auto-da-fe

obviously not, but we aren't talking about having the father around strictly for income purposes. I am speaking to which way is going to be healthier emotionally to the child. you could have a million dollars, but if the child is emotionally unhealthy (some sort of personality deficiency, which btw i could easily see not having a father causing some sort of personality deficiency) then all your money isn't going to help.

of course not, but if you get the choice to set certain things up beforehand, that at a later date, may or may not be beneficial to your unborn child, why do you have to assume that one parent can be just as good as two? if i am a woman (calling Dr. Freud) and I have a decent man in my life, of whom i am fairly certain would make a suitable father, why on earth would i want to exclude him? the op'er is not yet pregnant so she does still have a choice of who the father could potentially be. should she look only for genetic queues (i.e., healthy, blond, attractive, smart) when deciding, or she should she look beyond the physical, and look to what kind of an impact the man would have emotionally on the child?

it is almost a glass half empty kind of thing. i am presuming that 2 people, loving the child and nuturing the child, will ALWAYS be preferable to only one. please show me an instance where only one loving parent would be preferable to 2 loving parents (by loving parent i mean loving the child and loving the other parent)?

Debbie T

Morally I don't think there is an issue here. You will give your child a good home and be a good parent. Not sure where morals has to play into it. Unless someone believes that sex outside of marriage is immoral. Some religions believe sex without the intent to procreate is immoral, and that is your intent to procreate.

Have you thought about an anonymous sperm donor if this man doesn't want to be a party to bringing a child into the world without being married to the woman?

The first six years of my child's life I did on my own. My hubby walked away when I was 7 weeks pregnant (long story) and did not take any responsibility for his kid. I worked the whole time except for a short maternity leave and did the whole thing on my own. I will advise you that it isn't easy to do this on your own. In fact it is really hard to do. Not that it doesn't come without its rewards, your life will not be easy raising a child by yourself. Hopefully you will have a good support system to help you.

The other thing you must prepare for is if there are complications and you have to stay bed ridden to bring the baby to full term. Do you have a way to support yourself for the what ifs? Also if the baby is born with handicaps. There are no guarantees your baby will be healthy or that you won't suffer any complications from pregnancy. Without a partner the problems could be amplified.

I totally disagree that a child doesn't love back.

Added: I hadn't read through the whole thread, and I see you have thought through a lot. But please remember you have no idea what it is going to be like until you bring that baby home. I remember all the plans I made for that time, and they did not match the reality. I wouldn't trade it for anything but I had no idea how hard it would be.

braces_for_impact

My example had nothing to do with income. In your post you specifically said that having a child without a father is a deliberate statistical handicap to the child. My post was an attempt to show you that under your reasoning, having a child with an income on the lower end of the spectrum is also a deliberate statistical handicap. There is no difference.

A Groze and Rosenthal study undertaken by the Los Angeles Department of Adoptions found the following:

Groze and Rosenthal conducted a study that reports on the responses from parents in three midwestern states who had finalized their adoption of a special-needs child before 1988. The sample included 122 single-parents and 651 two-parent families. Researchers found that comparisons of single-parent homes to two-parent homes showed that children in single-parent families experienced fewer problems. (Groze and Rosenthal, 1991)

In the same study, research found that single-parent families were more likely than two-parent families to evaluate the adoption's impact as being very positive. (Groze and Rosenthal, 1991)

Also,
HERE you will find a study indicating that lack of income has been identified as the single most important factor in accounting for the differences in children from various family forms (Casion, 1982; Lindblad-Goldberg, 1989; Amato & Keith, 1991).

Obviously in our Op's case, income is not a factor. This link is interesting because it also questions many of the past studies used to evaluate single parent housholds. For instance...

Recent reviews criticize the methodology of many of these studies which support the "deviant" model of single-family structures. Confounding variables, such as income and social class, explain a large portion of the negative findings. When income is considered, substantially fewer differences arise between the intellectual development, academic achievement, and behavior of children in single-parent and two-parent families. (Casion, 1982; Lindblad-Goldberg, 1989; Amato & Keith, 1991).

With this and other resources, it becomes pretty obvious that poverty is a problem, and not single parents.

Other resources can be found at the website I linked.

auto-da-fe

first and foremost, i am not saying that a father for each kid is going to solve all problems. I am not attempting to become the saviour of mankind. Only saying that statistically speaking, all things being equal, with no other thoughts to poverty, drug abuse, physical abuse and all other variables, one loving parent is not going to be able to provide as much support as 2. of course you could say that one parent could possibly have more experience that the combined experiences of 2, but again, you are looking at the glass half empty. I am assuming that both the father and the mother are willing and competent, with no alternative motives, and no overriding baggae (i.e., drug addiction, alcholism, from the Slapahoe tribe or whatever), the child is always going to be better with 2 rather than one. Just like you can say we don't live in a perfect world, I can say not everyone is inherently bad. I consider my wife and I to be damn good parents, so good parents do exist. Just like bad ones do, but you seem to be focusing more on the latter of the 2, whereas I like to focus on the first.

and i don't want to hear anything about this being the real world, because just as you say that bad parents do exist, so do good ones.

