Dani, I'm enjoying your topics, but your writing isn't persuading me very well. Rhetoric is language and writing meant to persuade, and your rhetorical style is a little too soft.

For example, writing everything as one paragraph doesn't give me cues, as a reader, about what you want me to take from you as your main points.

You present some possibly useful facts - but in the modern age, nobody trusts 'facts' anymore - you need to remind us of your sources, and even better give us a nice link to let us check your facts for ourselves.

And facts stand out better, in a short presentation, especially online, if they are bullet-pointed or presented on their own lines.

And, finally, as I finish your post, I'm just not sure what you want me to DO about your topic. I'm not even sure exactly how YOU feel about it.

So, I'm inviting you to write harder.

I think this is a huge problem for all of us.  Sadly, "women's issues" are usually the last to be seriously addressed.  While we saw a woman run for president and vice-president - we also saw fairly serious sexism throughout that campaign and no one even called it.  We have a long way to go still.

With regard to women doing it alone financially, I think we need tougher laws to get men paying their fair share.  Sorry - but if our laws are going to allow men to waltz in and out of their child's life, that same nutty system should provide for such "convenient parenting" to come with a cost - a cost that is enforceable.

In terms of government help, I don't think it is the government's job to provide everything for us.  It is our job to help each other too.  Having said that, children are the most needy in this country and the poorest are those with only one parent.  Before we worry about free health care providing free subscriptions of rogaine and viagra, let's provide for kids and the adults who actually take care of them first. 

 In terms of childcare, I'm not sure that government is the best place to provide that - think about it.  So, not sure what the answer is - but I think holding fathers more accountable is a good place to start.  Another good place to start is to band together with others in similar situations to try to find creative solutions.  Asking the male-dominated "system" to help women is like asking the fox to help the hens.  You can try - but you are likely to be disappointed.

Everything you say is correct.  I am of the opinion that there is a biological imperative hidden in the foot on the neck of single mothers.  That is that men are the protectors and providers, thus allowing mother to perfom effective mothering. I also beleive that when a man devalues the mother of his child and his offspring that, then, society devalues them as well. This is all hidden in the unspoken biological imperative.  I beleive it is evident in the inability of single moms to get ahead, be respected, brought to parity with intact families - which they can't no matter what.  A child reared with a father and without a father will never be equals - emotionally, financially or socially.  The answer to this is men in our society.  Men who are prepared to be husbands and fathers and to take their place as adult members of America.   As I see it women do not need more 'stuff', jobs, day care, etc.  to be accomplished single mothers, what women need are grown up husbands so they can be MOTHERS and grown up men to be FATHERS for their babies.... 

  The man's natural instinct to protect and provide for his wife and offspring is in a state of decline and proceeding at a faster rate every day.  It also seems to be followed quickly thereafter by a woman's natural instinct to nuture and stay close to her children is also in demise.  As a result we ADD ADHA, Autism, et al and strangers making lots of money and jobs on the tragedy of the mental ill of our children who are left with no one to rear them.

Funny how the biological imperative you claim exists for pairbond parenting, you claim is declining, while the biological imperative to impregnate and be impregnated is still going gangbusters.

Those pesky biological imperatives, conking out on us that way! It must be the global warming, or maybe the gay marriage. Mother nature is falling down on the job.

Oh woe, "the biological imperative to be a good father is declining", whatever shall we do?

Biology or not, someone has to deal with the next generation and if it is just single women shouldering it all, it is not going to be an exciting future.  We all, as responsible adults, need to partake in the care and feeding of our youth.  Men need to step up to the plate in my humble opinion. 

I think women would be wise to stop having sex until they do....Maybe that would be a simplistic answer, but it would likely be effective....

How come the women get picked out as the ones that have to stop having sex?

Sounds nicely middle eastern to me - the women with chastity belts, the men with boys and prostitutes.

How about we pass a law that if a man wants to have sex he has to put up a bond of say $50,000 as earnest money in case a child is produced? And if a child is born without a proper support fund the impregnator is jailed until his family provides the million dollars or so required to rear a successful modern american child?

