The Ideal of Married Mother and Father

All other things being equal, a child is best off being raised by his or her biological father and mother, who are married to each other. Every child naturally has a mother and father.

How did that become such a controversial statement? It used to be taken as an attack on "single mothers" or "fathers" who abandon their children, but that objection has been (temporarily) dropped as most marriage neutering advocates instead focus on objecting by claiming that the ideal is "two parents", including two people of the same gender who are not biologically related to the children. It has become controversial to say "mother and father" are the ideal, because that presents sex-integrating relationships as somehow different and better for parenting than a couple absent one of the sexes.

What used to be accepted and self-evident has been questioned out of political desperation.

It is natural for a man and a woman to get together and produce children. That is how we all got here. Many people who identify as gay or lesbian, even ones who want state-recognized "marriages", will agree, especially in private, with the opening statement. However, Leftist marriage neutering advocates and social engineers almost always deny this truth, or at least try to sidetrack the discussion by calling the statement bigoted, because when people contemplate this truth, they will be more likely to resist pleas to neuter marriage.

In this entry, I will not cite studies claiming to demonstrate that married mother and father is the ideal and better in comparison to two men or two women – that leads to endless quarrels over methodology and the color of the sky – with the exception of saying that anyone who claims to have a long-term study of parenting by pairs of homosexuals with a large enough sample that indicates such parenting is as good as, or preferable to married mother-and-father has a very tall hill to climb, given the size of such a population and historical factors. A study should compare apples to apples as much as possible. For example, along with all of the other variables that need to be considered, lesbian couples who became parents through using third party reproduction or adoption should be compared to heterosexual couples who INTENTIONALLY conceived their children or adopted.

Instead, let's deal with things all of us should be able to see and know by observation, experience, and introspection, and what sociologists tend to observe in the difference between having a father and not having a father, and having a mother and not having a mother.

1) Men and women are profoundly different. Boys and girls are different. If you don't agree with this, good luck to you in whatever imaginary universe in which you live, and I feel sorry for your partner, if you have one. Males and females literally think differently, in addition to being different physically. Emotionally, psychologically, and hormonally, men and women are different. Even babies know there's a difference.

2) Because men and women are different, children benefit from having both an in-home man as a role model and an in-home woman as a role model.

3) Because men and women are different, children benefit from having both an in-home adult male with whom to bond, and an in-home adult female with whom to bond.

4) Because men and women are different, mothers and fathers tend to have different influences over the children and different contributions to raising the children; they tend to bring different things to the relationship and to parenting.

5) Because men and women are different, children benefit from witnessing the married interaction of their mother and father more than they will seeing two men interact or two women.

6) Boys need their fathers to help guide them into responsible manhood, and their mothers to give them a female perspective. Only a man can understand what it is like to be a boy and what it is like to be a boy going through puberty. Girls need their mothers to help guide them into responsible womanhood, and their fathers to give them a male perspective. Only a woman knows what it is like to be a girl, what it is like to be a girl going through puberty. No mother, no matter how good, can be a father, and no father, no matter how good, can be a mother. A father's presence has an impact on the hormonal and emotional development of girls, and what kind of men a heterosexual girl will seek as a husband.

All children, regardless of sexual orientation, are going to grow up to interact with both men and women. Both heterosexual males and homosexual males are going to have to deal with women and well as men. Both heterosexual women and homosexual women are going to have deal with men and well as women. Men somewhat instinctively understand other men; but do not have the same understanding of women. A boy does not know what it is like to be a girl; a man does not know what it is like to be a woman. Women somewhat instinctively understand other women; but do not have the same understanding of men. A girl does not know what it is like to be a boy; a woman does not know what it is like to be a man. Seeing an intimate, sexual, cooperative, symbiotic relationship between a man and woman they themselves have an intimate, nonsexual, dependent relationship with is more beneficial than seeing a relationship between two men or two women. Having both a mother and a father who know the boy or girl and love the boy and girl, especially if they share genes, there to lead those children in life's journey can't be matched by two men or two women.

It is not just that they are two people who love each other and cooperate. It is that they are a man and a woman who are doing these things as a married couple.

Leftists usually say diversity is good and brings value, at yet this is one example in which they increasingly deny that gender diversity is beneficial.  How can it be beneficial in the workplace, the classroom, and various organizations, but not beneficial in the parenting of a child? Yet some of the same Leftists will say with a straight face that society and children gain nothing from having both a mother & a father raising them instead of "two dads" or "two moms" - after arguing so emphatically that organizations and the individuals within them benefit from gender diversity.

A man who argues that uniting the sexes is not significantly different, that sex-integrative parenting is not better, is devaluing his own masculinity, masculinity in general (including that of any male partner he has), the presence and femininity of his own mother, and femininity in general (including that of his wife or girlfriend, if he has one.) Likewise, a woman who argues that uniting the sexes is not significantly different, that sex-integrative parenting is not better, is devaluing her own femininity, femininity in general (including that of any female partner she has), the presence and masculinity of her own father, and masculinity in general (including that of her husband or boyfriend, if she has one).

Why are people so willing to deny that they have something different to offer than someone of the opposite sex? In doing so, a man says, “I bring nothing to the relationship that a woman couldn’t bring” or “A woman brings nothing to the relationship that I couldn’t bring.”

A claim of innate (especially unalterable) homosexuality or of the necessity of partnering with someone of the same sex is a claim that demonstrates that there is a difference.

