Wisc. Bill Claims Single Parents Add to Child Abuse, Neglect

Wisconsin Senator Glenn Grothman — no stranger to controversy — would like to see single parent officially considered a contributor to abuse and neglect.

Wisconsin Senator Glenn Grothman has introduced Senate Bill 507, which would formally consider non-marital parenthood to be a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

As single parents make up a third of Wisconsin family units, the bill has provoked some controversy. Grothman is no stranger to such controversy, however, having previously equated the availability of financial welfare benefits to the rise in single motherhood among low-income families.

While the text of the bill would require the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize non-marital parenthood as a contributing factor, many commentators are taking it as a further attack on women from the senator who has openly stated that he believed social welfare encourages women to have children out of wedlock. Despite the gender-neutral language of the text, it is being interpreted as a de facto attack on single mothers because single mother outnumber single father by more than 5 to 1.

Section 1. 48.982 (2) (g) 2. of the statutes is amended to read: 48.982 (2) (g) 2. Promote statewide educational and public awareness campaigns and materials for the purpose of developing public awareness of the problems of child abuse and neglect. In promoting those campaigns and materials, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

Section 2. 48.982 (2) (g) 4. of the statutes is amended to read:
48.982 (2) (g) 4. Disseminate information about the problems of and methods of preventing child abuse and neglect to the public and to organizations concerned with those problems. In disseminating that information, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

The full text of SB507 can be found here.

Comments

Teacher With A Brain

March 12, 2012 at 3:16 pm

A Republican, I presume? One of Walker’s buddies?

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- Linda Brees
  
  March 12, 2012 at 4:11 pm
  
  Need to ask?
  
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Teacher With A Brain

March 12, 2012 at 3:17 pm

Teacher down the hall from me was an unwed mother in high school. She graduated from high school and college as a single parent and now she is the best math teacher at my high school. Her daughter grew up in a loving home including extended family and is thriving in college as I type.

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MattW

March 12, 2012 at 3:58 pm

“Government needs to stay out of people lives-except the lives of the people we don’t like.”

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Joe

March 12, 2012 at 4:12 pm

Single parent home is almost always a poor home or at least a poorer home. Since poverty is a big contributor to child abuse, what exactly are they saying that is untrue?

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- Linda Brees
  
  March 12, 2012 at 4:15 pm
  
  First, we don’t make these kinds of determinations by fiat. This is something for researchers to decide, not legislators. Second, you just explained the problem yourself. It isn’t single-parenthood that contributes to child abuse, it’s poverty. As a matter of fact, research has found that single-parent households do as well as two-parent households when income is taken into account. But of course Walker can’t say that poverty is what actually leads to child abuse because that won’t play well anywhere except Fox News, so he trots out the bugaboo of “single mothers,” something we can all get behind to flog, right?
  
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- Kevin
  
  March 12, 2012 at 4:17 pm
  
  This also single out, pardon the pun, families with gay parents since they are not able to marry in Wisconsin. A comprehensive study found that kids raised by gay parents fare as well as kids raised in traditional families, so we’ll be casting aspersions over families that are technically single-parent or unmarried households, but not through any fault of their own.
  
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Ann Wade

May 20, 2012 at 6:06 am

“The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor. The absence of a husband and father from the home also is a strong contributing factor to failure in school, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance, and a host of other social problems.“

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Linda Brees

May 20, 2012 at 9:33 am

If single mothers weren’t mothers they probably wouldn’t be poor either. In purely practical terms, it is cheaper and easier to make sex education, contraception and abortion easily accessible and free than it would take to fix the system that put AA men on a conveyor belt to prison or death practically from the moment they are born.

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