they probably (my italics) have another feature that joins them: absent father-figures.
Oh let's not worry too much about checking facts, a few half-baked assumptions will do fine.
An astonishing number of young males in London are the sons of single mothers.
Can't be that hard for a journo to actually find out the figure - course if you're just lazy then why bother, who cares about real facts.
.... but devised by Abraham to control men.
Who on earth is 'Abraham' and when did he get elected?
..... Ireland, went down the insane path of encouraging single mothers to have children
Here we go, bash the 'single mothers' again.
Let get a few facts in here now shall we? (these figures are from 2008 the latest available from the CSO).
40% of all parents raising a child alone have lost their spouse through bereavement.
A substantial (but uncounted and unregarded) number of parents are parenting alone where their spouse is either working long term abroad, in long-term care (medical or pyschiatric), serving in the Army, or in prison.
33.4% of all births occur to parents who are not married but the overall marriage rate has not declined. So parents are getting married
after they have had children.
In 2008 a tiny 3.2% of births were to mothers under 20 years of age. (Mothers under 20 are the group who are most likely not to be in a long-term relationship when they have their first baby.- Crisis Pregnancy)
..... single mother is far more likely to raise a criminal, a thug or rapist, than the married mother..........It is not mere "poverty" that produces the socially dysfunctional male, so much as father-free families.
Male lone parents of course face no such problems? And of course neither do those mothers who are divorced or widowed or have a spouse in long-term care, etc. Only if you are a single, never married female with a child and then we'll just condemn you anyway.
I have little time for Kevin Myers, I think he deliberately writes in a way to provoke reaction. Rather like a teenager having a tantrum.
The problem is when half-baked nonsense like this gets into the papers, people believe it.