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September 28, 2011: Marriage Rules to Cut Divorce Rate
By April Lopez
Australia - Some of the five young boys who went stealing cars and robbing houses while on a 1000 km long crime spree last week, have appeared in court.
The gang was made up of three 14-year-olds, a 13-year-old, and the youngest was just 12.
The young boys stole a Holden Commodore outside Townsville and drove it out west to Hughenden, where they crashed and abandoned it.
Afterwards they stole another three cars while making their way to Mount Isa.
A total journey of more than 900km.
The boys randomly burgled houses along the way, stealing whatever they wanted.
There is not much information about the boys.
It was revealed that two of the boys were on bail for previous offences. They appeared anonymously before children's court whose proceedings cannot be reported.
Some people are guessing the boys come from homes in which there never was a father, or where their parents have split; their language skills are years behind the average for their age; their mothers, possibly teenagers themselves when these boys were born, are on welfare and have been for years; they were restlessly aggressive as younger children, probably unable to pay attention for long to a single task.
Probably irretrievably, they are destined for lives of crime.
These boys are unlikely to make any contribution to Australian life. Their regular court appearances and incarcerations will cost everyone a fortune or million perhaps. One or more of them might even cost one a taxpayer's life.
For a growing number of Australian children, it's just the fact of life.
Predictors of adolescent antisocial behaviour have long been researched here and everywhere.
If you are surrounded with a disproportionate number of single-parent households, kids in the vicinity will are more likely to become criminals, if they haven't started offending already. And these are the boys, who are more seriously set back in single-parent families.
Kick-starting an endless cycle, the girls are less likely to stab you, but will give birth much younger than kids in other suburbs. Their offspring are more likely to stab you, the boys at least or your kids.
The best defense against becoming a violent criminal and falling into the often penurious ruts and grooves of early pregnancy is a stable family.
Every week in Australia, there is more than 1000 divorces. That's just between those who were lawfully married.
It is hard to pinpoint the statistics for those who cohabited, but never married, but they are also on the increase. Half of all divorces involved children. More than 40,000 kids aged up to 17 years experience their parents splitting each year.
For decades, s senior research fellow for applied ethics and philosophy at Curtin University, Dr. Alan Tapper, has been looking at these demographics and the fallout of failed marriages.
The divorce rates that shot up in the 1970s and 1980s aren't singularly to blame for fatherless households. The second big change was people having kids solo, never having formed a marriage or lasting relationship, he says.
He adds those two together mean that kids are much less likely to grow up with both their biological parents.
Dr. Tapper is referring to what is now known as single parenting payments, and the manner in which these increased in value along with the old-age pension.
He says of Centrelink payment, "when the age pension went up, it substantially increased the viability of being a sole parent. A payment which comes in at $641.50 a fortnight - a pension from a department whose motto is that it assists people to become self-sufficient.
To enforce discipline, experts talk about the need for the bonding attachments at birth, the benefit of experiencing stable adult relationships, and problem solving - negotiating disagreements - and the challenges for over-worked, single mothers.
Marital instability can double and even triple the likelihood of antisocial behavior in children, according to recent Australian studies.
All providing the right background for future criminal behavior, these kids are more likely to have low self-esteem, to be anxious, depressed, aggressive and even suicidal. The stress of a parental breakdown on children should not be underestimated. For them, it means a change of household; finances will tighten; it may force a family to move, and with a new address will come a new school and the loss of friends.
Any of these changes would be traumatic.
Children don't just have a relationship with each parent. They also have a relationship with their parents' marriage. This is an early lesson in the importance of maintaining a strong and balanced cooperation of trust and compromise.
Remember this, too: the best way to teach our children has always been by example. Maybe it's time we all take our own refresher course.
Find local divorce information, click here: http://www.divorcemag.com/findprofessional.php
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