If his family can't provide it, the man can be put into bond labor until the child's expenses are paid. Roughly the same deal as a loveless marriage, except the man doesn't get to abuse the woman emotionally, and force her to bear more children.

Look, it is not a moral or "virgin" thing - it is practical.  The reality is that women have more at stake and more risk associated with sex than men do - period.  It is simply a matter of self-protection and sanity to fully evaluate whether a man is worth bothering with or not.   Sadly, I don't think women protect themselves nearly enough.

When there is a pregnancy, it is not the male that gets to go to the doctor, gets to throw up for three months and gets poked and prodded and then swells up like a balloon.  In the hospital after the birth the woman doesn't get to choose whether to be present or not and guess who they hand the baby to?  Yep, the lady who just had it and from that day forward it is pretty much her total responsibility.  Men can decide to sketch out for ten years and then show up with a sperm sample and say "hey I'm the father - give me visitation rights!" and boom - he gets "convenient" parenting rights.  I'm not saying this is terrible - just that a woman should think long and hard about putting herself in a vulnerable position like this for just any guy she meets.   

I agree with  you completely.  I have quite a lot of experience as  I raised my four chldren alone.   And everything you suggested might happen did.

The thing that has angered me for years is that when a woman of any age becomes pregnant without intending to and without being in a committed relationship, there is never any mention of finding the "father," holding him responsible for his actions, or even suggesting that he now has an obligation.  I've been thinking this for a very long time.  Why is this?  Duh.  This is another reason why we need more women in government.  Maybe there are states that do engage the fathers.  If so I have never heard of it.  Mary

I guess if you all want to blame the women, and pat the men on the back and say '"screw away boys, it's all her fault, you're just doing what a man has to do, getting that introitus and impregnation done is a man's perogative", that's fine with me.

You hear that women? This is all your fault. So stop whining. And knock it off with that aid for single mothers stuff.

Bill,

Some people have always attempted to control women with "blame" and "morality."  That is not my point.

What I suggest is not "blame" - but responsibility and authority resting with the woman.  Neither left nor right - just the radical notion that women define what is best for themselves and act on that. 

Saying that women would greatly benefit if they were empowered to better protect themselves and make better choices for themselves is somehow offensive to you?  - somehow not politically correct? 

As a whole, the society, used to do what you say:  have woman make choices about who to marry based on a male's ability to bond with her and potential offspring, thus, ensuring the survival of (her) offspring.  The parents as well as the female involved participated in this unspoken arrangement for most of society and other parts of society participated in this too - chaparoned dances, schools and churches looking after girls and protecting them.

  This is no longer true. The Birth Control pill caused a disconnect between sex and reproduction and this changed the entire social contract between males and females.  Additionally Attachment Theoroists tell us that LOVE - you guys, ever hear of LOVE - creates a bond that is intended to keep the couple together no matter what and this then, too, ensures survival (and thriving) of offspring. 

 No one is going to stop having sex. 

 That is a useless theory. Forget that and talk about something that can be done.

   There is a complete and total disconnect between sexual intercourse, reproduction and bonding. Until we find a way to put humpty dumpty back together again we are going to have women know for sure what "its YOUR Baby..."  means.   Nowadays if a woman finds herself pregnant it is HER FAULT.  Because A) she could have used birth control or B) can have an abortion  (no need for (horrors!) a human being being the result of SEX - so the guy blames her and moves to the next sexually available, birth control taking woman.   Sexual liberation has been no friend of women.

Well Bill made fun of my statement without quite understanding what I meant, but that's okay.  I'm used to men making fun of everything I say.  However, if he checks the single woman parent households he will see that a lot of men have declined to bond, thus protect and provide for their offspring.  The numbers speak for themselves.  And Money isn't the issue.  Money cannot replace what a father in the life of a child brings.  If he abandons his children of course money has to be provided, but God help us, it is a very bad exchange for all that a father provides and that includes more respect in the society be begin and then it is all down hill from there.  Statistics show that all of the maladies that visit teenagers visit them in creater numbers and consequence for children without fathers in the home.

