Studies show that the biggest indicator child economic success is having two parents. Yeah, there's a lot of indirect measurements and selection bias, but it still says overwhelmingly: 2 parents is better than 1.

https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-succ...

It sucks, but having only one parent is a huge disadvantage.

In the US with high prices, lacking social safety net and lacking extended family support if you have 1 parent you are struggling financially so sure. But elsewhere 2 parents is better than one only as long as you're not one of those cases where 1 parent is crap, in which case if you have extended family support firing a crappy parent is much more preferable. You won't find stats for this of course.

Lone parent children can grow up fine. They very often do not.

Teachers are part of large state institutions, paid workers. They're not going to finance someone's surgery, rent, or groceries. Offloading this kind of stuff onto the state doesn't work well because the situations aren't legible and the type of support required necessitates a great deal of intimacy on the part of the benefactor and a great deal of vulnerability on the part of recipient not to mention a legitimate impetus from both parties to make things right.

I'm restrained in my ability to extrapolate, but from my personal intimate, experiences extended families don't exist in the US. We've built ourselves out of that. And even a couple hours of driving becomes a huge barrier when seeking child care. Let alone half a dozen, and that's in the cases where parents/children aren't estranged which is an increasingly common phenomena. Between that and economy, and economics... Families may well span the whole continent and it's simply infeasible to support one another.

Moreover few people have close friends. Men in particular report having no close friends. That means that a single mother is going to be hard pressed to find a male friend to introduce to her child and as the book 'the two parent privilege' states, stepfathers are not equivalent.

You may be talking about something US-specific.

> Lone parent children can grow up fine. They very often do not.

Children with both parents also very often do not grow up fine if they are in certain socioeconomic divisions. That needs to be eliminated from the equation before any such generalizations.

only very few divorces are with an abusive parent. most divorces are a disagreement between the parents without involving the kids. in those cases, the parents solving their dispute without divorce would be better. but if they can't, and the children loose access to one parent, they will be worse of.

Many cases without a divorce and both parents present include a parent or both who are not very fit for parenting.

a few maybe, but many, i highly doubt. that would imply that humans in general are unable to figure out how be a parent by learning from their own parents which is generally the vector for learning this.

people unfit for parenting are most likely mentally ill or they are put in an impossible situation with unreasonable demands and no outside support.