Argument_,_Myth_of_the_Doomed_Kids

An Argument In Response to Bella DePaulo’s “The Myth of Doomed Kids” Bella DePaulo’s main point in her essay “The Myth of Doomed Kids” from her 2006 book, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, is that children of single mothers do not have much of an increased risk for substance abuse problems than that compared to children of nuclear families. I view Depaulo’s argument to be both concise and correct. She references studies and surveys in her essay that harden her argument with statistical data. I argue in this paper that DePaulo is correct, and the myth of the doomed kids is false. In her essay DePaulo counters the argument that children of single mothers have higher rates of substance abuse problems than children of nuclear families. She states “single-mother families, in which 5.7 percent of the kids had substance-abuse problems, and the mom-plus-dad families, in which 4.5 percent did.” (Kennedy, Kennedy, and Aaron 353). With her data coming from the National Drug Abuse Survey, she shatters the opposition’s misconception. The difference is so small between single and nuclear families raising children, that single motherhood cannot be a main factor in adolescent substance abuse. DePaulo also cites a study that measured the substance-abuse problems among twelve- to seventeen-year-olds. The study covered nine different family types: Mother plus father plus other relative, mother plus father, mother plus stepfather, mother only, mother plus other relative, other relative only, other family type, father only and father plus stepmother. In their findings mother plus father plus other relative showed to produce the least amount of substance abusing adolescents at 3.4 percent, and father plus stepmother produced the highest at a staggering amount of 11.8 percent. The data shows that the stereotype of drug abusing adolescents’ raised by a single mother is false. That single fathers and other father combinations such as father plus stepmother produce double the rate of drug abuse compared to single mothers and single mother plus stepfather. DePaulo makes her point clear and provides sufficient evidence to support it. Children raised to single mothers are not at a significantly increased risk for substance abuse as compared to children of nuclear families.