    We need men to be men again and not eternal teenagers.  And we need our society to put social sanctions on men who refuse to be grown up once they have babies - hell! we can't get child support out of them most of the time so I doubt we can get them FEEL something for the woman they left holding the bag and the bag - read human being - they left behind.

Not funny at all... not even odd which is what you meant: odd.

  It is a simple reason:  men think they can have sex - the biological imperative to impregnate - which has been scewed by Birth Control - what is, indeed, a biological imperative to impregnate has been reduced to a matter of sexual intercourse with no consequences such as (!) impregnation - because there is now a collective cultural norm that women DO NOT HAVE TO GET PREGNANT - UNLESS THEY WANT (SIC) TO!

I do think it would be okay for women to stop having sex with jerks - which would decrease sexual activity quite a bit. 

If women thought long and hard about the man in front of her and the potential problems she may end up with if she had sex with him, at least half the time, she would walk the other way.

As long as we fall for losers, men will keep being losers.  If Bill is worried that some men will then go off to have sex with each other, small boys, or farm animals - that just proves that at least those men were not worth sleeping with/risking pregnancy and stds for in the first place!  

I agree with the writer about Bill's arrogant remarks.  Twice, he has "misread" other people's comments.  So, with all due respect Bill, I invite you to "read harder."

... male, with a username of Daddyapollo. So I wrote to you as if you were male. The only persons I was pretty sure weren't male were Dani and Mary. Still don't know YYYs gender, haven't read everything, but if I had had to bet money would have bet male.

So I saw this as a bunch of men trying to sell the old storyline of "it's all her fault for not keeping her legs closed, so why should society care?".

And I don't agree with that - I think it's a fifty-fifty responsibility, that men have to be held more responsible for their impregnations, and I also think we as a society better start thinking with our minds and not our prejudices when it comes to the problems of childrearing, becasue as the planet gets even more crowded, these kinds of problems are going to get worse.

Sorry - I happened to have inside information, and believed she is a college student doing this for a project. So I treated her as a professional writer.

But even if I hadn't known that, I would have said much the same.

Where I come from, the culture I come from, it's considered polite to offer critique of another's writing. Not saying anything is the worst kind of insult - it means you don't see anything worth praising or critiqueing. 

Mild negative critique, such as I offered, is considered a mild honor. It means you think enough of the writer's effort to suggest improvements.

it's an invitation to them to 'defend their piece'.

Yet, women get pregant all the time without "wanting" too. And sometimes women get pregnant because their brain and ancient biology is telling them it's time to get pregnant. Sometimes they get overwhelmed with love or sexual passion - which is another way of saying their ancient biology tricked them into getting pregnant.

And sometimes they think they've found a suitable mate, but turn out to be wrong. And sometimes, things just happen. Most of the single mothers i've known in my years didn't intend to be single mothers.

The question is, do we want to be spending all our time chastising those women who end up as single mothers, for 'sleeping with jerks' (something which seems pretty popular) or not being this or doing that, or do we want to accept that single motherhood and single parenthood is increasing and likely to increase much much more, and try to do something to help out those single parent families?

very much a female...and reared my daughter all by myself after her father to whom I was well married abandoned us when she was 9 months old.  Fought like a tiger for child support for 18 years, succeeding only part of the time.  The worst thing, however, was my baby girl growing up without a loving father to teach her the things that only a father can teach one.  He still can't be a father.  He is a Penn State Civil Eng. Graduate and completely unable to be a grown up.  She has lasting effects from his abandonment, although I tried as hard as I could to find ways to mitagate what I knew was coming.  That was hubris...I could not make up for him...not how clever I thought I was.

  This topic has more to do with shifting more' s.  We as a culture have not found an adequate way to re arrange ourselves after with threw out the old paradigm.  I question if there is a 'new' way, I can only think of one way to rear children well with the outcome of mentally and emotionally healthy adults.

