MARGARET CHO (Q4: #1 of 11)

It takes a village to raise a child. In my case, it took the Village People. Two-parent households are not essential to a child's upbringing, but it certainly gives children a better start in life. Being "born out of wedlock" is such an antiquated notion — something like keeping the caul after the baby is born. It is from the age of mourning jewelry made out of hair. Who gives a shit if a child is born out of wedlock? As long as the child is never put in a headlock, who cares? One parent trying to raise a family makes for a difficult situation for all involved, yet it is certainly not impossible. Single parents are hot, too, for some reason. They have an Alice quality, like '70s women, Anne Romano, fold-out sofa beds and all that. There will always be a Schneider around, or a Sidney. Am I showing my age?

JIM DE SÈVE (Q4: #2 of 11)

Being on the outside of the law for most of my life, unable to marry the person I love, I believe heterosexual couples with kids are idiots for not marrying. Marriage grants an enormous array of legal protections to a couple and a family. These protections can be mimicked to some degree with legal documents, but marriage covers it all in one swoop.

I went to the wedding of Hillary and Julie Goodridge on Monday. The Goodridges are the namesake couple of the court case that ended gender discrimination in marriage in Massachusetts. Seeing the excitement of these two women and their child, Annie, makes one wonder about the power of this institution. Though married in their hearts for seventeen years, Hillary and Julie now have the legal and societal stamp of approval. They know there will be no denials at the emergency room. There will be no cousins swooping in to challenge wills when one of them dies. There will be no question of parental rights for Annie. Marriage has afforded them great protections (though still NONE on the federal level).  

I think many straight couples take marriage for granted. This is unfortunate. Marriage can add stability that is important for children. But I do think children are resilient beings. Many single mothers have raised wonderful kids. Would those kids have been better off in a two-parent situation? Well, which two parents?

I know personally that separation is difficult for kids. To the extent that marriage thwarts separation, and given that a relationship is healthy, marriage does matter to kids.  

The deeper question is, why do some couples choose to skip marriage? Bucking tradition, disdain for bureaucracy, fear of commitment? I tend to think the fear of commitment is the biggie, especially for men. I would say, know yourself first, know yourself well, and give commitment a shot.

ETHAN WATTERS (Q4: #3 of 11)

Marriage is due for a comeback in the next few years. I would guess that this will lead many cohabitating parents to tie the knot. In the long run, however, I think we will get more and more used to families assuming a variety of forms, including single parents and cohabitating parents. As these forms become more mainstream, the experiences of the children in these situations will similarly normalize. A child of a single mother in the '50s would have suffered some of the marginalization experienced by his mother. This will be less true of the child of the single parent who is born tomorrow. This goes for cohabitating parents and gay parents as well.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER (Q4: #4 of 11)

I never met a single mother who said, "I can't wait until my child grows up to be an unwed mom." Or, "Goodness, I'm looking forward to my son having children with three women in two different states."

Both common sense and social science show that children really do fare better in an intact family, with their own married mothers and fathers — in a decent, average, loving marriage.

That's the ideal. That's what children want. That's what the human heart wants.

I think we are in the process of rebuilding a marriage culture, unless ideological and legal elites intervene to deconstruct the marriage idea.

SUSAN SHAPIRO BARASH (Q4: #5 of 11)

The trend of cohabitation will certainly continue, yet there is great respect for the institution of marriage. According to my research, it still remains a goal for 80% of women. The desire for gay couples to be married also proves how highly regarded the institution is in our society.

As far as the ramifications for children born to a cohabitating couple, well, when there is strife in a household, it hardly matters if the couple is married or living together. If a premium is placed on married couples raising children rather than cohabitating couples raising children in our culture, it still stands to reason that these children are better off without the nuclear family in a contentious atmosphere. If a cohabiting couple is happy and the modeling for their children is that their cohabitation is successful, the children will feel secure.

DAVID MOATS (Q4: #6 of 11)

The instinct of traditionalists that the nuclear family is best grows out of the sense that there is a role for a father and a mother in a child's life and that anything less is not good enough. But even in a traditional family, fathers and mothers sometimes let their children down and fail to provide the love that is expected or desired. Family structure is varied enough that we are all likely to find ourselves at one time or another in a nontraditional situation. If we are single, we may form a parental relationship with the child of a lover. If we are remarried, we may end up adopting the new spouse's children. With greater freedom of choice in marriage and divorce, families are taking different forms, and children are feeling the pain of unsought changes. It is hard to imagine a return to the old days, but it is not hard to imagine a renewed emphasis on commitment and a willingness to work through problems, especially among children of the much-divorced baby boomers. At the same time, there may be children of baby boomers who are afraid of commitment, which makes commitment all the more difficult and may make divorce more likely. Children are resilient and tough creatures. They are acutely attuned to bullshit. Having fatherly and motherly love is important, whatever the shape of the family. Even in non-traditional families, it is possible to provide it and for children to thrive.

JONATHAN AMES (Q4: #7 of 11)

Well, I'm no mathematician, but if in the last forty years there has been an 850% increase in this kind of thing, I'd bet a dollar that it will continue to increase. Then again, at some point, like the stock market, it has to fall off. Right? Who knows. Are children like the stock market? Well, the population is always increasing, therefore, all kinds of children — those born in wedlock, out of wedlock, in gridlock, by warlocks — will all increase, because everything is increasing. So, yes, this trendy trend will continue. 

