Oh for God's sake. Have a child, get dumped/divorced, now you're a single parent. Parents are supposed to be omniscient? God already has a job (and parenting didn't work out so good then either)
Survivor benefits cap out at 75% of the worker's benefits. That itself caps out to $2675. So a spouse with kids would get at most $2006/month. Not horrible, but a parent with two kids would just be over the poverty level. And realistically, most people at that age would have small accrued benefits.
It's not a nuanced statement, but it certainly isn't asinine. It's just the minimum positive effect you can have on the future -- the lowest bar, if you will.
You could, with similar effect, make the same statements about bacteria in response to "People should live" or "People should thrive".
In the context more than 75% of black children, and more than half of hispanic children being born out of wedlock, and comparable statistics for all poverty stricken population groups, calling it "the minimum positive effect you can have on the future" is a really an asinine statement. It's not a positive effect.
If you could tell someone with a single parent that they, for that reason, cannot have a positive effect on the future, then I don't think there is any basis for agreement between us on the topic.
