Do yourself a favor and go read Lauren’s post about a Dear Prudence column that Emily Yoffe vomited up:
Judging from her latest piece, Emily Yoffe, Slate’s advice columnist, is going after Dear Abby’s job. Incensed that Dear Abby stole her advice thunder by insisting that the rape of one man’s sleeping wife is obviously a big ol’ lie, Yoffe tried to up the ante by writing a concern troll piece on single parenting, concluding that the real problem with single parents, namely single mothers, is that they don’t feel enough proper shame for their failed attempts at parenting, i.e. shame for their stupid, destructive children. Yoffe cushions her assertions with a bit of social science that leaves out wide swaths of information about the realities of why single parents opt to remain single, and tries to couch her concern in economic blither and psychobabble blather. There’s so much wrong with her essay that I sprained an eyeball by rolling them so hard, starting with the ever-present definition of “single parent” as “unmarried woman.”
I prefer “dumb whore” — it keeps things simple[.]
Lest you think this is some kind of aberration on Yoffe’s part, I invite you to take a trip through the archives here at Feministe. She’s got several opinions about children, namely, that if you’re married, it’s your duty to have them regardless of whether you want to have them or not (and Yoffe knows that you *really* do, no matter what you say), and if you aren’t married, you should be, you irresponsible slut. And while you’re at it, keep your husband happy by doing all the work without complaining and let him fuck you even if you don’t want to.
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There is just so damn much to unpack there—-I love the way she mentions Bobby Darin being raised to think his mother was his sister, as if that’s healthy. Jeez Louise. (doesn’t it say something that she has to dig that far back?) And at the start of that train wreck of an essay, she takes off with all those pesky 25-29 year old women who are becoming single mothers (they should know better!!!! eleventy!!!one!! h-e-double-toothpicks!!!), but finishes it up with how we’re supposedly sending the wrong messages to young women who are completely unprepared for the demands of parenting. Scusi? Women 25-29 are completely unprepared for the demands of parenting? Because if that’s true, they are damn sure unprepared for the demands of married parenting, which bring a whole ‘nother set of demands no less stressful or easier to negotiate around than the screaming baby at 3AM.
Two things: first, the tried-and-true method for men dealing with pregnant women who were not their wives wasn’t the shotgun wedding. It was leaving and denying. Don’t believe me? Go talk to some old folks. (and it wouldn’t hurt to crack open a history book. Did the nobility or petty bourgeoisie marry the peasant women they impregnanted? How about slave owners—did they marry their pregnant slaves? No? Imagine that!) Second, these pesky women are having and raising children because—-drumroll please—-we can. It is no longer legal to kick us out of school, prohibit us from attending college, prohibit us from holding gainful employment, fire us for being pregnant, etc. We have a whole new world of possibilities for self-sufficiency. If Emily was serious, she’d start advocating for the return of throwing pregnant teenage women out of high school, barring women from higher education, barring women from any job that pays well enough to support oneself, and firing women for being pregnant.
Well, single parenting is a bit like flying a two engined plane on one engine — not really a good idea. Should something happen to the single parent, the child is basically fucked (or semi-fucked, if there are supportive grandparents or whatever around). And even if nothing dramatic happens, the (usually non-millionaire) single parent will be terribly overburdened, and won’t be able to spend much quality time with the kid(s), or indeed even properly provide for him/her/them. Which in turn often burdens society with crime and financial parasitism, as the financially challenged, underparented children grow up into financially challenged, angry adults.
Call me old fashioned, but imo every child deserves 2 parents (preferably a man and a woman). If you know in advance, or at least strongly suspect, that you won’t be able to provide the (relative, yes) stability of a ‘traditional’ family, you shouldn’t get pregnant/impregnate/adopt, simple as that. In fact, people should just forget about procreation and remain cheerfully childfree, but that’s another story.
I don’t call you old-fashioned, I call you prejudiced and ignorant.
But as the child of a single parent I must be underparented and angry, so what the fuck do I know?
Oh Paraponera, that is really good advice:
If you suspect you’ll run away, don’t impregnate a woman. ^^
The article is just crap. There’s a big misunderstanding about cause and effect and it totally lacks a conclusive proof for its claim. There’s talk about some results of some scientists and while she doesn’t want women to marry bullies and abusers they should marry those men who run away? What are they gonna turn into once they have a ring around the finger? Miraculously transformed into non-running, caring, loving fathers? Probably not.
