Divorced family discrimination at college presentation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was absolutely floored yesterday to hear this not only said aloud by the person presenting but repeated. I thought it was a joke until she repeated it.

The words were - "I tell parents the one thing that will get their kid into college is staying married"

So all these colleges are woke about everything else but it's still cool to throw shade at family status?

What is false about the statement? There is plenty of evidence that children from intact families have, in the aggregate, more academic success.

Intact families are also happy enough to not want to divorce. There's no evidence that a family whose parents hate each other but are only staying together for the college outcomes has kids who do any better than a family who divorces and is able to co-parent respectfully and peacefully.

Actually there is evidence that kids are still better off by every measurable metric even if the parents are unhappily together. There is no dive in these metrics for Unhappily vs happily married—-just matters that they are married.

God, people are dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you that it was a thoughtless statement, OP. Even though it's truthful in the statistical sense, it is also hurtful to hear for those who can't make their marriages work for whatever reason. I don't get what he or she was trying to accomplish in saying this. Maybe this person wants to become a marriage counselor instead of an admissions officer.

Nobody cares about your feelings.

[Anonymous]

Op, do you know how many times I’ve heard highly successful women tell other women at networking events during their presentations that the most important factor to being successful is having a supportive husband?

As a single mom I find that to be a pretty tone deaf statement as they are there to provide supportive guidance to all women - however it’s their truth and probably very accurate for many highly successful women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's a shocking and provocative statement. The person in question should NOT have made it. it's not helpful. And as PP said, data and interpretation of data is not the same.

OP, I would complain to the admissions department.

Not if you want to apply

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone so quick to believe this really happened? I’m calling bs.

If John’s Hopkins was saying this, it would be all over DCUM and College Confidential.

Maybe. I’ve heard from really wacky things on college tours, especially at UVA.

And here we go, it always comes back to UVA for some of you people. Twisted.

I’ve been on these boards for awhile and have seen the UVA wars you’re referring to but I am not a part of it. Just someone from outside the DC area who had a very bad experience on a uva tour like OP did here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was absolutely floored yesterday to hear this not only said aloud by the person presenting but repeated. I thought it was a joke until she repeated it.

The words were - "I tell parents the one thing that will get their kid into college is staying married"

So all these colleges are woke about everything else but it's still cool to throw shade at family status?

My guess is there is statistical evidence to back that statement up as fact.

-- Divorced dad whose children are both in college, but it was a rough adolescence.

I have to agree. It wasn’t the most sensitive comment to make, but unfortunately it wasn’t inaccurate.

- divorced mom who recognizes the divorce and, more importantly, co parenting stress on DC greatly affected them

*when people get divorced because they’re ’not in love’ anymore or similar, it infuriates me.

Look at you! You are not like other girls, ahem divorced moms!

[Anonymous]

Guys, this never happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my understanding, once the child turns 18, the higher earner parent has no obligation to pay for child support or any contribution to college, and thus children of divorced families may likely get less financial support from parents when the parents are not amiable and bitter towards each other.

From your understanding, children of divorced parents are more likely to have a-hole parents, and yet you think divorce is the problem?

FWIW, my ex paid the support money directly to the kids, once they turned 18. This has nothing to do with our relationship (not amicable), he was helping the kids, not me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, do you know how many times I’ve heard highly successful women tell other women at networking events during their presentations that the most important factor to being successful is having a supportive husband?

As a single mom I find that to be a pretty tone deaf statement as they are there to provide supportive guidance to all women - however it’s their truth and probably very accurate for many highly successful women.

I started a very successful business as a single Mom. I know lots of others like me. I've been to several women in business conferences and have never heard someone publicly say husbands are the key to success.

For me, I ditched the male business partners because they were holding me back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's the context?

This was a campus tour presentation and this was her observation on what matters among admitted families. According to her admitted students are more likely to come from intact homes.

Not test scores, nothing else apparently. Marital status...

Intact families directly correlate with higher test scores and more success in life.

You can't really say it this decade in the era of perpetual offense, but the most positive thing you can do for kids' development is raise them in an intact, 2 parent household with both their mom and their dad. This is a statistical truth.

It's important but it's far from the most important thing you can give your kids. Being married is simply associated with a lot of other factors.

Having stable, loving, involved parents, divorced or not, is far more important. Good community and connections. Strong friendships throughout adolescence. Stable income. Good ZIP Code. Good health.

