Fatherlessness and Same-sex Parenting
by Marcia Segelstein - OneNewsNow Columnist
June 17, 2008
Reluctant Rebel logoIt's been many years since the late Senator Patrick Moynihan tried to sound the alarm about the problem of fatherlessness in the black community and its long-term implications. Not only did his words fall largely on deaf ears, he was harshly criticized for speaking up about it.
Sadly, what Moynihan saw happening in the black community has now happened in American society as a whole. With celebrities leading the way, it is now no big deal for women to have babies out of wedlock. The very phrase "out of wedlock" sounds positively old-fashioned. Accidental pregnancies can be aborted -- or not -- take your pick. And these days, eyebrows are barely raised over intentional pregnancies by single women. The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story called "Looking for Mr. Good Sperm" a while back on the trend among single women, tired of waiting for Mr. Right, to seek out instead the right sperm donor. The author writes, "As recently as the early 60's, a 'respectable' woman needed to be married just to have sex, not to speak of children." Imagine! What a ridiculous notion that sex was anything more than mere recreation. And as for procreation, who needs it?! The sex part that is. Technology's come a long way, baby. So guess who's become obsolete in an ever-growing number of households headed by single women or lesbian couples? You got it: fathers. But is that bad?
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist, physicist and author of Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, on the subject of fatherlessness and how it should inform discussions of same-sex parenting.
Satinover told me that there is a myriad of evidence which makes it, as he put it, "crystal clear that the absence of a father in a child's life is one of the most pathogenic features you could conceive of. For the last 35 years there have been hundreds and hundreds of studies examining the long-term impact on children of being raised without fathers. That's because fatherlessness has become a phenomenon not primarily due to the gay movement, but due to the impact of heterosexual divorce and other forms of heterosexual misbehavior."
The research points to long-term ill effects in almost every aspect of children's lives. "There's lower educational attainment, poor physical health, earlier sexual activity, increased cigarette smoking, increased criminality, lower financial attainment later in life. There are even studies which show that the absence of fathers has an effect into the next generation."
Satinover was called as an expert witness for the state of Florida in a lawsuit which sought to overturn that state's law banning adoption by same-sex couples. "What's at issue here has nothing to do with homosexuality. It has to do with the fact that children need mothers and fathers." Being adopted by two men or two women would automatically make that child either fatherless or motherless.
He testified that the issue was not whether homosexuals make good or bad parents. "I said, at trial, that if a gay man and a lesbian woman wanted to get married and essentially put their own sexual desires in second place in order to get married and establish a mother/father household for a child, they'd probably end up making better than average parents because of their willingness to sacrifice their own personal desires."
He believes it's wrong to make a child permanently and obligatorily fatherless or motherless. "It's very much like Solomon's decision in the Bible. The one who's so eager to jump in and grab the child -- by his or her very eagerness and unwillingness to consider what the child needs -- has demonstrated his or her unfitness to be a parent."
It was the issue of imposing obligatory fatherlessness on the child in that Florida case that caused the judge to rule on the side of the state and uphold the ban.
Satinover believes these issues have serious implications for society as a whole. "What we're talking about is not just the issue of same-sex parents. We're talking about establishing two wholly new and different societal norms -- male unions raising children who will be, by definition, motherless; and female unions which are by definition fatherless."
Dr. Kyle Pruett, a child psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center, has written on the issue of how fathers and mothers offer distinctly different benefits to their children. In his book, Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child, he describes how these benefits begin accruing in infancy.
"By eight weeks, infants can anticipate differences in maternal and paternal handling styles .... When infants were approached by their mother, they slowed and regulated their heart and respiratory rates, relaxed their shoulders, and lowered their eyelids (Ahh ... Mom). When the father approached, the infant's heart and respiratory rates quickened, shoulders hunched up, and eyes widened and brightened (Dad's here ... party time!)." Pruett also describes what other researchers have also documented: that fathers play differently with their children, often in a more physical, rough-and-tumble way. According to Pruett, fathers also exhibit a drive to show children the world around them, often carrying infants facing forward. Fathers tend toward helping their children tolerate frustration by encouraging perseverance when presented with a problem, while mothers more typically intervene more quickly to alleviate frustration by helping to solve the problem.
Pruett cites the findings of psychologist Ellen Bing, who studied the effect on children of time spent with their father. "Bing found that the amount of time fathers spend reading with their children is a strong predictor for many cognitive abilities, particularly of daughters' high verbal skills .... [T]he amount of time mothers spend reading to children predicts neither daughters' nor sons' verbal ability, suggesting that there is something unique or characteristic about father-daughter reading time."
Pruett also refers to research done by educational psychologist Paul Amato, who evaluated the "sense of self-control in elementary and high school children and found positive paternal engagement to be related to a whole cluster of healthy outcomes including life skills, self-esteem, and overall social competence."
The studies listed in Dr. Pruett's book go on and on, and Dr. Pruett is one of many researchers to conclude that mothers and fathers fulfill different needs for children, and together provide a wider range of benefits.
Dr. Satinover believes there are serious ramifications for what he calls "the societal push to create two new family structures and place them on a par with mother/father families." Because all the evidence points to its being pathological.
After ten years as a producer for CBS News, forty-something years as an Episcopalian, and fifteen years as a mother, Marcia Segelstein considers herself a reluctant rebel against the mainstream media, the Episcopal Church (and others which make up the rules instead of obeying them), and the decaying culture her children witness every day. Her pieces have been published in "First Things," "Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity," and "BreakpointOnline," and she is a contributing editor for Salvo magazine.
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