To answer the second question, I'd say that a two-parent house is probably better than a one-parent house, but the likelihood of finding two sane parents is awfully slim. So maybe it's not so good. With a one-parent house, you have a 50% better chance of not having an insane parent. I think that's the correct math. Now, if you have two sane parents, that's probably better than one sane parent. But, like I just said, finding two sane people in the same house is deeply unusual.

My reasoning does provoke interesting questions: Is having one insane parent better than having two parents where one of the parents is insane or vice versa? Is it better to have two insane parents or one insane parent? I don't know the answers to these questions, but the Family Dynamics Institute at Johns Hopkins would do well to look into this.

MOLLY JONG-FAST (Q4: #8 of 11)

In the future, the marriage industry (divorce lawyers, including those set up in In 'N Out Burger drive-through windows, wedding planners, floral consultants, napkin renters, tuxedo lenders, klezmer bands, manufacturers of green polyester bridesmaid dresses and cake bakers) will be able to hunt down these last gaspers and get them. In the future, the government, concerned with a plummeting rate of reproduction, will release a list of the unmarried, including their addresses, phone numbers and dress sizes. Then these poor souls will be inundated with dress consultants, registry consultants and the famed invitation consultants. After all, why should some be spared countless hour-long meetings with tons of different people all focused on one common goal: your money?

KEITH BLANCHARD (Q4: #9 of 11)

This question strays far outside the boundaries of my expertise. Having been married for eleven years to the mother of my three children doesn't give me much empirical data. But here goes...

I think what we're seeing in the new millenium is the continuing gleeful fragmentation of old social orders. Marriage is declining, divorce rising; increasingly, at school, the kids with stable original parents and no stepsiblings are the freaks. People are learning to live together in all kinds of ways, and children are a part of all sorts of equations now. The marriage decline can be tracked thus: We've progressed in just two generations from couples "staying together for the kids" to "shacking up, then marrying reluctantly just to give the kids a set of parents" to "having kids anyway, and screw the ceremony."

Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I think divorce still cuts children as deeply as it ever did, because it's so huge and awful and unexpected. Having a larger pool of divorced kids probably helps, but kids by and large aren't social enough about the personal at that age to take much comfort there. I think the facile answer is the right answer here: That what's important is that they're raised in the shelter of a loving family, and whether that family is traditional (mom, pop, dog, Ford Explorer) or a traveling road show of gypsies is immaterial. Protection and unconditional love yield confidence.

DARCY COSPER (Q4: #10 of 11)

Two of my best friends are currently preparing to have a child out of wedlock, not because they’re not committed to one another, nor because they don’t plan, as partners, to raise the child to adulthood — they absolutely are and do. They’re just not interested in the trappings (and traps) of marriage, and it’s not clear to me how this disinterest on their part could have any bearing at all on their child’s well-being.

My hunch is that the key to a child’s short- and long-term well-being is to be raised by loving, devoted adults, whether single or married parents, gay or straight parents, biological or adoptive or step-parents, immediate family or extended family or community.

I grew up in very nontraditional households, first in a community in which there was a lot of collective/collaborative child care, and after my parents’ divorce, in a loose-knit group of recently divorced, newly single mothers and their children — the Kramer vs. Kramer generation. I haven’t turned into a psychokiller yet; in fact, I seem to be a relatively happy, useful member of society, and some of my finest, fondest memories from childhood have to do with these two dangerously, wackily untraditional, it-takes-a-village type communities. So my personal experience suggests that the hetero/nuclear family unit isn’t the only way to ensure that children grow up to be relatively happy, useful pseudo-adults — and may even be inferior to other possible configurations.

BLAISE K (Q4: #11 of 11)

I still don't think having children out of wedlock will make marriage obsolete, but I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers continue to rise. People like cohabitating. Cohabitating is fun. You may live and love like marrieds and think, "Who needs a piece of paper to prove it?"

I definitely don't believe that a two-parent household is necessary to a child's well-being. I think good parenting is what's necessary to a child's well-being.

DR. SCOTT HALZMAN (Q1: #12 of 12)

Children who grow up in two parent households have a distinct advantage over their peers who come from separated, divorced or never-married homes.  Of course there are some kids that do just fine in school and social settings.  But research indicates that the risk of childhood problems soars from 10% to 25% in households of divorce.  But in families where the mother and father share their children, the children grow up to be better at work, school and relationships.

    I see the outcomes of children raised without both parents all the time. It’s a strain on the child and the parent.  The single parent is the first to recognize the stress.  He or she must do the lion’s share of cooking, cleaning, doctor’s visits, school conferencing and nurturing the egos and bodies of their kid.  Then, that exhausted “custodian” must deal with juggling the emotional and practical considerations of maintaining their child’s connection with the non-custodial parent.   At the end of each busy day, there’s not much tenderness left to give. When a couple is married (for married couples stay together longer than cohabitating couples), the child’s second parent provides a place for a spouse to turn to for support and comfort; the second parent provides a break from the drudgery of child-rearing; the second parent provides a dyadic relationship that the growing child can observe to figure out how individuals can ever get along.  And beyond all that, a second parent in the home is a consistent and present source of love for the child.

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