Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Conservatives highlight the primacy of family and argue that family breakdown exacerbates poverty, and they're right. Children raised by single parents are three times as likely to live in poverty as kids in two-parent homes.
Almost 24 million children - one in three - are likely growing up without their father involved in their lives.
Children with healthy mothers are much more likely to survive childhood, attend school and live healthy, productive lives.
Some kids win the lottery at birth; far too many don't - and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults.
Children that are raised in a home with a married mother and father consistently do better in every measure of well-being than their peers who come from divorced or step-parent, single-parent, cohabiting homes.
With the right support, a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, who was destined for a lifetime on benefits could be put on an entirely different track - one which sees them move into fulfilling and sustainable work. In doing so, they will pull themselves out of poverty.
It is widely known that the effects of childhood poverty follow children through adolescence and into adulthood.
Divorce is one of the key predictors of poverty for a child growing up in a home that's broken.
We do nothing for children between the ages of zero and five. And we seem to be quite happy to have children growing up in not just poverty, which wouldn't be so bad, but isolation, lack of people around them, lack of support, lack of ability to go out and play in the dirt.
My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.