Which is why it says they reject the "requirement". No one is denying that a 2 parent home is better.

But if you are a kid that grew up with one parent, we need to have alternatives to help those kids thrive. Harping on the fact that 2 parents are better than 1 does nothing for kids with only one parent (except maybe make them feel defective and disadvantaged).

Who made it a requirement?

They are probably referring to policies or laws or just culture that make it more difficult to thrive if you don't have 2 parents, one male, one female. It's obviously not an actual, literal requirement, hence the quotes.

Does that measure have an inherent bias? Is it like saying kids with parents that tolerate each other are successful? When they don't tolerate, they separate and are not a two parent household anymore and so don't show up in the measure. Maybe it just means kids in peaceful households fare better?

It does. This text picks it apart concisely. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/03/01/the-success-...

That text doesn’t actually dismantle anything (and ignores mountains of other evidence) and doesn’t defend its own alternative either. Put simply, if redistribution worked, we’d see poverty rates decrease rather than stagnate or increase.

In contrast, single parent households drastically reduce the chances of success in life along a ton of metrics. Those kids get worse grades, drop out early, suffer learning and mental disorders at a much higher rate, are much more subject to domestic violence, etc. A shocking statistic is that around 85% of people in prison had no significant father figure in their life. This isn’t a one-off statistic either as incarceration rates do seem to track with single mothers over time. It even affects the mothers themselves who report higher rates of mental health issues (this tracks over time and across racial and ethnic groups).

Note: This probably would occur with single fathers too, but fathers are unlikely to be granted custody unless the mother has extreme issues going on and the father has a pristine record in comparison. Likewise, with 90+% of elementary teachers now being women (this wasn’t always true), finding a male role model is more difficult during the early, formative years.

> Put simply, if redistribution worked, we’d see poverty rates decrease rather than stagnate or increase.

That is what we see, in other countries with more robust (and more redistributive) welfare state systems than the US.

I've encountered people who say that's bad, biased, unfair, etc. - and not that we should encourage more two parent households.

"Some say" doesn't make it so. Two-parent households make children more successful; emotionally, intellectually, and economically.