The trend toward unwed parenthood has reached a new milestone: More than half of births to American women younger than 30 now occur outside of marriage. Predictably, some lament this as another sign of the fall of civilization. Others see it as something to celebrate. On the feminist blog Jezebel.com, a headline unabashedly proclaimed: "The Increase in Single Moms Is Actually a Good Thing." The article argued that women are now empowered enough to be choosy about the men they marry. On Slate.com, writer Katie Roiphe urges us to recognize that "the facts of American family life no longer match its prevailing fantasies" and that marriage is only one way of raising children.
The doomsayers may exaggerate, but the cheerleaders are misguided. It's great news that more women are economically self-sufficient. But there are at least two major reasons the rise of single motherhood should not be hailed as a victory for female autonomy. One is children. The other is men.
Children born to single mothers do not always fare worse than children of married couples. But all else being equal, out-of-wedlock birth is a risk factor for economic hardship, psychological and behavioral problems, and lower educational attainment.
There are other ways the kids lose out. Many single mothers speak of their children's longing for fathers. While many unmarried mothers live with these men, such relationships dissolve twice as often as marriages, and never-married fathers are less likely to stay involved in the lives of their children than divorced fathers.
Roiphe, a divorced mother of two, writes that her younger child, born outside marriage, gives his affection to "fatherish" figures such as his half-sister's dad. Unfortunately, the men who come and go in the lives of moms often do the children more harm than good, including not just the heartbreak of attachment and loss, but also physical and sexual abuse.
Fatherlessness is not only bad for children; it is also bad for men -- and for gender equality.
Many feminists have lamented the fact that, while women have moved into traditionally male roles in the workforce and made great strides in career achievement, they continue to do most of the traditionally female work of housekeeping and child care. Gloria Steinem is fond of saying that we have learned that women can do everything men can do, but not the other way around. This, many agree, is the unfinished business of the last half-century's revolution in gender roles.
In fact, married fathers, especially in households where both parents work, have become involved in hands-on child-rearing to an extent that would have seemed unthinkable 50 years ago. It is no longer unusual to see fathers changing diapers, bottle-feeding infants, or shopping with toddlers. Stay-at-home dads are a small but growing population.
Yet the trend toward more engaged fatherhood is being canceled out by the growing number of children with no father in the home. This redefinition of families as women and their children is a modern-day version of the old-fashioned, very non-feminist notion of family and child-rearing as a female domain in which men are only visitors. Sending men the signal that they are disposable is hardly a way to encourage them to be better fathers.
Concerns about the drop in two-parent families are often couched in sexist nostalgia for the days when men were the breadwinners and women stayed home. The 1950s-style family is certainly not the only environment in which children can thrive. But glorifying single motherhood is no better and, in the end, no less sexist. RSS
Poster Comment:
Goddamn Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem straight to Hell.
I am tired to having talks with fatherless young men.
"So what did you think of Bob?"
(Looking at ground) "He's kind of a prick...but he's okay. Is he coming over again?"