Wisconsin bill "to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as factor in abuse"

Remember Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman, who called the early-2011 protesters at the state capitol "slobs"? Well, he's been involving himself in controversy again.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/proposals/sb507

(Yes, this is approximately month-old news now. If a thread already exists for this, please let me know.)

Senate Bill 507, which requires the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board "to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect."

• http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/wisconsin-bill-claims-single-moms-cause-child-abuse-011200419.html Shine from Yahoo article on this issue
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/glenn-grothman-wisconsin-law-single-parenthood-child-abuse_n_1316834.html Huffington Post article on this issue
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/glenn-grothman-unplanned-pregnancies_n_1327940.html Huffington Post article on Grothman's response to this issue

Note 1: This bill did not pass, and the Wisconsin State Senate is not currently in session. I am not sure whether this means the bill is dead.

Note 2: Grothman cites studies that have shown that kids are about "twenty times" more likely to be abused if they are living with single parents. Actually, according to Politifact, it's just one study, and the study finds that the "twenty times" difference is between kids living with married biological parents and kids living with single (as in unmarried) parents and their partners. Glaringly, there is nothing about single parents who do not live with any other adults, which this bill seems to target.

This may be because Grothman provides the following as his reasoning:

edited 25th Mar '12 6:14:25 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

I would just edit your OP to fix the italics, but if I post about it, more people will see it and learn the correct formatting.

To have text in italics, you need two single apostrophes on both sides of it: ''italics''. If you put three apostrophes around a bit of text, it's rendered in bold.

For more markup tips, click on the box that says "Show Markup Help" on the top-left corner of any "Add Post" or "Edit Post" page. It opens into a list of the most common markup tools, and at the end of the list, there's a link to the Text-Formatting Rules page.

Relevant.

tl;dr: the study shows a 0% abuse rate among families headed by a Lesbian couple.

While I'm sure due to statistics, there has to be some abusive lesbian parents out there somewhere, this would definitely prove the bill's basis a bunch of hooey.

I heard about this several weeks ago. As the child of a single parent, I can definitively say that I was incredibly insulted by Grothman.

Hm...what does "formally recognize" actually mean? I'm not sure it's worth getting worked up over this.

Formally recognized as in stated as part of the law.

@ Best Of: I thought I had typed double quotation marks, not single quotes twice.

edited 25th Mar '12 2:04:03 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Punishing women for making a bad choice.

Well.

Don't we have an anti-woman legislation thread for this? As if anything more needs to be said about it, really.

@En: Yeah, I realize that. What I want to know (sorry if this is a stupid question) is how this amendment affects policy. What will change in Wisconsin, other than voters' opinions of this man?

Wonder what his opinion is of men and women marrying each other in order to create a good, stable house to bring up children? By which I mean, men marrying men and women marrying women.

Frame that question in the right way and you could get an unwitting Republican sponsor for the next pro gay marriage bill!

You might have to get two biological fathers to marry each other, two biological mothers to marry each other, and then have all four cohabit the same household.

Being one of the few tropers to possesses the right of centre view of the quote unquote 'importance of promoting good old fashioned family values' I can say I unironically see where the man is coming from. Woman hitting, puppy kicking Jerkass that he is.

Yeah we have an anti-woman thread, wouldn't this fall under that?

I don't see how the pretext is gender-specific.

Arguably this is different than the general anti-woman laws thread, because arguably single dads fall under the umbrella of this astonishingly asinine bill.

I have my doubts as to what extent they will, though. Social conservatives tend to have a creeping horror of single mothers, but single fathers don't even seem to be on their radar. Or when they are, they're viewed as tragic heroes struggling against the odds, whereas single mothers are selfish bitches who won't do what it takes to give their children a proper life.

well they are fives times a many single mothers then fathers at the moment.

It was in response as to why single fathers don't even seem to be on republic radar. Not that unbridled misogyny doesn't play a part in it.

edited 25th Mar '12 5:12:54 PM by joeyjojo

I say that because he specifically targets women in his speech up there in the post #1

And?

edited 25th Mar '12 5:04:07 PM by stripesthezebra

Well, of course there are more single mothers than single fathers. Fathers neither give birth to children nor do they usually win custody of children in a divorce. Unless the mother is halfway to crazytown, most courts will want to put children in the mother's care. This is something that should be noted about single parents.

@Glenn:

From your OP:

I assume you wanted to achieve italics with "[i]" and "[/i]" and thus I felt that I should tell you how to make italics. I mean, people go to many sites with different formats for these things, so I wanted to remind everyone of how our software works and how you find the instructions.

Does the bill, if passed, mean judges MUST say you were abusive if the child was in a single parent situation, or does it mean that judges may use that factor? Afterall, an intelligent court system could technically just always ignore the factor anyway as a sort of saving grace.

Look, here's my take:

I don't think this was a slam on gays in particular(Given, I didn't read the linked articles)

I don't think this is meant to say that single parents are garbage(Child of a single parent for a while myself)

I think the point of this is to say that hey, we've got a fuckton of single parents out there and need to get to the bottom of this. Why the hell aren't people staying together?

I would rather have not had to be the child of a single parent. Wish I'd had a goddamn dad while I was growing up. I think the fact that there are tons of single parents out there is a bad thing, but unfortunately I can't think of a solution to the problem. I think one of the reasons is that people don't put as much effort into relationships as they used to, and people sure as hell don't think out the decision to bring children into this world like they should. They might think they want kids, but they think nothing of the question of (Do I want kids with this person?)

I don't see how recognizing this in the senate has any bearing other than awareness, however.

edited 25th Mar '12 5:15:53 PM by Barkey

Barkey, the problem here is that this guy wants to blame child abuse and neglect specifically on that. Which means that people who are damn good parents and happen to be single are going to be put under another microscope. While I think this could be as bad for single fathers as it is single mothers, due to how our society works it's going to fall hard on single mothers.

This bill does nothing to address the problems of single parenthood, and does nothing to make people who are bad parents suddenly responsible. It's pointless and likely to be obstructive.

Barkey, is that Saren as your pic?

Also, if this has anything to do with ME 3, don't tell me, I don't want to be spoiled.

edited 25th Mar '12 5:25:37 PM by stripesthezebra

Does this include single parents who left an abusive relationship? Or whose spouse happened to die?