on purpose are equated in her rant against single mothers.
There is obviously a huge difference between the likely futures of children with teen mothers as opposed to children of financially secure, mature older women.
Welcome, Deb. Hope you stop by again. Your point is well taken but I think it also suggests why marital status of parents cannot explain criminality in the kids. For example, it’s been found that 40% of the inmates in Canadian federal prisons have a learning disability. Gotta be huge, right? Ditto poverty, abuse in the home, dysfunctional parenting (as opposed to “single” parenting). I just think that we should talk about the real factors and not focus on marital status for social engineering purposes, which is what Coulter and her cabal would like us to do.
Thank you Ann Coulter for having the courage to speak the truth.
Thank very much for this post. I am also a single mother and I so very sick of reading “single-parent household” as a reason for kids that turn to crime or have a mental disorder. And as I was reading on Feminist Philosophers this morning, there are so many people that believe this tripe.
So I started doing some research myself, and found myself here (very lucky me thinks). However, I am finding in my initial lookaround that most of the “positive” stories of single parenting are women who are older, financially solvent, well-educated, and who may have adopted rather than given birth. This is a little frustrating to me. This does not describe me, other than the well-educated part. I am going to continue my lookaound and see what else I can find. And I am very glad to come across your page. It will be added to my blog reading musts.
Hey haters… Hitler and Stalin were both raised by single mothers – a fact.
Men have realized that getting F’d over in divorce courts or being hit with false allegations is not cool. Marriage Strike!…or foreign women.
You cant have your cake and eat it too.
Women rule. Feminists drool.
The notion of singlemotherhood is tightly linked to fatherlessness in the US. The term “single mother” is more politically correct for coward politicians because for their corrupted mind it helps make “a good sentence”. Show me an absentee-father, I will show you a greedy single mother with a US Court Judge’s decree that denies Father and child access to each other. This is USA today: a fatherless nation lead by a fatherless president. For many, USA has become the land of deception obaout to be “blown and tossed by the wind” of fatherlessness. By rejecting the morals, principals and beliefs of the Founding Fathers, political fatherlessness engenders a new generation of political cowards who seduce with empty promises (a.k.a. “a good sentence”), deceive with political cowardice (a.k.a. “A good compromise”) and chocking the land with unjust decrees (a.k.a. “a good piece of legislation”). Political cowardice gives ways to greedy corporate officers, and rulers who oppress hard working fathers and rob what belongs to the children and the elders. If we do not go back the values, morals and beliefs of our Founding Fathers, our fatherless-president as well this fatherless nation is obaout to be “blown and tossed by the wind” of fatherlessness.
Our country has become so messed up that I increasingly worry a lot about its near future. If it was not for my faith in the Living God – the God of our Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and my favorite: Abraham Lincoln, 1863 – I would be living daily with anxiety, depressions and all sorts of destructive addictions. But, by faith, my first hope is to live to see the punishments of the wicked and a better tomorrow for my children and my grand- as well as my great-grand-children. I originally favored Barack Obama as a U.S. President because I did not know all the truth about him. Being seduced, I failed to seek behind the “good sentence/s” he spoke during the US elections frenzies. But now, every day his words and decisions convince me that his administration could be worse than the previous one – or may be the worst U.S. President ever.
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” – Charles F. Kettering, US electrical engineer & inventor (1876 – 1958). I hope I’ve helped. That’s my second and audacious hope.
How in the world is 70% a weak correlation? 10 or 20 percent, maybe. But 70? Can you explain in a logical manner how three quarters of a population falling into a certain demographic makes a weak point? Other statistics are even higher – such as 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
Your snort that this must mean all those absent dads are/have been in prison themselves, and THAT’S why the kids are there, is nonsense. Where’s the proof? I know a lot of single moms, and not one of the missing dads is or has been in the clink, he just didn’t want to be there.
And BO was raised by a single mother (mentioned in your linked post)? Not so much. She went off flitting with various men and left little BO to be mostly raised by her parents – ie, a mother AND father figure – for years.
Not all kids who come from single parent homes end up a mess – but it starts them out with three strikes in life. Yeah, stuff happens, people die, a marriage you thought would last forever dissolves. I get it. It’s the women who think that men are irrelevant in child-rearing that are the problem. More than 80% of AA children in the US grow up without their fathers. Is it any wonder the AA community is in such disarray? There are more AA men in prison than in college – 12% of the AA population is in prison. If you meet a strong black community leader, ask him about his father, and he’ll no doubt have wonderful things to tell – or perhaps he’ll tell you of his stepfather or grandfather; some other wonderful male role model who taught him what it means to be a man. If you see a couple of hoodlums on the corner, ask them about their fathers – chances are there wasn’t one.
Yes, there are exceptions to all rules. But the statistics on this matter are undeniable, except to those simply don’t want to acknowledge the truth. MEN MATTER. We need them in child-rearing.
