The two parent advantage (or why a divorce law is a dumb idea)

Last February, Esquire Philippines came out with a rather curious article, declaring that the “Philippines Has the Most Number of Singles in Southeast Asia” and that the country is “practically the capital of singleville in the region.”

Culling “data from the UN Population Division for 2021 posted on SeaAsia Stats Facebook page shows that the Philippines tops the list of Southeast Asian countries with the most number of single people (49%) — almost half its population. The definition adopted for ‘single’ encompasses individuals who are unmarried, divorced, separated, or widowed.”

It’s curious because the matter is truly not something to celebrate about. And yet, despite Esquire’s decision to cheerfully quote a Miley Cyrus song within the article, it still managed to fail to mention the context of such rising singlehood and its price:

• The Philippines has “58% female” Pornhub viewers, the only country in the world where female porn viewers outnumber males.

• 58.1% or 844,909 of newborn Filipino babies are illegitimate.

• 20% of marriages in the Philippines will be broken, with 82% of such broken marriages involving children.

• A World Health Organization study finds that there are 15 million solo parents in the Philippines, with 95% (or more than 14 million) of whom are women.

• The Philippines registers among highest in Southeast Asia for teenage pregnancies, with births by girls 14 years old and below having increased by 7% in 2019 compared to the previous year, which also represents a nearly 300% rise from 2000.

• The total fertility rate (TFR) of Filipino women aged 15 to 49 years dropped from 2.7 children per woman in 2017 to 1.9 in 2022. With the lower TFR, the country is already below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman.

The Philippines is now reaping the fruits of universities and media ramming progressive policies on our children. And then there’s the divorce bill to make matters worse. If we insist on being a society where “anything goes,” it won’t be long before our society itself is gone.

Gratifyingly, Melissa Kearney, the University of Maryland’s Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics, recently came out with the highly relevant and quite commonsensical book, The Two Parent Privilege. Here, she presents a data-driven defense of marriage and declares that to depreciate it leads to economic problems, fractures society, and badly hinders children’s development.

Presenting no religious arguments and based on more than a decade of economic research, the Two Parent Privilege demonstrates that “marriage, for all its challenges and faults, may be our best path to a more equitable future” and that when two adults marry, such immensely and comprehensively benefits not only the married couple but their children as well.

Indeed, “two parents combined have more resources than one. Two parents in a home bring in the earnings — or at least the earnings capacity — of two adults. And so, in a very straightforward way, we see that kids growing up in single-mother homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than kids growing up in married parent homes. (Kids in single-father homes are three times as likely to live in poverty.)

“Some of that reflects the fact that people with lower levels of education or income are more likely to become single parents. But even if you compare moms of the same education group, you see that kids who grow up in a household with two parents have household incomes that are about twice as high. That means that those parents are paying for things like a nicer house in a safe neighborhood with good school districts. But they also spend more time with their kids.

“We see that kids who grow up with married parents have more parental time invested in them: reading to your kid, talking to your kid, driving your kids to activities. If there are two parents in the household, there’s just more time capacity.” (“Why Two Parents Are the Ultimate Privilege,” Bari Weiss interviewing Melissa Kearney, Free Press, December 2023)

This lines up with previous findings that broken marriages affect society as a whole. Practically every school shooter (for example) was bereft of a father, “whether due to divorce, death, or imprisonment” (“When Will We Have the Guts to Link Fatherlessness to School Shootings?,” Susan Goldberg, PJ Media, February 2018).

Then there’s this: “72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers; the same for 60% of all rapists. 70% of juveniles in state institutions grew up in single- or no-parent situations. The number of single-parent households is a good predictor of violent crime in a community, while poverty rate is not,” wrote Goldberg in an article in Medium from 2018.

The advantage of a society reared by two parent (i.e., biological parents) homes, is clear, undeniable, and conclusive. To insist on a divorce law despite every fact, logic, and experience is not only to exhibit blatantly gross hubris, it’s also patently unwise, ignorant, and borders on irresponsibility.

The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the institutions to which he belongs.

Jemy Gatdula is the dean of the Institute of Law of the University of Asia and the Pacific and is a Philippine Judicial Academy lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence. He read international law at the University of Cambridge.