And what’s with all those men and women who lost their spouse? Totally bad single-parents who should consider giving up their children for adoption to another married couple, just in case?
Paraponera, call me lunatic, but imo every child deserves the stability of a line marriage. If you know in advance, or at least strongly suspect, that your marriage may not continue into perpetuity, you shouldn’t get pregnant/impregnate/adopt, simple as that.
Paraparona, what “Tradition?” The one that has a tiny little footnote in the whole of human history and cultures, wherein two people living separately from extended family are expected to provide all support and resources for their children? Why do you assume that all or even most single parents have no other support system and that the child will have no one but that parent?
Every child deserves a stable and loving home. But two parents don’t guarantee that. And when efforts are made to shame people into complying with the two-parent system, those efforts usually end up hurting children more than helping them by making one parent homes even less stable and secure than they might otherwise be. When single parents are demonised and shamed, it makes it harder for ALL single parents, not just the ones you personally have decided were selfish or whatever.
And I’m with Kirsten. It’s bigoted and prejudiced to assume a man and woman make a better parenting couple than same sex couples. Studies have shown that all things being equal, neither has any particular advantage.
“What are they gonna turn into once they have a ring around the finger?”
Well, presumably women can use their vagina-based powers of mind control to make them be committed, caring, loving fathers even if they don’t want to, just like they used their vagina-based powers of mind control to make them say “I do.” Oh, wait–I bet they drew those swirly-bull’s eye lines on their boobs and hypnotized them into it.
I mean, seriously. Guys aren’t diamond-ring-and-fatherhood vending machines any more than women are pussy vending machines. There’s no magic sequence of button-pushing that will just get you what you want, no matter what the other person wants. I really don’t understand how someone–let alone so very many someones–can routinely insist that if women just did x, y, and z, they could have their very own Paragon of Husbandly and Fatherly Virtue no matter what they started out with.
Well you do sound kinda angry, lol. Anyway, just because some SP kids turn out ok, doesn’t mean that single parenting as a whole is a good idea — especially for the poor (and let’s face it, most single parents are poor. Women).
It is, actually. But of course the ultimate responsibility lies with the woman, as she’s the one who risks getting pregnant & stuck with offspring she (often) can’t really afford. If there’s no safe, reliable contraception available, vaginal sex should be avoided, and if the man doesn’t like it, she should tell him to piss off. Pretty simple, no?
I like the point another poster made about confusing cause and effect.
The vast majority of single parents did not intend to be single parents. They were coupled parents, in a married or unmarried state but a serious monogamous relationship nonetheless, until one of the couple split and left the kids. The vast majority of the time, the splitter is the man, but not always; my own husband was abandoned with two babies by his ex-wife.
Another situation that occurs fairly often is that the member of the couple who is primarily responsible for the kids determines that the other member of the couple is either actively unsafe for the children (an abuser, a child molester, a drug addict who behaves dangerously on drugs), or simply more of a burden than a help with the children (a man who does nothing around the house to help his wife, but whines outrageously that she isn’t paying attention to him when she is paying attention to the children.) In this case, the children and their primary caretaker are better off without the other parent. Again, usually this is a woman leaving a man, but it can happen the other way around — men have taken their kids and left drug-abusing wives for the sake of the children before.
What basically does not happen is that women with no support structures in their lives — no family, no friends who can help out — decide to get knocked up because they want a kid to raise themselves. Anyone who chooses to have a child without the support of the man who fathered it usually has support structures in place to make that possible. The only exception might be if the woman is given no choice — if she has no family support, was denied birth control (or it didn’t work) before the sex, and was denied the ability to abort afterward. Some women *may* under such circumstances choose to go it alone rather than giving their child up for adoption, especially if their child is not someone who would be easily adoptable (eg, not a healthy white infant.) But this wasn’t really their choice; while one might argue a certain degree of contributory negligence in deliberately having sex with a man who would be useless as a father in the absence of family/friend supports and the ability to get an abortion, the truth is, a lot of girls think abortion will be there for them as an option and are shocked to discover too late that their rights have been stolen from them. In this case the woman didn’t freely make a choice; she was coerced into carrying the pregnancy by the absence of the option of abortion.
It’s true that in an ideal situation, a child should have two parents. It’s also true that many, many people don’t live in an ideal situation. I saw someone make the argument, I think on Feministing, that before people start bloviating about how you shouldn’t deliberately choose to have a child in a circumstance where it will be hard to raise it, such as being a single parent, you should consider that it is much, much harder to raise a child in America, where we don’t have guaranteed health insurance, state-supported childcare centers, or much of any support for parents outside a tax credit or two, than it would be to raise that child in Europe, and yet no one argues that it is child abuse to birth a baby in America.