That people don't see the opening statement as obvious reality or can deny it without being laughed out of the forum is a testament to on of the destructive results of unmarried parenting and poorly conducted marriages, whether they end in divorce or not. The blame for those things rests on heterosexuals. Some of it can also be attributed to the relentless assault of gender confusion advocates and misandrists, and feminists who devalue femininity.

The Usual Objections

“But I know a heterosexual couple that was beating, torturing, and raping their kids and two men who are great, loving parents.”

This is why my argument is not “Any both-sexes couple will be better parents than any same-sex couple.” It is all other things being equal... Ask those raised within decent marriages by loving whether their father's masculinity or their mother's femininity contributed nothing.

That some same-sex couples are raising children together doesn’t change the truth about the opening statement.

A sex-integrated couple can, and usually does, bring children into the family through normal, natural sexual behavior. Sometimes this happens even if they are using contraception, or thought they were infertile, or the husband has had a vasectomy.

With same-sex couples, no matter how much bonding they do or how much fun they have together, children never result. That means that every child being raised in a home of a same-sex couple is there as a result of the intentional choices of adults, whether the same-sex couple rescued a child who would otherwise be institutionalized or endlessly in the foster care system (and I say God bless the couples who do this), made babies with other/prior partners of the opposite sex, assumed custody of orphaned (literally or functionally) nieces and nephews, or use “third party” reproduction to intentionally conceive a child to be condemned to a mother or fatherless life (shame on them!).

“What about adoption?”

Adoption is a great remedy to a problem situation, or multiple problem situations. Unfortunately, not all people who can have children together are good parents, and not all people who make good parents can have children together. However, most people understand that genes do have some influence on what a child will experience, and so being raised by people who already went through the process of growing up with those same genes can have some benefit. That many adoptive parents do a wonderful job raising children does not change the ideal. Adoption can be the next best thing, but for many of the reasons cited above, it is still better for the adoption to be to a mother and a father. Eliminating the legal distinction of marriage as different from brideless or groomless unions will make it impossible for public or quasi-public agencies or programs to give preference to bride+groom couples, and that is a problem.

“I was raised by a gay or lesbian couple and I’m fine.”

Kids can be severely abused by their parents and still seek their approval and defend them to others (and abuse is obviously far worse than what we’re talking about). It is no surprise that marriage neutering advocates can find people, especially teenagers or very young adults, to stand up in a supportive environment and make statements about how they turned out fine being raised by a lesbian couple or a gay couple. They get applauded for telling people what swell people they themselves are. However, most young people don’t have much experience with serious relationships or parenting, where it may become more clear what was lacking in their childhood home. Some children do recognize that they are missing something if they don’t have a father in their lives or don’t have a mother in their lives, and some have spoken up about this once they have come into their own as adults. On the other hand, some people don’t know what they don’t know, or don’t know what they’re missing. We have no way of knowing for sure how much better off John Q. Citizen, raised by two women, would be if he had instead been raised by his married biological mother and father, but we do know that not having a mother or not having a father is generally detrimental to children.

“My husband is feminine” or “My wife is masculine”

This is not a place for your complaints or your confessions about your socialization deficiencies. We are dealing with generalities and what is normal for overwhelming majorities.

Conclusion

None of this is to say that two people of the same sex can’t love each other, don’t love children they are raising, or aren’t doing a generally good job as parents. None of this is to say adoptive parents don’t do an amazing job of parenting day in and day out (I’m a huge fan of adoption). None of this is to disparage good stepparents. All of those things can be true, and the opening statement can still be true as well.

Most heterosexual people will get married and naturally have children together, and most heterosexual people will have children even if they do it before or without marriage, some of them while on contraception or otherwise thinking it won’t happen. It is better for children to be raised within the marriage of their biological parents than by an unmarried parent or parents or by stepparent. This is one reason why it is important to distinguish, value, and encourage marriage, and to reinforce the idea that it should be a lifelong union that is about community and family, not just the feelings of the married. Even if the lovey-dovey feelings are gone, it is better for the children created in the marriage to grow up with their parents married to each other than divorced, especially if divorcing means their parents bring new lovers around. But if marriage is about the feelings of adults rather than integrating the sexes in a union that encourages persistence through thick and thin, the rights and needs of children are damned.

If one believes God created the two sexes on purpose with a design that they unite to form marriages and families, then one can’t, with consistency, accept brideless or groomless pairings as the same thing as holy matrimony. Some professing Christians have abandoned this clear teaching of Scripture (see Matthew 19), along with some other people who claim the Tanakh or at least the Torah (see Genesis) as an authority in their life.

One can be of any or no religious faith or tradition, one can be a fervent evangelist of the neo-Darwinian synthesis and see that humans have been provided with two distinct sexes and sexual, rather than asexual reproduction, and there’s something different about the pairing of a man with a woman, even if they never have children.

Our society needs to raise new citizens who will be our future neighbors, in-laws, taxpayers, leaders, lawmakers, judges, soldiers, employers, workers, customers, voters, teachers, caretakers, innovaters, and investors. Shouldn't we raise them in the best way we can, with both a mother and a father? We are all better off – regardless of our sexual orientation – the more children are born into and raised within lasting marriages between their biological mother and father and the more often the next alternative is the child being adopted to be raised by a married mother and father. The uniting of bride and groom is a special union that should be distinguished and encouraged. Is changing public policy in a way that will insist the people affirm that there is no difference between a bride+groom union and brideless or groomless unions more likely to encourage or discourage this?

Food for thought: “The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children”