Why don’t you tell that message to the men who abandon their children, Jo Mama? I don’t know one single mother (and I know a lot, as I am a member of several single mother support groups) who didn’t want to raise their children with their father. The vast majority of single parent households are single parent because the man refused to stand up to his responsibility and instead chose to run away. If single parent households create crime (and I’m not saying they do) its the DEAD BEAT DADS FAULT. Not the single mother. At least single mothers stick around and take the responsibility.
Jo Mama:
A correlation is a mutual relationship. Strictly speaking, you are right that 70% is a high figure. My point is that the broad heading of “fatherlessness” does not illuminate the real factors that result in criminality and incarceration. These factors have been nicely summarized in this article.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/12/4/46.pdf
In this summary of the research you will find two lists of predictors–one about the kids themselves and one about the type of family they live in. The lists are as follows:
Characteristics of children
Antisocial behavior/behavior problems
Low IQ (especially low verbal ability)
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Learning disability
Poor motor-skill development
Prenatal and perinacal complications
Minor physical anomalies
Head injury
Characteristics of the family
Parenting practices
Lack of parental supervision
Parental rejection
Lack of parental involvement
Poor parental disciplinary practices
Family criminal behavior
Child abuse/ neglect
Poor marital relations
Parental absence due to divorce or separation
Large family size
Yes, your eyes have undoubtedly locked onto the factor “Parental absence due to divorce or separation”. I’d like to point out that this describes only a portion of families with “father absence.” There are plenty of other parents like myself whose families didn’t start out with a dad at all.
About this specific factor the authors note that:
Parental absence may have a slight link to later delinquency. Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber reported that thirty-three of forty analyses found a significant relationship between parental absence and delinquency. However, the relationship is found inconsistently and is weaker than for many of the factors discussed above.
Please visit the link for references.
I don’t mean to suggest that men shouldn’t step up to the plate when they make families. Ideally, all kids should have good parents and happy families. But that does not necessarily mean mom and pop. Heck, there are 2 million kids in the US being raised by gay or lesbian families. One-third of lesbian households have children. According to your fatherless thesis, these kids should have a very high chance of winding up in prison. I guess we’ll see eventually if your thesis bears out. In the meantime, I am convinced that kids (and adults) who wind up in jail are deprived of a whole bunch of things, but dad ain’t gonna make it all right.
Oh, sorry–I was not beating up on the divorced or separated in that e-mail. Point is, when you do separate or divorce, there are additional challenges for your child not experienced by kids living with a solo parent right from the start. My hat goes off to all those who handle this time with their kids’ best interests at heart.
[...] Hottest Post: Ann Coulter Says Thank a Single Mother if You’re a Victim of Crime [...]
Surely the key issue is about NOT having children in the first place unless you are able to support them.
The world is hugely over-populated and we don’t need any more people. So parenting is purely a lifestyle choice.
It is wrong for fathers to abandon their children, but I wonder how many single mothers sprang pregnancy on an unsuspecting guy; you know, the “accidental” conception. (Dumb guy for not using a condom)
Bottom line: if you don’t have the money, you have no right to breed. This is child abuse.
[...] Hottest Post: Ann Coulter Says Thank a Single Mother if You’re a Victim of Crime [...]
ann Coulter is correct, this is why they have destroyed the family, to create more crime, more crime, more need for a police state and gret=ater need for the state to intervene in child rearing.
I agree with Ann.
It just isn’t the whole picture.
I am a divorced single mom. I participated in the formation of two children with a man who was not responsible, mature or ready to be a father. That makes me partly responsible. I know now it was wrong and harmed my children.
I grew up and decided I would never again make babies with a man who did not have the maturity to understand commitment, loyalty and what it means to be the leader in his house, and in control of his baser instincts.
I also think our porn culture plays a part. We do not teach our children of both sexes how to honor, respect, and treat the sexual relationship sacredly.
We sell our bodies, our minds, and hearts to a feel good moment, and don’t want to put the work in that it takes to cultivate long term relationships. I was guilty of that also, and have paid a high price for that. I used to be like that. Thank God I grew up.It was hard work to face my own issues and not just blame my former husband. I made choices too.
Meanwhile, my children did suffer many things because there was no father protecting , providing and teaching and guiding them. Children NEED good fathers. They do.
There is a reason it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, it takes both to raise them well.
It is not just the fault of women. It is all our faults. We are all guilty.
I think though if young women insisted on not having sex with men that won’t take responsibility or commit, many of these things in society would not be such painful issues. Having casual sex, and addiction to porn destroys many men and women’s and childrens lives. Our addictions to pornographic and a spirit of selfishness, it hurts us all. Especially , the children that may happen through that act of a man placing himself inside a woman. It is not just entertainment.
Self control is not much fun at the time it is exercised, but well -worth practicing. Long-term it gives people what they really want- loving, caring committed intimate and lasting relationships.
It was a hard learned lesson for me. Wish I could go back and talk to the teenage me that thought being sexy , and being good at pleasing men sexually was what mattered, and tell her she was listening to lies and headed for hurt.
I know I would have happier , more stable, secure kids.
Blessings,.
Trish