And most of the bloviation about single parents overlooks the fact that in most cases, the reason the parent is single is because the other parent ran away, or was unfit to be a parent. Therefore the “single parent crisis” is really the “Irresponsible Runaway Parent or Abusive/Neglectful Parent” crisis. Why are we whining about the people who are sucking it up and taking on their responsibility as well as they can, rather than the people who are ducking out on it or unsuitable for it?
I’m still not clear about the “fact” that “a child should have two parents”. Sure it’d be nice, but is it really necessary for the physical. mental, and emotional health of the child?
I know way too many kids who were raised in a duel parent household who are extremely screwed up by seeing their parents fight all the time. I know kids who lived with both parents even while one parent was actively abusing the other. Those kids will grow into adults who have severe emotional trauma to live with. Some of them will abuse their partners because they think it’s normal.
Why would the parents of those children stay together? Why didn’t the abused leave?
In part, because of the “we have to stay together for the children” propaganda they have been fed by society, and oftentimes, their abuser.
I am not saying that is the only reason, but it is a factor in many cases.
So tell me-is it really better to have a duel parent household, or is this just more bullshit thought up by misogynists to control people?
One could make a case for two parent households being better, on average, for children than single parent households. A weak case, but not completely outrageous nonetheless. However, the “preferably a man and a woman” is utter nonsense and thoroughly disproven by evidence. Numerous studies have demonstrated that children of lesbian and gay couples are absolutely as well adjusted as children of straight couples. So forget the gender issue: it’s just not important.
I don’t understand the whole “if you die your child is fucked” thing. Is that untrue if a child has two parents? Like, what, if a kid has two parents, having one of them die is no big thang? A single parent is incapable of making long-range plans in the event of her/his death which would include making responsible arrangements for her/his kid(s)? There’s something that precludes leaving parental rights to a an aunt or uncle or godparent if you’re single?
Because single parents never have any emotional/relational bonds with any other adults, dontchaknow. ‘Sprobably because they’re so selfish or overworked or something.
Really? Do people still really use this argument? Man. My mom heard this when she was growing up and was brave enough to say “Actually, I’m the child of a single mother, and I don’t think it’s the worst possible thing that could happen to me, thanks.”
Of course, dear Pru isn’t really talking about my mom, because she’s white and her parents were married when she was born. But since she ends the article with this gem:
…I’m inclined to think of my mom anyway. Uhm, Pru? No one is debating that losing a parent–any parent–can be incredibly painful. But that doesn’t mean that a single parent is necessarily lonely or overwhelmed, or that children of single parents are going to grow up to be horrible troublemakers who are damaged goods. My mom grew up to be a wonderful strong woman.
Oh, and Paraponera? Every child deserves a loving family, full stop. Many children with two parents are abused or neglected. Many children with one parent, or gay parents, or other loving guardians are not. As a lesbian who hopes to one day have children, I find your comment extremely insulting. Open your eyes and realize that there are probably a lot of families around you that don’t fit your “traditional” definition, and they’re doing just fine.
The “omg single parents suck” reasoning is so ironic. Most of the people who hold those views are the people who still back Bush and Iraq. Many, many, people are raising their kids now as single parents because of that war. Are you going to take their kids away?
Para, you are trolling … right? I mean, you’ve got classism, sexism, homophobia, and a tug at the ongoing childfree wank all in one comment. Must be by design.
I love to read Dear Prudence because it’s just so backward I roll my eyes and laugh out loud, but if you all think THIS is bad you should read her advice to a dad who doesn’t like his two year old daughter. She told him he didn’t need to try harder, he needed to pretend harder. That is, read a book in public while his daughter plays near him. But actually interacting with the person he helped bring into the world, ya know that’s not important.
It’s the first letter here http://www.slate.com/id/2186861/
Beth, that really is horrible. The sad part is that few two year olds are going to always be satisfied with being a kind of sophisticated piece of furniture and will want to interact with their parents and the scenario she’s suggesting could require a lot of reinforcement. Basically making sure the daughter knows she’s not to bother daddy.
And that letter in combination with the Magical Marriage Makes Parenting Easier piece has me boggling.
It’s no bargain having two parents when one of them is an emotionally abusive drunk.
