I'm sure you understand that your friends and acquaintances don't make up a significant portion of feminism or even a representative sample. That's why it's necessary to actually read some feminist literature to find out what feminism is all about.

I suppose to their credit, feminists in the 60s and 70s were quite frank about their goal of destroying the family. They said the family was oppressive and the root of all oppression of women. They said it so much that it's hard to miss. From there it was a short hop to the claim that fathers were unnecessary in children's lives. Those who disagreed, like Karen DeCrow, were marginalized.

Feminists are still at it, of course, but they're more - 'ahem' -circumspect in their pronouncements. Now the song is ever expanding federal and state support of child care. Given feminism's long, rich history of hostility to fathers, that can be seen as their bid to replace dads with daycare at taxpayer expense. With the vast majority of custodial parents being mothers, can it be anything else?

Well, since you raise the issue of intellectual honesty, why don't you try some yourself. In the first place, you claim that the studies I referred to consist only or mostly of families that have incurred a "terrible loss." Why do you say that? Do you have any evidence? Actually, as I clearly stated, those studies are corrected for pretty much all the categories that might yield a skewed outcome (like race, class, etc.), but the findings were unchanged. So now you show up and claim there's yet another category of people the researchers didn't think of and, according to you, that makes all the difference. Care to back that one up? I look forward to seeing your citations.

And, again with the intellectual honesty, didn't you notice that I clearly said that none of this necessarily impacts Sloan or her child?

The deal about deciding to have and raise a child is that it's a prospective undertaking; you don't know going into it how it'll turn out. That's why it's wise to think in advance about things like CF, Downs Syndrome and other illnesses and conditions and maybe decide to forego children or adopt. You agree with that don't you? So why's it different in this case?

I don't understand the question. "When were fathers providing childcare?" Uh well, they are now, and they have been in the past. And they will be in the future. Didn't you know that?

Or maybe I don't understand your point. If you expand it a little bit, maybe I can do better.

But beyond the obvious, the studies I cited are dispositive of the need for two parents in children's lives, don't you agree?

Your strawman doesn't stand up very well. They never do. No one here has said that all children of single parents end up badly. What we have said is that any parent who goes into parenting alone has to recognize that the child is at increased risk and that is true according to multiple studies.

And it's kind of interesting that your post to this thread conflicts dramatically with statements you made to Naomi Miller reported in her 1992 book, Single Parents by Choice. Even though the women referred to in the book were largely white, well-educated and financially-secure professional women, they were reported to have extremely negative attitudes toward men and were generally incapable of intimacy with men though they strongly desired it. Their antipathy for marriage relfected "pseudoindependence," an acting out of a need to not repeat perceived problems with their own parents.

You yourself said these women had serious problems with intimacy with men and that they viewed having a child as making them not so needy, i.e. the child would in a way fill the void caused by the lack of a man in their lives. You said children without fathers have a harder time resolving oedipal conflicts and that single mothers should recruit men into their lives.

Not exactly the placid view you espouse in your post.

Nothing you said contradicts the well-known social science on the issue of single-parent families.

What I'm angry at is intellectual laziness, which is rife on these threads and in discourse generally. For whatever it's worth, I had two parents and a very happy, stable childhood. Unfortunately my parents taught me to be rigorous in my thinking which renders me frustrated by so much of what I read and hear.

If you meant by "terrible loss" that a parent was lost to accident, illness, divorce, etc in which there was once a parent and now there's not one, OK I now understand the distinction you're making. But it is not that new a phenomenon and it has been studied, in part by Jane Mattes, one of the posters to this thread. A book in 1992 reported several serious psychological problems both with women who chose single parenthood and their offspring. Interestingly, Mattes chooses not to cite that book or her staements quoted in it.

But more to the point, you claim that the children of this category of well-to-do single mothers by choice will not suffer the problems reported in all the other studies, but you can't cite a single study to bear you out. Your excuse that there are no such studies may be true, but hardly supports your claim. So again, with no evidence to support what you say, why do you say it?

my point was perfectly simple. You choose to ignore a vast quantity of feminist writing past and present that is directly, specifically and clearly antagonistic toward fathers and families. That doesn't mean you and your friends are as well, but the public side of feminism has been for a long time just that. If you don't want to read Catherine MacKinnon, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn French, Andrea Dworkin or any of countless other misandrists, I don't at all blame you, but don't pretend it doesn't exist.