In the realm of parenthood today nothing can
be taken for granted — not even that a mother and father are the best thing
for children, at least according to certain elites.
Last year in delivering his verdict on Proposition 8 — a
referendum in which a majority of Californians supported the traditional definition
of marriage — San Francisco Judge Vaughan Walker said it was beyond “any doubt that parents’ genders are
irrelevant to children’s developmental outcomes.”
Also last
year Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston opined, “Women are realizing it more and
more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that
child.”
But sociologist W Bradford Wilcox says that this “elite
wisdom” is dead wrong. Moms and dads bring different and essential gifts to the
parenting enterprise, as a growing body of social science research findings
testifies. In a presentation called “Vive La Difference: Gender and Parenthood”
in Canada recently, Prof Wilcox, Director of the National Marriage Project in
the US and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, said
this evidence shows:
*Mothers and Fathers bring distinctive talents to the
parenting enterprise; and,*Children are most likely to thrive and even survive when
they are raised by their own mother and father;*Children long to know and be known by the man and woman who
brought them into this world.
You can find Prof Wilcox’s slide
presentation at the Institute for Marriage and the Family Canada website
and read a summary of the science behind what you always thought anyway —
namely, that although death and other misfortunes sometimes rob children of a
father or mother, being brought up by their own married mom and dad is far and
away the best thing for kids.