But maybe that’s just me.
I find that *trying not to make moral judgements on anyone’s life works best, since you know, its not my life, its someone else’s.
If you would like to be a single parent, ok. If you would like to have 5 babies by 5 different dads, ok. If you would like to never marry, ok. If you would like to eat nothing but lettuce, ok.
That said Dear Prudence is an advice columnist. People go to her begging her to fix their lives with some advice. And she has beliefs. As an advice columnist, it is her job to give people advice based on those beliefs. Really though, anyone that listens to her is silly. I much prefer Miss Manners.
I’m sure she had a letter on the subject and probably said something like “Assure them you’re not interested in having any, and then find somebody else you can foist them off on” ;) in a polite way.
*not always succeeding :)
Anyway, just because some SP kids turn out ok, doesn’t mean that single parenting as a whole is a good idea
True, but just because some kids with two parents turn out okay, that doesn’t mean people in failing marriages should always “stay together for the kids”. I have too many friends with parents who HATE each other, but still live together. Something like that always effects the kids, and not in a positive way. However, I have plenty of friends with one parent and they have a good home life.
I think your SP = bad and two parents = good argument is very flawed. And I agree with Alara, many single parents don’t choose their situation. Many of them were married or in a relationship, but the other person ran off and left them alone to take care of the children. So, it’s not like these people went into single parenting because they thought it was a “good idea”.
Ah, but you forget the Magic Widow Dust. You see, if you are widowed instead of a selfish divorcee or a big ol’ slut who was never married, Magic Widow Dust settles on you and your children and prevents them from suffering any untoward consequences whatsoever.
Frankly, I think raising kids is a hard enough job that the more people doing it, the better. Think how much more well-adjusted and secure and happy kids raised in a loving home with four or five parents are than those unfortunate enough to have just two! Why are married couples so *selfish* as to have kids when they don’t have a more-extensive support system in place?
I love the way she mentions Bobby Darin being raised to think his mother was his sister, as if that’s healthy.‘
Some of Darin’s biographers think finding out the truth — that the woman he thought was his classy sainted WASP mother was actually his grandmother, and that the woman he thought was his loud working-class Italian sister who embarrassed him was actually his mother — was what ultimately killed him. Shortly after that he “forgot” to take his antibiotics for a tooth cleaning (critically necessary for him to prevent endocarditis), and that was that.
I can’t believe that, after what happened with Andrea Yates, that someone working for a mainstream national publication would actually advocate that ABSOLUTELY EVERY woman get (heterosexually) married and have kids whether she wants to or not. Even granted that the Yates case was extreme, the foster care and child welfare systems are choked with millions of cases in which somebody had a baby with someone who she thought would be her husband for life and either or both of them could not handle it. This Yoffe person pretty much has to be a troll baiting readers for page hits, right? She can’t NOT know this, can she?
well thank-you for that charming judgement on an aspect of my life, and of many successful single mothers i know, that you so obviously know NOTHING about. you have no idea what you are talking about. yes, single parents work. and we take care of our kids. but you know, somehow in all that trainwreck that apparently you think is our lives, we still manage to have wonderful and fulfilling relationships w/ our kids. our successful and happy children, like my child who goes to a wonderful private school on a scholarship.
what would have happened if i had married her father? well i would have been alone for four years since that is how long it took his miserable ass to actually decide he wanted to meet his kid. and now i would be chained to a washing machine since it wouldn’t be suitable for me to work, and my kid would get spanked every single day, b/c that is how he deals w/ kids who don’t bow to his whims. oh, yeah, and i would probably still be getting the crap beat out of me, but now there would be an almost six year old forming her first opinions about relationships off of the mess that would have been in that little “ideal” situation of yours.
STFU already.
as for Lauren’s response to that jibberish that Slate calls an article, she was brilliant.
And that case is mostly economic, in that most single parents will be working extra hard to make ends meet and therefore have less time (and energy!) to give individual attention to the children. No time to help with homework; gotta go to the second job.
Of course, if there were a better support structure available for low-income parents, I believe that point would be entirely moot. There is no evidence that a well-supported single parent is any “worse” than two parents of any gender at any economic level. Economic status is the limiting factor here, not adherence to traditional values.
My parents stayed married until I was 24. And when my dad finally left my mom, myself and my two sisters were all like, “FINALLY! What TOOK you so long?!” I think it was out of obligation than anything else.
