Debra

So, before setting off all our red flags, Douthat asks gently, “But aren't there some people whose sexual activities harm society? What about those serial baby-daddies?” If it's hard to cast women and gays as villains, what about, for starters, promiscuous straight men?

It's an interesting direction to go, and I'm surprised social conservatives haven't picked up on it earlier. Because once you divorce it from sexism and homophobia, the idea that there's a public interest in promoting certain kinds of private behavior becomes much more difficult to reject. And if you do reject it, you also have to throw out a lot of incentives for private behavior that liberals would like the government to enforce.

'As far as I can tell, Ross thinks a better society will arise out of traditional families and traditional gender roles, and that government should encourage both. I prefer Will's suggestion, but let's not pretend they're the same thing.'

They aren't the same but they aren't in conflict. From one Mom and 20 – 40 hours in day care to Mom and Dad and 20 – 40 hours in day care sounds like an improvement for both Russ and Will. And I really don't think Russ would have an issue with a full time Mom in a two parent family taking 20 hours a week by placing the kid[s] in daycare.

But I think Will is wrong. There is no big cultural split because there isn't a lot of opposition to middle class stay at home Mom's utilizing day care. It is the standard. It doesn't happen more because it is a luxury good.

Most of them are close-minded just like Delong.

It's much easier to raise kids if they have grandparents and aunts and uncles to help once in awhile or more often.

Althouse has a post and a BloggingHeads discussion on why women are unhappy. Short version: because they think too much about how they feel:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/05/women-are-…
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/05/its-new-bl…

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I deny both Will's and Ross' assertions. There is NOTHING government can do to discourage unhappy marriages, or encourage happy marriages. Enduring marriages are an alchemy … or rather, each marriage needs to be considered sui generis. Stigmatizing anyone only makes someone more unhappy, not less. Which brings me to …

“Ladies: don’t be a single mother, because that would be bad for you, and if you are a mother, ignore your kids more, because that would be good for you! But I’m afraid there’s a kind of deep cultural logic that rules out this sort of arrangement.“

No one who has even a passing familiarity with the experience of the variety of human experience that anthropology has given us can read that with a straight face. In ancient Sparta, there was no law against adultery. Spartan women where notorious (in their day) for being free spoken, and free lovin'. Today we can point to multiple examples of functional, long-lived matrilineal societies. Upper class European societies did not stigmatize concubines. indeed, bastards were often selected to high office.

There is no “problem” with single motherhood. Many fathers walk out on marriages because they find (post kids) that the 'contract' they entered into is no longer the 'contract' they find themselves living! I hate to break it to you, but some women make terrible mothers!

Such is the variety of human choice, of human experience, of human error.

the more disturbing part of douhat's argument is that the entirety of american culture and life should be dramatically shifted because single motherhood makes people unhappy.