More Education=Better Dads

May 31, 2006 / 9:32 pm • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

What isn’t said in this article is that men with higher I.Q.s get more education, wait longer to get married and make better decisions including being involved with raising their children. They are better dads.

Here’s a synopsis for you and it isn’t the conclusion of the writers of the article: stupid people make stupid decisions, smart people make smart decisions. And stupid transcends race. No kidding. Shocking.

Now, here’s the conclusion of the article:

But across all races, a dad’s education still made all the difference, Martinez said. Well-educated men “are more likely to be married when they have children and are more likely to be active in the lives of their children,” she said. “Education trumps race,” she said.

One expert thinks that the report paints a positive picture, but added that dads still need support, especially those in lower-income brackets.

“This is a very optimistic picture of the role of dads and fatherhood in America,” said Shelley Waters Boots, vice president for policy and programs at the Washington, D.C.-based Parents Action for Children. “It is quite affirming that a lot of dads are doing a lot of the work of parenting,” she added.

“In America, we don’t give parents credit for how hard it is, and how hard it is to do it well,” Waters Boots said. “So, if you have higher income and more flexibility, you see dads really step up to the plate. For dads who are really struggling to bring home the paycheck, they are paying a price of not doing the parenting job they want to do. We need to be giving dads more support,” she said.

“For dads who are really struggling to bring home the paycheck, they are paying a price of not doing the parenting they want to do. We need to be giving dads more support,” she said.

Will that really make a difference? It sounds good on the face of it, of course. Fuzzy and feel good. What does support really mean?

A person must have a certain I.Q. to succeed in school. He must have certain reasoning skills in order to make prudent long-term decisions. Once the higher I.Q. dude finishes college, he will make more money. He will enjoy jobs that give him more autonomy. He will have the smarts to make better decisions life-wide–not just in parenting. Good decisions would include not getting a girl pregnant before he’s married to her and then leaving the kid alone.

The key (politically incorrect) solution to this problem, since I.Q.s and education are unlikely to increase, is to emphasize marriage before parenthood. Even less intelligent people can make decisions for moral reasons. A married guy will in turn, even with a low I.Q. and uneducated, make more money than his single male friend, will have better health and because he is actually available, make a better father.

No one wants to say that marriage is a better solution than single parenthood. No one wants to say that marriage is preferable to divorce. No one wants to say that marriage is preferable to spawning children out of wedlock. That would be judgemental. That would lack understanding for the poor, unfortunate, ignorant souls who don’t know any better.

Bull. Even stupid people can grasp simple moral truths–like it is wrong to have sex out of marriage, like it is wrong to commit adultry, like it is wrong to divorce (except for extreme cases and by extreme I don’t mean “we just grew apart”). There was a time when ALL people, no matter their I.Q. or education, accepted these moral truths and acted on them. Higher education unnecessary. Men got a girl “in a motherly way” and he married her and supported them and they made the best of it.

There’s no going back to those days–not with women actively choosing single parenthood in preference to dealing with a meddlesome male. But that doesn’t make the new way better. Children being raised by one parent or the many permutations that make up modern families are vast social experiments. The results are just coming in–and they aren’t good.

Marriage: It Does a Family Good

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