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Commentary from Mikki

Well here it is...the public debate between a Glenn Sacks father's rights crony (Robert Franklin) and myself on PublicSquare.net. Read, laugh, seethe, comment. I actually love the opportunity to offer a rational perspective, even if my opponent has a decidedly different viewpoint. Such as Franklin's view that Choice Moms often trick men into having kids and then lie to keep them out of the child's life. Here's a synopsis, with links to the full debate.

Round 1: Mikki
"Many women decide that the realities of single motherhood are too daunting for their particular situation, values, or temperament and decide to remain childless. Others do everything they can to build up the strengths of this choice. The women who choose this path tend to be highly self-sufficient, 'can-do' women who find solutions, build strong networks, and are devoted to motherhood. Like our successful counterparts who are widowed or divorced, we seek out male role models and build support within our families of origin and our school, church, and fellow parenting community. Like a family quilt, we blend together the many good materials we have in ourselves and our networks to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
...A majority of kids raised in single-parent homes, in fact, do quite well. That’s why I find it useful to look at quality parenting (not quantity parenting) to determine what has worked, so that the wisdom of good parenting--not simply married parenting--can be passed along to benefit all."

Response 1: Robert Franklin
"The major problem with single-parent child-rearing is not what’s in the hearts of the parents; it’s how the children fare. As over four decades of social science tell us, children of single parents tend to fare worse than do those of intact families. Morrissette prefers to mostly ignore that fact; wiser parents will not....'Choice Moms' had...strong feelings of insecurity and lack of rootedness that they tried to assuage by becoming mothers. In short, for those women, motherhood was more about them than about the children...That continuing parade of males through the child’s life creates continually changing loyalties both on the part of the child and on the part of the mother as well."

My rebuttal:
"Robert Franklin is concerned about the struggling children in single-parent households. But in criticizing the decisions of hundreds of women to raise children on their own, he fails to make crucial distinctions between good parenting and bad parenting. Franklin’s use of statistics is misleading. You can base any number of generalized opinions on what certain numbers tell you. For example:

Men are four times more likely than females to be heavy drinkers; more than 40 percent of separated or divorced women were married to or lived with a problem drinker or alcoholic.
Women are three times more likely to be assaulted by a spouse than men are. About one-third of the women murdered in the U.S. each year are killed by their partners, and roughly 1.3 million women are the victims of physical assault by a partner each year.

So if we look strictly at the numbers, men are more likely to be alcoholics, and women stand a high chance of being beaten up by their partners. Does this mean that a child will likely be exposed to abusive behavior from a man and that mothers can better protect their children and themselves by not having a partner?...Does Franklin think substance abuse might have something to do with the prevalence of single-parent homes with struggling children? If I had married and then divorced an abusive alcoholic, my kids probably wouldn’t be as healthy as they are now. And if I was a substance abuser, I certainly wouldn’t expect my spouse to stay with me for the sake of keeping the children in a two-parent home....

I expect Franklin is not proposing that women should gladly raise their children with sex offenders, alcoholics, and abusers in order to shield their children from the evils of a single-parent household. And while we’re on the topic, pedophiles, gang members and the chronically unfaithful--who all tend to be men as well--don’t hold much appeal as parenting partners either. I know Franklin would take offense at the idea that, based on the statistics, the odds are that a child will be exposed to abusive behavior from a man and thus all children should be separated from their fathers. It’s the same reason I take offense at the idea that a child is likely to suffer in a single-parent home. The majority of men are good fathers and husbands, just as the majority of single-parent households are good environments for their children. Yes, it’s hard to be a great parent if you are financially and emotionally handling everything without a strong partner by your side. But, by and large, we do pretty well."

Franklin rebuttal:
"Not only does Morrissette abjure science, but she also neglects to mention just how a woman comes to be a single mother by choice....The decision to become a "Choice Mother" is the decision to have a child without a father involved in the child’s life. One way utilizes the services of a sperm bank, and another is adoption, but both are fairly rare. The dark side of 'Choice Motherhood' includes things like paternity fraud and the simple expedient of the woman lying to the man about whether she’s pregnant or, if he knows about the pregnancy, lying about the identity of the father."

So....this just scratches the surface of the debate. Use the blue links above each synopsis to read in full. Then LEND YOUR VOICE to the discussion. Let's keep reminding everyone that we are rational, thinking women who carefully consider what we are doing in raising a child on our own. We won't change the mind of people like Franklin, but I think we can use this opportunity to proudly point to our own successes as mothers, including that of our Single Mother by Choice pioneers whose children are now grown, to remind anyone who actually wants to listen that we are smart, capable families -- not perfect or stress-free at all, but certainly doing very well even without a second partner in the home.

Mikki

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Commentary from Mikki

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