Getting pregnant is not just getting pregnant. Like getting a dog is not just getting a dog.  It is a lifetime commitment and between the PARENTS.  Note the plual.  Women will always be driven to have babies.  To ask them to shoulder all the responsiblity for 1/2 of the human contact is once again letting men off the hook. Men are supposed to be men and know that women, pregnant and wtih children - any female for that matter with offspring is VULNERABLE, easy prey.  Women with babies and children NEED MEN.   Men used to know that.  they knew if a woman became pregnant - they were ON THE SPOT - IN BIG TROUBLE  -LOOKING AT A SHOTGUN MARRIAGE.  Therefore sex and its inevitable outcome of human beings was taken more seriously. 

i've watched "bill" post all over this site, and i don't see him treating this blog any differently than any other. and i agree with the part about taking the time to critique someone's writing is actually a sign of respect.

i think a blog should show some thought otherwise it's not worth reading. why should any of us waste our time if folks are just spouting off without thinking? 

 this issue of single parenting, abandonment and dead beat absent parents is interesting though. it is not always the case that in a divorce, the parent who leaves "abandons" the child as it is not the case that when two people stay together they are both really there for the child. abandonment, and nurturing, can happen in both instances. but there's no excuse for folks not paying child support.

but our children need more than the nuclear family to raise them - this wouldn't bring us to a new paradigm so much as return us to an old one, one before industrialization dragged extended families off the farm and put men in the plants and women at home making and raising future workers. we need to resist that, as I think African Americans have done more effectively than whites by the way, by maintaining extended family ties and when those don't exist, creating pseudo-families within our community. my daughter has many "moms" and each of them has helped to raise her. i'm very thankful for that, and for the times they straightened me out when i was wrong. that's true friendship and true communit and has helped make up for our "21st century" nontraditional family.

.... I was wondering if anyone has thoughts on what could or should be done about impoverished and stressed single parent families?

It's not an easy problem to address - especially in a time of economic distress, cash-straped government, and rising unemployment.

The right would suggest religion I think - that poor single parents should join some church or another and throw themselves on their charity. This strikes me as stinking of religious extortion, but, it has the advantage that it doesn't ask for tax dollars - after all, wall street and the rich needs that tax more, right?

Anybody have any ideas?

>>>Saying that women would greatly benefit if they were empowered to better protect themselves and make better choices for themselves is somehow offensive to you?  - somehow not politically correct? 

Well, I don't think it's particularly helpful to the single parent.

"You shouldn't have slept with that (a) jerk, (b) poor guy, (c) childish but charming guy, (d) emotionally unstable guy, (e) philanderer, (f) abusive guy, (g) etc etc etc.". That ain't gonna put a dollar in the single parents pocket, and help to raise an emotionally balanced child.

I get that you are using this as a morality tale to try to warn other women not to let the wrong kind of men have introitus. Thats arguably a good idea. Here, I'll help amplify the message.

Hey women, don't let the wrong kind of men put sperm in you! These kinds of men can be charming and attractive and seem like good candidates - but don't be fooled!

Okay - warning delivered.

Actually, I think this topic is closely related to the question of insurance and birth control, and cheap and plentiful access to birth control, which was mentioned in another blog in this series.

But even cheap birth control, were it possible to arrange, won't help the already existing single parent.

Yes, you are correct.  Jumping to solving the larger issue or prevent the occurance doesn't help those with the problem now/already.  I disagree that we should just "accept" the situation as inevitable and not try to reduce the problem.  I think we should strive to help women make the best possible choices for themselves whenever we can.

As far as real help for folks with problems now:

• I think we have a responsibility to make sure all kids are insured,
• to help single women get more education/job training as needed
• and most of all to provide vouchers to pay for good child care.  If a woman can feel safe and comfortable leaving her child in someone else's care, that makes a huge difference.  
• I also do feel that banding together with others in similar situations is helpful for the emotional support and maybe even shared "village" parenting to provide the context of a larger extended family if that is missing.