My latest post from Newsreal:
It’s a little over a week before Father’s Day, and The Atlantic has the perfect thought for all of us to ponder over the next week: are fathers really necessary anymore?
In today’s new, “progressive” world, women apparently all understand that they are Super Mom, hear me roar, and that dads are pretty much completely useless. Pamela Paul writes:
Drawing on reliable comparative studies, you could say this: single moms tend to be more involved, set more rules, communicate better, and feel closer to their children than single dads. They have less difficulty monitoring their children’s whereabouts, friendships, and school progress. Their children do better on standardized tests and have higher grades, and teenagers of single moms are actually less likely to engage in delinquent behavior or substance abuse than those of single dads. Go, Murphy Brown.
The quality of parenting, Biblarz and Stacey say, is what really matters, not gender. But the real challenge to our notion of the “essential” father might well be the lesbian mom. On average, lesbian parents spend more time with their children than fathers do. They rate disputes with their children as less frequent than do hetero couples, and describe co-parenting more compatibly and with greater satisfaction. Their kids perceive their parents to be more available and dependable than do the children of heteros. They also discuss more emotional issues with their parents. They have fewer behavioral problems, and show more interest in and try harder at school.
Wow, from the way all of this sounds, maybe we should just cut out men altogether! Since women are the best thing for kids since sliced bread, it’s really best for two lesbians to raise kids! This study has been celebrated by leftists all over the blogosphere the past few weeks, but I can’t help but be cynical. Can two lesbians raise happy, healthy children? Will they have issues growing up? Considering gay parenting is a relatively new phenomenon, it will be quite some time before we can really ascertain the long-term effects on a large scale.
It doesn’t stop gay rights activists from trumpeting this new find. They’re especially enjoying rubbing it in the faces of conservatives who claim that fathers are essential to families. And, right before Father’s Day, we get another study to corroborate the claim that gender does not matter.
There couldn’t possibly be a gay rights agenda being pushed here, could there? It sounds like propaganda straight out of the gay rights lobby. And perhaps for good reason. Let’s take a look at one of the people behind this study, Judith Stacey. She’s a sociology professor at NYU with a focus on “gender; family; sexuality; feminist and queer theory; ethnography.” According to the McMurry University website, her work has focused on the changing of the family structure, and she is an advocate for gay marriage and gay family rights.
liz says: Isn’t the original comparison children in a home with no father vs. children in a home with no mother? Usually the reasons for no mother in the home involve serious drug abuse or prison, which right there puts the whole family at risk and means the father figure probably has some issues of his own if he ended up with her in the first place. I know a very successful family where the mother died when the children were in middle school and both boys graduated from high school with 4.0 gpas and they are very close.
Smithwick says: Every study I’ve seen has shown that kids of single mothers are more likely to be low achievers, not graduate highschool, get pregnant at a young age (or get a girl pregnant), end up in correctional institutions, and generally be a drain on society.
Not all of course. But in general they are worse off on all key indicators on average than kids with two parents.
If men are so useless, maybe women should stop asking for alimony and child support. Something tells me, though, that these differences are due primarily to the fact that single dads are working full-time (and then some) to support the family, whereas a lot of single moms are working cute “mother’s hours” and supplementing her income with 30% of her ex-husband’s paycheck. Yeah, it’s not hard to be attentive to your kids when you don’t have to work, but that’s not an argument for single motherhood.
Now I’m confused. I thought that Scientific Research had conclusively proven that men and women are exactly the same, and that to even suggest that one sex or the other might be inherently better at something was sexist, outdated, and ignorant.
Once you start saying that women are better at parenting then men, then by definition that means that the two are different. And if women are naturally better at some things, then maybe men are naturally better at other things. But of course, that very line of thought is ridiculous. Just ask Larry Summers.
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