Lots of kids growing up with half-siblings:
The data included information about individual men in each household, describing what demographers call “relationship churning.” Dorius found multiple fathers is common — 28 percent of all U.S. women with two or more children have children by more than one man — and it is frequently tied to marriage and divorce rather than just single parenthood.
“We tend to think of women with multiple partner fertility as being only poor single women with little education and money, but in fact at some point, most were married and working, and going to school and doing all the things you’re supposed to do to live the American Dream,” Dorius says in a statement.
Unlike the author of this piece, I guess I had no strong prior views about this situation. My father’s two siblings were the offspring of an earlier marriage of my grandmother’s, so nothing about this idea seems especially unusual or troubling to me. But here’s another piece on the study in The Daily that seems wildly alarmist and quotes Dorius saying that “juggling all the different needs and demands of fathers in at least two households, four or more pairs of grandparents, and two or more children creates a huge set of chronic stressors that families have to deal with for decades.”
Previous in TP Yglesias
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.