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Anecdotally, I've known two such men whom you would The facts are that roughly 85% of the incarcerated and 80% of pregnant teen girls were raised by single mothers, who make up roughly 80% of single parents. Less than 1% of those groups were raised by single fathers, who make up 15% of single parents. The key word here is "anecdotally". There is a bias in your statistics that the men who are single fathers are to a greater degree single fathers by choice rather than circumstance, therefore they are more motivated to be good parents. The only way to truly prove if the apparent "trend" would hold out, is to switch the numbers around and make 85% of single households "single-dad" households. Then we could compare apples and apples. Until then, its apples and oranges and no comparison.

Which is why I say let's do it. Let's give custody over to men 85% of the time, not by choice but my default (as we do with women now) whether or not there is evidence the father would be a good parent. Then let's check the statistics again. Just hand that newborn over to the father and and the mother walks away. Let's try it and see what happens.

It's a pathetic myth that the men .... are incapable of rearing children alone.

I agree, it is a myth. How did that myth get started do you think? IMO it is not a matter of ability, it is a matter of motivation.

"single parenting may be a sub-optimal arrangement, but when men do it, they're generally more successful at it than women."

Well, I don't agree with this generalization based on the bias in sampling (as I explained above). But nevermind. I could be wrong. Let's give it a whirl and find out!

By the way I too know men who have successfully raised children on their own. One man I know (now about 70) raised 4 children on his own after his wife succumbed to some debilitating illness (I forgot which). In addition he took care of her as long as he could before he had to put her in a care home. He could have divorced her and remarried but he did not until she died and by then the kids were mostly grown.

But this man you could pre-select as the type of individual who would step up to the plate and do the right thing in ANY situation. Not every man, not every woman, has that integrity. We can point to these people as examples, and there are many of both sexes, but the reality is most people are not of that caliber.

"The key word here is "anecdotally". There is a bias in your statistics that the men who are single fathers are to a greater degree single fathers by choice rather than circumstance, therefore they are more motivated to be good parents.

I didn't try to pass the anecdotes off as "data" - just launching points. Further, another woman in the thread where those statistics originate challenged them in the same way, calling the single fathers "self selecting." I suspect this is right out of some feminist tract of "talking points" as a defense of single motherhood. But with the availability of artificial insemination, birth control, abortion, and the societal tactical nuke we call "divorce" - I'd have to say that women and men are equally "self-selecting" as single parents. To say otherwise is to continue on mutually exclusive paths of "choice" and "victim" - something that ideological feminists do quite comfortably.