MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE

From THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE, by Harlan Ellison:

It's a scene in which a young supplicant, an aspiring poet, somebody like that, seeks out this knowledgeable old philospher-kind of a Bukowski or Henry Miller figure-in Paris or New York or some such bustling metropolitan situs...and the kid comes to the old guru in his ratty apartment, and he sorta kinda asks him that old saw about the meaning of life. Correction: LIFE. He squats there and says to the old man, "What's it all about? What's it mean? Huh?"
And the old man purses his lips and beetles his brow; he perceives the kid is really serious about this; it's not just jerk-off time. So he nods sagely, and clasps his hands behind his back, and he walks to the window and stares out at the deep city for a while, and sorta kinda ponders for a while. And finally, he turns to the kid and he says, with core seriousness, "You know, there's a lotta bastards out there."

Ellison, of course, meant "bastard" in the slang sense of "A person...who is held to be mean or disagreeable." But I was reminded of that passage, one of my favorites by one of my favorite writers, when I read this news item about a new study:

A record number of babies — nearly 1.5 million — were born to unmarried women in the U.S. last year. And those moms were more likely to be 20-somethings than teenagers, according to new federal data released Friday.

"There's been a sea change in terms of expectations around marriage and babies," says Dorian Solot, co-founder of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, an advocacy organization for the unmarried.

Solot says unmarried mothers present very different scenarios for their children, depending upon whether they are the single, professional parent-by-choice, a cohabiting couple, or a poor woman living alone.

"It's really unfair to children," says David Popenoe, a sociology professor at Rutgers University who has studied the effects of marriage and cohabitation on children. He co-directs the National Marriage Project at Rutgers.

"One thing you don't know from these data is whether the births are to lone women or to a cohabiting women," he says.

For the record (such as it is), I tend to agree with Professor Popenoe. I grew up without a father, and in a very real sense I deal with it every single day. I don't think marriage is necessarily one of the most important things in life, but I do think that taking care of a child is much too important a thing in life for one person.

I wish these data told me how many of these women are "single" only by virtue of their not having "a ring on their finger," because it makes a difference. It really does make a difference. This difference having little to do with reproductive rights or anything like it; rather the fact that the trouble with parenting is it's far too easy a job to get; any fool can do it.