Only a small dose of common sense should be required to see that
children tend to flourish when men and women rear them together through
permanent family units sustained by marriage.
There are many examples of single, divorced, and widowed mothers—and fathers
and other people—who struggle successfully to bring up children in other
familial settings. It’s no insult to
them to point out the misguided nature of arguments that praise single motherhood
as the new normal, as does Katie Roiphe
in her recent op-ed “In Defense of
Single Motherhood” in The New York Times.
Try as she might, Roiphe
provides no convincing answer to the charge that, in the world as we know it,
households headed by a single mother are more likely to be financially strapped
and associated with challenges that hinder the development of healthy children.
Perhaps extremely wealthy unmarried
persons have the resources to hire nannies, chefs, and chauffeurs to take up
the slack, but most of us barely get by with both spouses working and sharing
childcare and other domestic responsibilities. Single motherhood is strongly associated with
poverty in our society.
Those who work in helping
professions know the sadly common story of the abuse of the mother’s children
by her boyfriend. To encourage practices
that result in the absence of fathers and the presence of other males in the household
is simply irresponsible and promotes the endangerment of children. And
though it is politically incorrect to say it, men and women are different. It is good for kids to be brought up by a
representative of each sex and to have role models of how men and women make a
life together. The lesson given to boys
and girls by fathers who are absent from the daily responsibilities of childrearing
is not positive. This is a circumstance
for mourning, not for praise.
Roiphe’s
argument has little respect for men and actually states that “Young men need
jobs so they can pay child support and contribute more meaningfully to the
households they are living in.” What a
pathetically low perspective on the role of husbands and fathers! When a society asks so little of men, we
should not be surprised when they behave irresponsibly and simply do their best to produce more
single mothers. As a married man and a
father, it has never occurred to me to think of my financial contributions to
our family as providing child support.
That is a minimalistic standard set by the state for deadbeat dads. Ways of talking about family that encourage
such a perspective on fatherhood are profoundly misguided, insulting to men,
and ultimately bad for women and children.
For
Orthodox Christians, there is no question that single motherhood is an
exceptional circumstance that no one should seek, except perhaps in cases where
unmarried women adopt children. That’s
not the circumstance described by Roiphe, who writes in praise of her situation
of having two children by two different men, neither of whom live with her or
their children. There’s no question
that such scenarios fall short of the marital nature of the intimate union of
man and woman as blessed in the Church.
Nonetheless, those who find themselves in such circumstances may repent,
lead holy lives, and do their very best to raise their children in spiritually
and morally beneficial ways.
The point of Christian teaching on these matters is not self-righteous moralizing,
but humbling accepting the truth about what is best for men, women, and
children. God creates us in His image as
male and female; out of our difference and love for one another, we bring new
persons into the world. The more these
different types of human beings bond together in love, the better for all
concerned and the more we image the Holy Trinity. 
