Today, I caught wind of this in the news:



Granted, Bill O'Reilly and his Fox news band of idiots are all, well, idiots. But what do you guys think? Is it better for children to grow up with a mother and a father? Will it hurt their transition into adulthood to be missing one or the other? What about gay parents? Where do you draw the line between what is 'natural' and what is just as good, provided that the family is functional?

*grew up without a father, is perfectly happy and fine*

It's Fox News. It's not meant to be taken seriously and any sh!t any of these people spew should be disregarded entirely. Arguably, for the sake of humanity.

The number and gender of the parents does not matter, as long as the home is a loving and stable one.

If I still had my textbooks from college, I'd give you a list of psychological studies that say as much. I don't, though, and it's 7 AM, so you'll have to settle for my memories on the subject, at least for the moment.

Single mothers get a bad reputation, but that has more to do with the likelihood of them not having adequate support systems than "needing" a father figure for their child. Raising a child is expensive and demanding. Doing so on one income, without someone like a partner or grandparent to offer occasional relief from childcare duties, can leave you rather emotionally and financially stretched — especially if that one income is below the poverty line.

Anyway, yeah, it's FOX news. Never mind a grain — I take everything they say with an entire freaking ocean of salt.

I think, pretty much for the reasons Candllis says, that having multiple parents is beneficial to people growing up. I also think that it's good for children to have multiple authority figures. Let's face it, we're all flawed in some interesting ways and it's likely that a good number of us will eventually have children, therefore splitting the parenting duties between more than one person lowers the risk of our worst quirks coming out in our children. Between the average of two or more people there should hopefully be one full functioning adult role model

Yeah, similar sentiments here. I don't think you NEED both to bring up a happy child, but having two parents in a childs life certainly makes happy stability a hell of a lot easier to achieve.

I am echoing people...

eople..

eople...

I had three, then I had two, then I had one, then I had two (parents). I am now a well rounded and happy individual, but it's in no way thanks to the chopping and changing of numbers of parents or parental figures. That chopping and changing involved moving house repeatedly, a lot of arguments between the parents, stress on everyone, mental breakdowns and a lot of money issues- including bankruptcy. As has been said in the last three posts; it's not the amount of parents that make the childhood, it's the stability of the home.

Yeah..it all depends on how well a parent or tutor knows to educate a child. You may even have no parents but a good mentor and you'll be happier than a person with two parents that don't know a thing about parenting.

Agreeing with all of the above, but I'd like to say also that I think there is too much emphasis on the idea of the nuclear family being the "right" one. If you have two parents who bicker constantly, you will probably not feel better just because you have two parents around. That goes with the "stability of the home" idea. Getting divorced when you have children is rough, but I think that some people don't realize that sometimes it will be more beneficial for the children too if the parents separate - if together they are making an unstable home. My mother passed when I was ten, so I've sort of forgotten what it's like to have more than one parent (my dad's gf doesn't feel like one). And at this point, my dad's gf tends to make the home a little less stable... I don't think my growing up was affected all that much by having only one parent.

The idea that gay parents can't raise a child because they are the same gender is ridiculous, and I think most everyone here would agree with that.

Yes!

I often heard of couples staying together "for the children" and, whilst their sentiments may be right, sometimes it is better for them to go their separate ways. A two-parent tumultuous household surely cannot be better than a stable, single-parent one?

Throughout school and sixth-form college, I often felt as though I was in a minority because my parents were still together. It seemed as though the majority of my friends lived with just the one parents, and so it was my family life that was unusual. Nevertheless, it never crossed my mind that the single-parent families were any less functional as a unit... they were just different to mine.

Having said that, almost all of the friends I had who's parents had separated had a negative view of marriage and "the family". This is understandable, I'm sure, but I wonder how many of these children still feel this way, and are actively avoiding a future that contains marriage? However, one girl who was always adamant that she wanted neither children nor married-life, is now living a life that's about as traditional and domestic as you can get. Maybe the opposite can be true...

--

In the UK, there was a bit of fuss kicked up when the government announced their plans to introduced a tax break for marriage couples - essentially, giving married couples an extra £150 each year. This included married gay couples ("civil partnerships"), but ultimately there was a lot of complaints about what seemed to be a "reward" for marriage and thus other types of families were being penalised.

That's odd. My parents never argued in front of me or made a fuss, and their divorce was supposedly really amicable, but the circumstances surrounding their separation really weren't..traditional in any way, shape, or form. Everyone around me seemed just beyond mortified where I was concerned, and a lot of my teachers and friends, even girls and boys who didn't like me sort of acted like I had been diagnosed with cancer or something and I needed to be handled very carefully. Personally, I wasn't really bothered. I know that sounds totally tough-guy, but I truly wasn't. I remember one time a neighbor put her hands on my shoulders, looked deep into my eyes, and throatily whispered, 'don't blame yourself! It was nothing you did!' and I couldn't help asking her where on earth I would ever get the idea that it had been.

I think my parents did too good a job teaching me not to notice or judge differences in other households. Racism, sexism, homophobia and the stigma surrounding divorces always confused the hell out of me until I started to understand why they were an actual problem - because other people made them into one.

That said, it was hard growing up, but that had nothing to do with my mother. We would have had the same ups and downs had my biological father been in the picture or not - and funnily enough, after a few years, my stepdad's presence did create a lot of friction at home.

I think children cope a lot better with parental separation than maybe it is sometimes thought. A lot of emotional damage can be caused, I am certain, but a child's ignorance towards why these things happen could well be the best way for them to cope with the situation. As Syuu hits on, it's the adults bringing their problems into the conversation that can make things more difficult.

My ex's divorce from her daughter's step-father would have been a lot easier on the daughter if the adults hadn't attempted to justify everything. Whilst, singularly, the factors causing the relationship's end would have made sense to the rather astute little girl, as a collection of reasons - and coupled with visible tension and anger towards one another - it made it suddenly rather more troublesome for her. The parents over-complicated matters.

There is definitely a tax advantage to being married in the US. That reaction is interesting; I don't know how long we've had the system for but I feel like it's been a while and no one has complained.