Reminds me of all the middle class knowlege workers who at peak covid smugly proclaimed that everyone should just "work from home", I'm doing it and I am very important so why isnt everyone else.

Turns out the supermarket shelves arent at home and someone needs to deliver the toilet paper so you can panic buy your 200th roll that week.

First, I don’t think anyone should be a single parent. Find a new mate asap, if you can’t there’s something deeper there. If not for you, for your children.

That said, I get it. That’s a situation where you need support and help. I also don’t view it as a “failure”, there are optimal and suboptimal situations. If you didn’t have children in a marriage and / or you divorced your spouse; that’s suboptimal and created by the parents (ie a failure). In situations where the spouse dies, society supporting them is necessary. It also isn’t a failure in the sense of any control. Ultimately though, it’s still the parents job. You can’t just ignore the responsibility, you may also not do as well as possible, even if it’s out of your control. It’s unfortunate, but life.

> This is a natural extension of the american/conservative "all consequences are the fault of the person experiencing them" ideology.

You have a very weird view of conservatives that is really nothing like reality; at least based on what I’ve seen.

First point, your comment implies that your view is it’s your neighbors are responsible for your child? So what, the pedophile next door should take care of your kid? Or should you move and take that responsibility? If is your responsibility to move or take action of some kind obviously.

No conservative I’ve ever met have been anti-community or pro-suffering. They have their churches, their private schools, etc. they have more community than most. But they claim it’s your responsibility, because it is. It’s a fact, you can’t ignore. You don’t want your neighbor dictating how you raise your kids. You want help sometimes, that’s good. You can collaborate with people, but shouldn’t expect someone else to take care of something for you. In way of another example, if I got a dog, I wouldn’t expect my neighbor to feed it. That said, there’s a community shelter if the dog needs it.

I came from a poor household, but my parents never shirked responsibility. There were many times they failed to live up to their expectations. But that doesn’t change the fact they tried and understood no one was going to do it but them. My brother and I started working early and we had to pull some weight or we wouldn’t have clothes. It’s the way it was, I suffered far less than those who had irresponsible parents.

the flipside of this is the attitude that suffering and deprivation is virtuous if it is mutual, that you have a 'responsibility' to buy in to a failing and now outright neglectful educational model out of poorly conceived notion that this is leveling the playing field. it isn't, it never has and it never will. the parents who compound the maximum advantages for their kids will win out and the ones who can't or wont will be stuck with another decade of 'no child left behind' given a new, vaguely utopian name.