New at Reason

December 19, 2006

Cathy Young starts planning for Mary Cheney's baby shower.

Comments

|12.19.06 @ 7:58AM|#

Dr. Spock is the guy who wrote how to raise babies. Mr. Spock is the one with pointy ears and green blood.

ed|12.19.06 @ 8:40AM|#

I congratulate Cathy for writing a whole article on gay child-rearing without once mentioning penguins.

Warren|12.19.06 @ 9:05AM|#

Solitudinarian,
No kidding. Yeesh, that's pretty major error when your audience geek ratio approaches unity.

I don't know what kind of effect gay couples becoming parents will have. I suspect it will be little to none since there really aren't that many gay people to begin with. I do think that single parenthood is a serious and growing problem. However, my libertarian principles, tell me that in either case, any government effort to correct the "problem" can only exasperate it.

|12.19.06 @ 9:06AM|#

Mary Cheney is in a position to beat the probabilities on fatherless parenting and negative outcomes. Most fatherless households are not. But I doubt there are a lot of people who are thinking to themselves that if Mary can do it they can. Mostly I am not sure why this is anyone's business.

Sullivan notes that most people who condemn Cheney and Poe for "denying their child a father" would not advocate taking away the children of single mothers.

What does one have to do with the other?

|12.19.06 @ 9:06AM|#

A good article over all.

|12.19.06 @ 9:37AM|#

I don't buy it at all. The "it's for the good of the children" argument is merely a cover for bias against gay couples.

I recall that there is a correlation between economic status and how kids turn out. If you're born to poor parents, you're more likely to get in trouble with the law and have other problems than if you're born to well off parents. If the argument against gay couples having kids is based on the potential negative effects on the kids, shouldn't we apply the same logic and discourage if not ban outright -couples of lower economic status from having kids too?

Also, everyone cites the data that indicates that family with an absent father produces messed up kids, but I hav enever seen any data that deals with the causal factors. It it the absence of the male parent alone that causes kid problems or is it the economic effect of having a single mother trying to earn a living and raise a family at the same time?

The stereoypical single parent family is the young, black, urban mother who is on welfare or working a low wage job with no financial help from dad. Is it really the absence of the no good male figure that cuases these kids to get into trouble or is it the fact that they are poor?

alkali|12.19.06 @ 9:42AM|#

But, while respecting choices, can we also agree that some choices are less beneficial than others -- and that liberation often has its costs, some of them still unknown?

No. Fuck off.

|12.19.06 @ 9:50AM|#

This should be illegal because I think it is wrong. It is fucked up. It is immoral, period, END OF DISCUSSION.

:-|12.19.06 @ 10:17AM|#

Jane is a byproduct of anal sex.

Someone had to say it.

D.A. Ridgely|12.19.06 @ 10:19AM|#

The stereoypical single parent family is the young, black, urban mother who is on welfare or working a low wage job with no financial help from dad. Is it really the absence of the no good male figure that cuases these kids to get into trouble or is it the fact that they are poor?

That's a false dichotomy and the correct answer, of course, is both. Obviously, neither Ms Cheney and her partner nor the increasing number of rich celebrities who have concluded that long-term monogamous heterosexual relationships are unnecessary to their decision to become parents will face the vastly greater difficulties of the stereotypical single mother described above. Obviously, also, neither will their children.

One can say, as I have written elsewhere, that the optimal family structure for the raising of children involves a female mother and a male father in a long-term monogamous relationship. But then one must immediately add that such optimality also requires that both parents be reasonably stable, sane, competent and loving people, that they are financially capable of rearing children and so forth and so on, and it readily becomes obvious that there are very few optimal families these days, if indeed there ever were. So the question becomes not so much what is optimal but how we go about making trade-offs about which less than optimal situation, all other factors being equal, poses a greater risk to the child than another. And here, of course, we must also add the wearisome disclaimer that all other factors are almost never equal.

So, for example, few people of any political or religious persuasion would really be willing to say that, given the choice between only one family or the other, a child would be worse off being raised by a sane, stable, affluent, competent and loving lesbian couple than by a single, heterosexual, impoverished, drug addicted, uneducated, emotionally unstable woman with a penchant for picking child abusing boyfriends. In anything approaching a moment of clarity, even the latter such woman would agree. So the question whether any particular person or couple are even fit parents, let alone ideal parents, always entails the question "Compared to whom?"

|12.19.06 @ 10:38AM|#

I wonder sometimes what people who condemn lesbians or single mothers for "depriving" their children of fathers think about people stuck in the following unfortunate circumstances:

1) a father is tragically separated from his family by death, thus leaving the mother single and in a position where she raises the child(ren) in a fatherless environment;

2) a father decides he no longer wants to be a dad, and leaves his wife/girlfriend in a position where she has to raise the child(ren) in a fatherless environment;

3) a father is present, but is an abusive bastard who rules by the fist over his wife/girlfriend and children (I should think in such a situation a fatherless environment would be the better option)

There are numerous reasons where circumstances dictate that parents, either by choice or by twist of fate, raise children in an environment without fathers or mothers. To single out lesbians or gays or women who want children but not a mate as somehow evil or selfish is a case of denying them a basic human instinct: the desire to reproduce, share love and provide guidance for a future generation.

