keyser_soze

Expecting class and rational thought from a fundy is like expecting to win the lottery....sure, it could happen...but the odds are longer than hell.

auto-da-fe

once we have established that while it isn't neccassarily immoral to exclude a father from a childs life for selfish reasons as this, it certainly could be labled as ammoral. I apologize to the OP'er and wish not to stir up trouble, but I was abandoned by a father at a young age only to re-discover him again in my teen years, only to be abandoned by him a second time. this caused me a great deal of trouble when it became my turn to be a father. without a proper role model, i felt, for several years as if i was inadequate and flying by the seat of my pants, which is not the best way to go into parenthood.

fathers are as essential for proper development as mothers are. fathers help instill values that mothers cannot. chivalry being an obvious one. as pointed out earlier, fathers are important for both boys and girls, though in seperate ways. not to be controversial, but it could be argued that this view on disposable fathers is one of the biggest tragedies of the new millennium. with the decline of the family, so goes the decline of civilization. family courts around the contry trample on men's father hood rights daily all in the name of the mother. while i agree that the mother is hugely and undescribingly (is that a word?) important, i doubt it as more important than that of the father. they are both equal. for a child to have the absolute best posible chance in life, he/she would need both her/his father and mother there as support and role models, as well as disiplinarians, teachers, and ethisicts.

Philosoft

The problem is no one knows what constitutes the "absolute best possible chance"; in any case, it's probably an unreachable goal. Thus, we are left trying to decide what factors are indispensable, and in many cases, it does not appear that a strong father-figure is indispensable.

auto-da-fe

that depends on how you quantify "indespensible". to what? a good upbringing? a well rounded individual? best chance at a succesful life? because i think in all those cases, i would think the father is just as indespensible as the mother. now if you are talking strictly survival, then yes, one of the parents are indespensible becuase the other would be sufficient to guarntee survival. however the op was a question of morals, and I should say the father is just as indespensible as the mother.

In what way is a father more disposable than the mother?

auto-da-fe

true, but logic would dictate that 2 people to share the responsibility is nearly always going to be preferable to one person with no help.

certainly there are always exceptions to the rule, as there is to anything, but taken as a whole, the 2 parent family is almost always going to give the child the better chance at being succesful versus simply surviving

braces_for_impact

I fail to see your point. My mother taught me chivalry quite well. Please name some values that women cannot teach to their offspring that men can.

It seems to me these two statements assume a few things which I do not see properly demonstrated. A loving parental figure is certainly required to have a good upbringing, a well rounded individual and a better chance at a succesful life. However, two parents being better than one would seem to be logical assuming that things always worked out as expected. Unfortunately, we know this not to be the case. There are abusive parents, apathetic parents, divorce, accidents, etc. All of these can and do take place. Children with a single parent grow up all the time to be moral, outstanding people. If we were in a perfect world I would agree with you. But as is, I see nothing either immoral or ammoral about a woman (or a man) that wishes to raise a child if they are financially and emotionally prepared to do so. There are plenty of parents out there who are coupled and are not prepared to raise children.

Edited for spelling. Then I edited the spelling for spelling.

auto-da-fe

the fact that there are exceptions, even many exceptions, is something i am not debating. there are exceptions to everything. but all things being equal, and with no knowledge of the future, the op'er has asked if her unilateral choice to deprive an unborn child of a father is immoral. I am not quite to the point where i belive it is immoral, but it is ammoral simply based on the fact that you are forcing a statistical handicap upon your child without his/her consent.

if perhaps the op'er had a father (i.e., sperm donor) in mind that she was not sure would provide a good role model for her child, and she had already concieved that child, than perhaps depriving the child of him would be ok until the child was old enough to decide on his/her own. however, she did not indicate anything about Mr. Sperm's viability as a father and not just the fertilizer, and the child is not yet conceived. so as i said, she is making a unilater choice with no input other than her own personal needs.

(disclaimer: I am not judging the op'er in any way. I have no idea what her life is like, and am only debating this acedemically based on all things being equal)

auto-da-fe

the fact that there are exceptions, even many exceptions, is something i am not debating. there are exceptions to everything. but all things being equal, and with no knowledge of the future, the op'er has asked if her unilateral choice to deprive an unborn child of a father is immoral. I am not quite to the point where i belive it is immoral, but it is ammoral simply based on the fact that you are forcing a statistical handicap upon your child without his/her consent.

if perhaps the op'er had a father (i.e., sperm donor) in mind that she was not sure would provide a good role model for her child, and she had already concieved that child, than perhaps depriving the child of him would be ok until the child was old enough to decide on his/her own. however, she did not indicate anything about Mr. Sperm's viability as a father and not just the fertilizer, and the child is not yet conceived. so as i said, she is making a unilater choice with no input other than her own personal needs.

(disclaimer: I am not judging the op'er in any way. I have no idea what her life is like, and am only debating this acedemically based on all things being equal)

while the mother may be able to sit down with her son and say "Son you should treat women as a gentleman would", it would have much more meaning coming from a repected father figure. by respected again i am assuming that we are not talking about one of the exceptions discussed above because again, the op'er has giving me no insights to his ability to be a parent.

of course i cannot sit here and give you every example of when a father would be better than a mother becuase there are only about 8 trillion oportunities for parental influence in a childs lifetime. but you can't tell me that there are no instances where a fathers advise would carry more meaning than a mothers.

not to mention the fact that most boys and nearly all girls (only in my personal experience) respond better to discipline from a respected father figure (same definition as above for same reason) than from the mother. now you have hard lined mothers and soft hearted fathers, but i have already approached that.

Philosoft

Well, it's not clear that indispensibility is necessarily a moral issue.
I was pretty careful not to say that. My point was that single mothers are capable of raising well-adjusted children. I surmise that single fathers are often able to do so as well. The existence of these counterexamples refutes the assertion of "indispensibility" So the question is, how dispensable is a single parent?

braces_for_impact

We live in a real world with real consequences, and we cannot tell the future. Not only are these "exceptions" that we are talking about important, but they are quite common.

I think you have to show how this is immoral. If I have a child on an income of $40,000 a year income and my neigbor has a child and they are a millionaire, am I 'forcing a statistical handicamp upon my child without his/her consent?' one will most likely have better chances because of expendable income, and will have open doors that another will not have. Are we to only breed now under optimal circumstances? Who gets to decide when those conditions have been met?