So a while ago, I wrote a post in which I said that the key to the problem of children born into single-parent homes is the men: women get the rewards of motherhood, plus state and social services supports, so their motivation to avoid pregnancy is small compared to a man who genuinely believes he\u2019s going to lose half his income for the next 18 years. <\/p>\n
But on the other hand \u2014 there are very clear obstacles to demanding men to step up, in our present-day culture and legal system. <\/p>\n
Chief among them is the issue of abortion. Up until the child is born (based on the broad definition of health in Doe v. Boulton), an expectant mother may get an abortion \u2014 thus making her own decision not to \u201cstep up.\u201d And, of course, the expectant father has no say in the decision. But as soon as the baby is born, we expect him to make a commitment to the child in a way that, up to this point, hadn\u2019t been demanded of the mother. It\u2019s very difficult to deliver this message \u2014 a woman has \u201cchoice\u201d but a man does not, once the child is conceived \u2014 and expect the father to, in all cases, fully accept this obligation. <\/p>\n
On top of this \u2014 \u201csociety\u201d (that is, politicians, leaders of political and social organizations, pundits, decision-makers of all kind \u2014 has made it taboo to say that a child needs a father. Sociologists come out with studies demonstrating that children raised by two gay or lesbian parents are no worse off than those raised by a married mother and father (so far as I know, these studies are all of self-selected same-sex couple volunteers, thus deficient in the requirements for a valid random sample), and the upper middle-class Murphy Browns, choosing to conceive with a sperm-donor father, are equally insistent that their children are not being deprived to any meaningful degree due to the lack of a father in their lives. <\/p>\n
How can we tell a man that his active love and care of his child is important for that child\u2019s well-being when so many groups, and Experts, and Powers That Be, in general, insist that it\u2019s not, that he offers nothing special that can\u2019t be replaced by an uncle, family friend, or just a second mother? <\/p>\n
And if the man, as father<\/i>, is nothing special, we\u2019re left with an insistence that he parent because he\u2019s obliged \u2014 and yet that obligation is so contingent. If the mother aborts, the obligation is gone. If she choses to raise the child on her own (either absolving him of responsibility or never telling him in the first place), the obligation is no more \u2014 unless she applies for welfare, at any rate. How can we expect a man to take the parenting obligation seriously if he\u2019s told that he\u2019s replaceable, and that the obligation is so dependent on the mother\u2019s own decision? <\/p>\n
So, really, the only way to reasonably expect men to step up is if they\u2019re consistently told that their parenting role is important and necessary. And we can\u2019t get from here to there, while at the same time saying, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing wrong with a woman having a child without a father.\u201d <\/p>\n
Which means we\u2019re back to the fact that we, as a society, have to be able to say: \u201cdon\u2019t get pregnant unless you\u2019re married\u201d and even: \u201cdon\u2019t do things which have a measurable probability of getting pregnant unless you\u2019re married.\u201d But we can\u2019t. It\u2019s practically unthinkable. It\u2019s unjustly imposing a fanatical Christian morality. Etc. <\/p>\n