Neither my father nor my mother were abusive, but I am nearly positive that everyone (including us kids) would have been happier and better off had my dad left a long time ago. They fought a LOT. It was not pretty.
Kids KNOW when something is wrong. Kids FEEL the tension. And staying married just for the kids does nothing except make EVERYONE miserable.
If it’s obvious that in an ideal situation children should have two parents…
… then by extension isn’t it also obvious that it’s even more ideal for them to have three or four parents?
I mean, if the argument is redundancy, backup, shared work, more diverse role models, etc. then that would seem to hold true. Yet we hold the number “two” up as the ideal for some reason, even though it’s a historical blip, as someone else pointed out.
Ya know I always thought it would be just nifty if all these handwringers would let women, who last time I checked were rational human beings, make their own godamn decisions about what is best for their children, and please kindly shut the fuck up and focus on their own shit instead of crying out that the sky is falling, when I can think of fewer americans today who have done more damage than the godamn rich son of two very married parents, who is now responsible for a death toll of over 4,000 in this country as of yesterday. But maybe that’s just me?
Why is it verboten to express the truth that growing up with a lonely, overwhelmed mother and a missing father is a recipe for childhood pain?
…aaaaand you can have this recipe for pain with both parents married and living in the same house. A father who stays off at work or out with friends/students because he loathes his wife and kids – and is a vicious SOB when he’s forced to be home – makes for a lonely overwhelmed mother, and said mother’s refusal to give him a divorce b/c her self-identity is tied up in being The Perfect Old-Fashioned Retro Catholic Mom-Martyr doesn’t help her not be lonely or overwhelmed, either.
Like so many others have said, there’s no such thing as Wedding Ring Magic…
I have found that the most well-adjusted kids do have the extended support network: not just mom and dad, but aunts, uncles, roommates, neighbors, et cetera. It is so much easier to raise a child with help.
I can think of a few other celebrities for whom this was the case — Jack Nicholson is one, there’s another male actor of around that age too. And they never seem TERRIBLY happy about it when they find out. It must have happened a lot back in the day. So I guess Yoffe thinks if you get pregnant without a reliable partner, it’s your parents’ duty to sacrifice their retirement years on the altar of Two Parents Only? That kinda sucks for them too.
My parents weren’t married when I was born (they were 19), but ended up getting married about two-and-a-half years later. I can’t help but think that I wouldn’t be so emotionally f#cked up had that marriage never taken place. Maybe I could have a relationship and not be so lonely, if I didn’t distrust people (especially men) so damned much.
But going by ‘traditional’ standards, I guess I should be grateful that I’m not ‘illegitimate’, right?
/bitter snark
I am a product of a very traditional household and I can tell ya right now, that doesn’t lead to sane kids. All my bothers and sisters are screwed up in some shape or fashion by my parents. I just want to say just because you CAN have kids and are married, maybe you shouldn’t. I had 2 parents with one who only liked kids before they could talk (and therefor think/speak for themselves) and the other at work all the time then vegging out when home. It wasn’t the best parenting unit.
On the other hand I know someone who is single, has two kids, who works and volunteers tirelessly for orphans. I want to be her when I grow up (except I want to keep my hubby).
Paraponera-
Of course I fucking do. You’re making nasty, judgemental statements about my upbringing, with some homophobia thrown in. I have damn good reason to be angry.
I just read this on ABC news, seems kind of relevant…
Nope, its not just you ;)
Consider me for instance — raised in the same dysfunctional home by an Raging Alcoholic and a Classic Enabler. I can remember begging Mom to leave Dad, so we could have some peace and stability — but she couldn’t, she stayed “for the children”. What a burden to have to live with as children! But the irony of it all was that when I left my own dysfunctional marriage and became a single mother (something I had never planned but found myself doing) my biggest critics were (some) of the very siblings who had suffered along with me.
How does that happen? The socialization on this issue is really powerful. I’m not sure why — what exactly are we protecting by clinging to this two-parents-as-ideal-family model? Its not the children for sure.
But I’m with MK — I think children deserve a “loving family” and the actual combination of family members really isn’t important.
Man, that brotherly rape story distracted me, and now I’ve got a Steve Miller tune running through my head:
I’m a joker, I’m a smoker
I’m a midnight poker
I get my lovin’ on the run
Sorry about that.