And you know what, you can provide all of the above and have a less than perfect outcome, even disastrous and unexpected outcomes. There are plenty of examples of people NOT having a stable family life and turning out quite well, Obama or Kamala Harris for example (JD Vance for that matter).

It's foolish to think that just staying married is some kind of golden key, just like the opposite of it is not a curse. Can't believe some of you got this far in parenting and think this way.

For individuals, true, but at the population level, it really is. Naming a few exceptionally talented individuals doesn’t change this.

[Anonymous]

Maybe next year’s US News college list will have a “marriage variable” in their models with 50% weight, everything else 50%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's the context?

This was a campus tour presentation and this was her observation on what matters among admitted families. According to her admitted students are more likely to come from intact homes.

Not test scores, nothing else apparently. Marital status...

Intact families directly correlate with higher test scores and more success in life.

You can't really say it this decade in the era of perpetual offense, but the most positive thing you can do for kids' development is raise them in an intact, 2 parent household with both their mom and their dad. This is a statistical truth.

Cool. Do you have a time machine?

I mean no…….but it’s not like you didn’t already know this, right? Did you somehow reason that this was a GOOD thing for your kids to split their time between two households and have their mental, physical, and emotional energy and attention consumed by adult drama of divorce?
I know it must have been a tough decision for you and your spouse, but it would be hard to believe that you thought divorce would have no negative impact.

You’re missing the point. No one is arguing that divorce has no negative impact on children. This thread is about the wisdom of telling people who are already divorced that the best thing they can do for their kids is not be divorced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was absolutely floored yesterday to hear this not only said aloud by the person presenting but repeated. I thought it was a joke until she repeated it.

The words were - "I tell parents the one thing that will get their kid into college is staying married"

So all these colleges are woke about everything else but it's still cool to throw shade at family status?

Yes, the best thing for children is to grow up in a stable, loving two parent household. How is this new?

It’s not “new”—it just hurts OP’s feelings since she wasn’t able to provide that for whatever reason so she doesn’t think that the AO should be permitted to point out that statistically students other than her DC are advantaged by that.
We’ve sort of decided as a collective society that saying things that make people feel bad about their choices is rude, even if true. And yet the AO violated this social contract. So OP is venting and wondering why is it okay for this one subject but not for other subjects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's the context?

This was a campus tour presentation and this was her observation on what matters among admitted families. According to her admitted students are more likely to come from intact homes.

Not test scores, nothing else apparently. Marital status...

Intact families directly correlate with higher test scores and more success in life.

You can't really say it this decade in the era of perpetual offense, but the most positive thing you can do for kids' development is raise them in an intact, 2 parent household with both their mom and their dad. This is a statistical truth.

It's important but it's far from the most important thing you can give your kids. Being married is simply associated with a lot of other factors.

Having stable, loving, involved parents, divorced or not, is far more important. Good community and connections. Strong friendships throughout adolescence. Stable income. Good ZIP Code. Good health.

And you know what, you can provide all of the above and have a less than perfect outcome, even disastrous and unexpected outcomes. There are plenty of examples of people NOT having a stable family life and turning out quite well, Obama or Kamala Harris for example (JD Vance for that matter).

It's foolish to think that just staying married is some kind of golden key, just like the opposite of it is not a curse. Can't believe some of you got this far in parenting and think this way.

For individuals, true, but at the population level, it really is. Naming a few exceptionally talented individuals doesn’t change this.

+1
Anecdotal evidence of exceptions and outliers does not negate the statistical reality that divorce throws a curveball into the trajectory of whether kids will have positive outcomes. Glad that some do, but statistically divorce is a key metric against that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, do you know how many times I’ve heard highly successful women tell other women at networking events during their presentations that the most important factor to being successful is having a supportive husband?

As a single mom I find that to be a pretty tone deaf statement as they are there to provide supportive guidance to all women - however it’s their truth and probably very accurate for many highly successful women.

Yes but that’s code for “you need to put 100% of your focus on career to succeed”….and for most women that isn’t possible without “someone else” taking care of literally everything else, including household and child responsibilities. Great that you are the 2% of single moms who have that covered, PP, but most do not. That’s the reality.
So just like OP, the reason you don’t like hearing it and are offended by it is that it excludes you from the pool of higher career advancement and you take issue with that. Doesn’t mean there are not exceptions and that you can’t be one of those exceptions. But you are literally offended by the statement of reality about what it takes.