World magazine has an interview with Jennifer Roback Morse, who brings an economic point of view to analyze family and marriage. An excerpt:
So we have many more single moms. So what?
Many questions are involved: While mom’s attaching to the baby, who’s taking care of mom? In the natural family, there is another person taking care of mom, and that’s dad. Why is dad doing that? Because that child’s as much his as it is hers, physiologically. Could the mom do it by herself? The answer is, not very well. We have a lot of data on that point, that mom by herself does not do nearly so well as mom with dad. There are a number of reasons: First of all, someone has to earn a living. There’s a whole body of things that she doesn’t have to think about. Even if she does have a job, she doesn’t have to face it alone. It’s pretty decisive that kids benefit from two parents.
