Single parenting...

The December 4, 2006 Newsweek has an article about the boom of children being raised primarily by (i.e. in a household with) one parent. It starts with the usual examples of people who are surprised and then blasé when they play the odds on modern courtship practices and lose, and then gets into the sociological ramifications.

On the one hand, single parenthood is shown to be less than a tragedy, since people are getting married later and later in life (and, I infer, condoms will break at any age), so kids outside of marriage are just going to happen. On the other hand are the likes of Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, who draws a connection between single parenthood and child poverty, and with welfare dependence, both of which contribute to future births of children with unwed parents. Continues the article:

But sociologists say many of these kids actually fare pretty well, especially when two parents are involved. The determining factor seems to be family stability--and marriage has no lock on that.

Duh. Marriage might not have exclusive rights to domestic stability, especially in this day and age, but which arrangement tends to be most stable in the first place?