Bravo to Cathy for pointing out that men get the shaft when it comes to choice about single parenting - they cannot walk into an "egg-bank" and hire a surrogate womb when they want to have kids but not a mate (yes, rare, but I do know at least 2 individuals who are straight, not in relationships, but would love to have a child even if it meant raising the kid alone). I think this is an issue seldom thought about in the fuss over reproductive rights and responsibilities. Thank you for raising it.

|12.19.06 @ 10:40AM|#

Dear Jane,

Stanley, is that you? We thought you were dead.

|12.19.06 @ 10:47AM|#

So D.A. Ridgley, would you agree that the argument that homeosexual couples are bad for children - put forth, as Cathy has done in her article, as a sweeping generalization without qualification - is essentially invalid?

Burr|12.19.06 @ 10:56AM|#

The concept of needing a father and mother of opposite sex to raise a kid is actually fairly new. Back in the day, all a father did was inseminate the mother and provide a paycheck/food/etc.

People need to stop confusing the means of _reproduction_ with the means of _parenting_. The main reason 'fatherless' children don't work out is because a single mother has to work and can't spend as much time with her child. If she has a lesbian partner providing for her, then hardly anything is missing at all, or not anything that could be easily replaced by having a male relative or friend around to act as a male role model. Same goes for two gay dads..

So many kids have been raised by aunts, uncles, grandparents, even their own siblings and turned out fine. This obsession with somehow only allowing kids to be raised by a female mom and a male dad, even if they're horrible, abusive, and idiotic is just plain stupid. Good parents are good parents. Bad parents are bad parents.

I'll finish with this gem of wisdom from Bill O'Reilly:

On his television program, Bill O'Reilly asked "why," if children suffer no psychosocial deficit from being raised by same-sex parents, "wouldn't nature then make it that anybody could get pregnant by eating a cupcake?"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200612150001

: -|12.19.06 @ 11:06AM|#

The kid will save money on Father's Day cards, but will have to spend twice as much on Mother's Day cards. That alone is troubling.

|12.19.06 @ 11:10AM|#

1) Republicans are evil.

2) Republicans are hypocrites.

3) Conservatives, too.

4) Some traditional families are abusive.

5) Some people raised in nontraditional families turn out fine.

6) THEREFORE, it follows ineluctably that it doesn't matter whether kids have fathers or not.

D.A. Ridgely|12.19.06 @ 11:24AM|#

Mr. Average:

I'd say, with some qualifications, that most sweeping generalizations are, if left unqualified, usually and probably to that extent invalid.

College Student|12.19.06 @ 11:50AM|#

For what its worth, one of my friends at school has two mothers. He's perfectly well adjusted. People act like this hasn't been going on for the last 20 years. It has. Really, its going to be just fine.

|12.19.06 @ 12:37PM|#

Somehow, none of those "kids need a father!" arguments seem to make it necessary to outlaw a woman carrying the child of a former husband or boyfriend, or no-fault divorce between couples with children, or in vitro fertilization of single women, or adoption by unmarried persons, or a legal requirement that widowed spouses remarry or put their kids up for adoption. But if the kid's going to have two parents of the same gender? HORROR! This is a job for the federal government!

Bite me.

|12.19.06 @ 1:24PM|#

Somehow, none of those "kids need a father!" arguments seem to make it necessary to outlaw a ... no-fault divorce between couples with children...

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but in Ohio you are not allowed to get a divorce if the wife is pregnant.

|12.19.06 @ 1:54PM|#

Still can't see why it's anybody's damn business what Mary Cheney does in her private life, especially her sex life. Or are we now at the stage where we successfully construed a compelling public, that is the State, interest in every nuance of parenting to ensure a "good outcome"?

MadBiker,

Presumably single men can adopt. I know that single women can, so in the spirit of equal rights, men can do the same.

It's kind of funny how we agonise about US kids growing up without fathers, but accept just that for many kids south of the border whose dads slipped into the US and can't even go home to visit. Wonder how many Americans would want to live like that.

|12.19.06 @ 3:13PM|#

Still can't see why it's anybody's damn business what Mary Cheney does in her private life, especially her sex life.

Wasn't it the radical feminists who said "the personal is political"? Doesn't this mean that it damn sure is our business what Mary Cheney (and everyone else) does in their private life?

|12.19.06 @ 3:29PM|#

"Still can't see why it's anybody's damn business what Mary Cheney does in her private life, especially her sex life."

It shouldn't be; but in her public life, she is engaged in promoting a political platform which explicitly repudiates her private life. I find this amusing.

Cathy Young|12.19.06 @ 9:45PM|#

Mr. Average: Where in my column do I state a sweeping generalization that gay couples are bad for children? I actually say that research comparing children raised by gay and straight couples is inconclusive. In fact, I would not even say as a "sweeping generalization" that single mothers are bad for children; I say that, everything else being equal, children of single mothers tend to fare worse than children with two parents. Certainly, a child with a good mother who is not married is going to be better off than a child with two alcoholic and abusive parents.

I do think that the belief that it's perfectly fine for a woman to raise a child without a second parent involved leads to huge social problems. I've had a number of people ask me quite casually why I don't have a child on my own since I'm nearing the end of my childbearing years and I haven't met the right guy. And I find that quite disturbing.