so why do you focus so much on the bad ones? all of your sites indicate that the problem is unfit parents (be it financially unfit or otherwise) are the prevailing problem and i do not argue with that. A simple google with give plenty of cites showing 2 parent families tend to have a higher income (duh, 2 incomes tend to be more than one, and yes i am assuming that they both work), so your claim that the real problem is poverty is lacking because again, even if it is, a father would be a better choice than no father.

you decry me for not talking about the real world, but I hardly think that the responses form 3 midwestern, probably mostly middle income states are a good analogy for the rest of the world.

this seems to have taken care of itself for me. thanks. poverty certainly does have something to do with income, and once we decide that, my earlier posts apply.

unfortunatly i must go, but we will continue at a later date

braces_for_impact

My initial example had nothing to do with income. It was merely an analogy to show you that people make decisions for their unborn children that may 'statistically disadvantage' them as compared to others all the time. This does not necessarily mean that they are not fit to breed. I used income as an example as the first thing that came to my mind. I did attempt to make that clear in the last post.



Then provide these statistics. Although you say "all things being equal" and so on, I will reinterate that this is the real world. We are talking about the OP. She is a living and breathing person. She has feelings. She wants a child, she is financially independent, and feels that she has the time, love and patience to be a single mom. I have provided evidence in the form of studies that show that once you remove the problem of income, children from single parent families by and large turn out as well adjusted, etc as their peers that have two parents. This being the case, what would be immoral about having this child without a father?

Studies are perfomed from a sample of the population, since it is impossible to poll everyone. The study does show the number of people involved, it appears to be a good representation. Now you're grasping at straws.

Actually they DO NOT apply in this situation as the OP has decreed herself financially independent.

auto-da-fe

It seems that you may misunderstand my true point here. I am not saying that single mothers (by choice) are unfit to breed. I am not even saying that I am neccassarily against it.

What I am saying is that in the realm of possibilities, given the opportunity to provide a child w/ a "nuclear" family should always be preferable to a dysfunctional one (vis a vie, a single parent household).

When I speak of "nuclear families" I mean happy, content, caring, loving members of a traditional Dad, Mom, kids family. I fully acknowledge that this is not always possible for a huge variety of reason (and yes poverty is a big one). However, this does not change the overriding fact that a loving mother and father is much healthier for a childs "ID" than a single parent home.

There are many times that a second parent would become invaluable, as any single mom can attest to (and no I am obviously not a single mom, but my mother was, so I am speaking from experience). Be it to help with the finances (i.e., a second income), or to help discipline junior, there are many, many events in a childs lifetime that either one parent would be more suited than the other to deal with, or 2 parents would be more suited than one.

So taken into the context of the question "Is it right (moral) for me to choose to be a single mother?", I would say that she should have hope for a nuclear family always. If this is not possible due to circumstances or a percieved time constraint, my personal suggestion would be for her to consider adoption. Then the ethics involved with the unilateral choice to bring a child into the world fatherless changes perspective considerably. Instead of bringing a child into the world alone (which can be a daily struggle for both the parent and the child, and again, I am speaking from experience and not something written about other people), she has the opportunity to provide a better life for an otherwise underprivleged child. It's obvious the first choice is at minimum questionable. She herself obviously has doubts, hence her query. The second choice relieves her of her doubt, and gives her the opportunity to become a hero for a child that most certainly needs one.

You cannot keep refering to studies done at some point or another, because as you are so quick to point out, they may or may not be representative of true life situations. I am not talking about printed facts submitted by doctors. I am speaking from a man who grew up watching his mother struggle daily to make it alone. I am also speaking as a child who spent many, many nights wondering what having a father would be like, and what I missed out on.

dangin

In Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress there are several types of group marriage. One is called a line marriage where, over several generations young men and women are added to the group of the "married" within a large family. Genders are added alternately to keep the numbers equal, and all males and all females may couple in whichever manner they see fit. So a family could be made up of 4 males and 4 females all sleeping together, all breeding in different combinations, all providing, nurturing, and caring for the children produced.

Surely if two parents are better than one, eight loving parents are better than two. So all of you saying that one parent can't do it as well as two, to you I say that two parents can't do it as well as eight, and that all two parent families produce bad kids who weren't nurtured enough, and didn't have enough role models.

dangin

Wait, why stop with eight, clearly that is not enough. Perhaps a group marriage of 20 would finally be enough to care for a child properly. Then the older kids could be care givers too.

Or maybe it really does take a village.

auto-da-fe

With all due respect dangin, but I think you are taking a simple idea and exaggerating it to the point where it is obviously ridiculous. I can do that with just about any point made on any thread, but I hardly think it does anything to add to the actual discussion.

The difference between 2 parents and 8 parents is, in my view obvious. There are only two parents needed to produce an offspring. You cannot produce one offspring using 8 people and it mean the same thing. 1 sperm, from one man, combined with 1 egg from 1 woman. Pretty simple. IF IT IS POSSIBLE, it should always be preferable to have the 2 biologically responsible for the concieving of the child to also be the ones responsible for the child after it is born.

auto-da-fe

I know I sound extremely old fashion and conservative here, but I think that is just fine with me. I wonder how many of the problems of the world today can be attributed to broken or dysfunctional homes.

A part of me wonders why I am the only one here defending this traditional stance. All I know is that my kids are very happy and well adjusted and I think that has a lot to due with the fact that their mother and I are also very happy.