But in my own old-fashioned way, I would say every sexually active person should consider that they might become a single parent. A woman’s right to choose includes carrying the pregnancy to term. Comparing notes with other first-born boomers, I saw that the priest didn’t always beat the obstetrician by all that much. The early failure rate of marriage is high, and adding a baby strains any relationship. My first job I worked alongside many single moms whose husbands had turned out to be wackos or who just disliked the reality of marriage and fatherhood. Later I met ex-wives who had disliked the reality of marriage and motherhood.
I agree that staying together for the sake of the children is not such a super idea . First, it gives the kids a messed-up idea of what marriage can and should be like. One couple I knew grimly stayed together until their daughter’s graduation when the father finally moved in with his girlfriend. Another couple I knew stayed together because the father didn’t want to lose his share of their biggest asset, their modest ranch house.
And sometimes the most rational decision is to have a kid on your own. Your most fertile period may not coincide with meeting an ideal or even an acceptable partner. A friend’s genetically-transmitted disease made a lot of men shy away from having kids with her. Not that having a partner is always all the help it’s cracked up to be; I remember my brother-in-law asking his wife, the mother of their newborn if she was going to make lunch for him, trying to use guilt as a lever while the episiotomy was still healing, because otherwise he would have to eat in a greasy spoon.
Apart from a couple of minor details (20, not 24, mom left dad not vice versa, one sister) the same thing happened to me. No way to know how things would have turned out if the parents had separated when they stopped caring about each other instead of waiting until their kids were grown, but I can say that living with two parents who don’t love each other–even if they don’t fight and aren’t overtly abusive–is no fun. And screws you up in ways that growing up wit parents who are divorced probably doesn’t
Whoa. That sounds like the sort of situation where it’s time to get a divorce so as to only have one baby to raise, rather than two. How can a grown man not know how to make himself lunch?
“How can a grown man not know how to make himself lunch?”
The same way my brother doesn’t know how to make grilled cheese or macaroni and cheese from a box, things I’ve known since I was old enough to use the stove. I mean come on, how pathetic. He also doesn’t seem to realize that just because something doesn’t have microwave instructions, or even says that microwaves aren’t recommended, doesn’t mean you can’t use the microwave.
It’s because some parents just do too much for their children. Maybe if I was taught to clean after myself when I was young, instead of my mom cleaning up for me, I wouldn’t be such a slob now. Unfortunately, she didn’t start trying that until I was 13 or 14. It’s hard to change those habits.
Rape is not a joke, Hector. You’re banned.
What Antigone (and others) have said. Fuggedabout this “two parent family” business. What kids really need is an EXTENDED family. Of course, single parents can provide this with their own relatives and friends. You don’t need to be married to give your kid grandparents, aunts and uncles (whether biological or honorary).
I remember reading an article on Dorothy Allison, the lesbian writer. Her son had two moms AND two dads – Allison, her partner, the biological father, and HIS partner. What a lucky kid!
Having studied anthropology, and written a huge paper on egalitarian societies, I conclude that the best arrangement for children (and women) is not the nuclear family. It is the matrilineal, matrilocal extended family (like the Iroquois longhouse). I think we do need to strengthen family ties, but not the patriarchal nuclear family. Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy tells us that humans are “cooperative breeders” – like wolves, we evolved to raise our children in a network of extended kin and friends.
What a sad, narrow definition of family she has. My brothers and I are among the lucky ones, methinks. We grew up with a large extended family: cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-grands, great-aunts, great-uncles, etc. Good, bad and indifferent, we were exposed to all sorts of parenting styles and relationships. (In my fam, any adult can and will discipline/comfort any child.)
There is more to being a parent than being a convenient receptacle of biological material and being straight/gay/married/single or blue with yellow polka dots will make no difference if you are shitty human being.
Do you guys feel the need to defend having/being an only child by saying, “Oh, so you’d rather I’d had a brother and sister who beat me and bullied me and made my life a living hell?” as though being an only child is only justifiable in comparison to something much worse? No, you don’t. Most people understand that having siblings, or more than one sibling, has both benefits and drawbacks, and different children, being individual people, have different ideal situations, and thrive in a variety of family sizes depending on their temperaments.
It’s the same with the number of parents you have. I was very happy with one, I suppose I could have managed with two, and I would have been miserable with three or more. I missed out on having a father in the same way I missed out on having a sister: that is, not much at all, because you don’t miss the hypothetical. Please don’t ‘defend’ children of single parents with backhanded justifications that boil down to “well, it’s better than being abused.” If your single parent is capable, stable, and reasonably happy, it’s still harder for him or her to get all the work done, but it’s not some kind of misfortune for the kids. Sorry.
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