It appears to me that people support both out of fear--of children. The desire
for romance unencumbered by children is at the root of both social
problems.

"I think it will strengthen marriage. It's a sign that someone intends it to be a unit, that this is marriage, and it is for the duration."

The husband who gives his name to his bride in marriage is thus not just keeping his own; he is owning up to what it means to have been given a family and a family name by his own father-he is living out his destiny to be a father by saying yes to it in advance. And the wife does not so much surrender her name as she accepts the gift of his, given and received as a pledge of (among other things) loyal and responsible fatherhood for her children. A woman who refuses this gift is, whether she knows it or not, tacitly refusing the promised devotion or, worse, expressing her suspicions about her groom's trustworthiness as a husband and prospective father.

Patrilineal surnames are, in truth, less a sign of paternal prerogative than of paternal duty and professed commitment, reinforced psychologically by gratifying the father's vanity in the perpetuation of his name and by offering this nominal incentive to do his duty both to mother and child. Such human speech and naming enables the father explicitly to choose to become the parent-by-choice that he, more than the mother, must necessarily be.

"Today's young adults may see little reason to justify their decisions to cohabit by affirming their marriage intentions," she writes. "Serious discussions of marriage often did not occur until couples had lived together for lengthy periods, generally 1 to 2 years."

Thi is partly due to greater opportunities that young adults enjoy today in education, employment, and intimate relationships, she writes. And in this time of rapid social change -- economic ups and downs -- living together helps young people ride out the risks.

For the vast majority, practical problems -- finances, convenience, housing situation, roommate departures, parent/family problems, and "because they wanted to" -- were the prompts for moving in together.

"In many ways, living together represented an advanced stage of dating, often preferable to living with roommates, while also having some advantages over marrieag (like freedom)," Sassler writes. "Growing commitment to partners and the relationship seems to develop after moving in together."

"Future relationship goals were generally not discussed prior to moving in...and discussions about marriage did not become serious for most until after they had cohabited for several years."

Those so-called "family values" consist of denying my family and children the most basic legal and financial security accorded to civil marriage.

IN BRITAIN: The Children's Play Council and the Children's Society, who commissioned the survey, ...found that while 72% of mothers and fathers thought they played with their children on a daily basis, only a maximum of 30% of their offspring agreed.

Q: My granddaughter, Lisa, and her husband, Jon, are getting a divorce. Lisa and their daughter Kayla, two and a half, live in Texas. Jon lives in North Carolina. They have agreed to a cycle of four weeks of visitation with each parent. During the first cycle, Kayla has been with her mom and refused to talk to her dad over the phone. Now she will be spending four weeks with him.

Twin 13-year-old boys have asked a Durham County court for a `"parental divorce'" from their father - a legal filing that may be unprecedented in North Carolina.

In a petition filed recently in Durham District Court, William Lee Coleman and James Henry Coleman say they want to live with their mother because they say they aren't happy living with their father, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The teens say there's a precedent for their request: 14-year-old Patrick Holland, of Quincy, Mass., last month successfully severed ties with his father, who is in prison for murdering the boy's mother.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Washington state, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing ruled today. But, as expected, the decision is stayed -- and no local marriage licenses can be issued -- until the state Supreme Court reviews the case. In his ruling, Downing said the state's Defense of Marriage Act, which limits marriage to one man and one woman, is unconstitutional.

Fathers don't think same-sex marriage affects them directly? In light of the travails endured by the fatherhood movement over the past decade, same-sex marriage stands as a particularly decisive blow in the disenfranchisement of fathers in American culture. How? By reinforcing the idea that one parent is disposable, which has been both an unspoken tenet of American divorce and the animating force behind the fatherhood movement….

...We launched our foray into the world of parenthood by boarding the first gay and lesbian family-friendly cruise. We hoped the trip, organized by R Family Vacations and headlined in the media by Rosie O'Donnell, would be the ideal opportunity to learn about our options and to immerse ourselves in a community living the real deal...

"I think we lost a generation of fathers,'' [Dungy] said. "With my
parents, the family unit was so important, as important as a job. It's a
fact of life that there are so many single-parent families in the United States
now. I visit a lot of prisons, and I know that a major problem, particularly
with African-American men, is not having dads at home to influence them. That's
why I'm involved with Family First and the All-Pro Dad campaign. I want to
see us get back to the family structure more. We're making progress, but there's
work to do. I hope to reach out to fathers and help them realize how important
it is for them to be real fathers.''

The Bracks government had restricted IVF treatment to medically infertile women, excluding the so-called "socially infertile."

But a Melbourne newspaper today reported that the Infertility Treatment Authority and Melbourne IVF had found a way to beat the ban by allowing women to take samples away from the clinic for self-insemination.

If their do-it-yourself home insemination failed four times, single women and lesbians can be deemed medically infertile and granted full access to IVF.

Until now, lesbians and single women who are not medically infertile have been banned from all fertility treatment in Victoria.

Melbourne IVF chairman Dr John McBain said the practice did not breach the Victorian ban.

"It is not a reproductive service if we're not performing it," he said.

The whole article is a bit confusing, but I find it disingenous for the IVF chairman to apparently suggest that providing women with sperm samples to "self-inseminate" at home is not a reproductive service. Where else would they find these tidy, screened samples if not at a clinic? And why bend the definitions of "infertile" to make this change? Didn't the original prohibition have something to do with society's concern about creating fatherless children, and nothing to do with the technicalities of whether women are able to get pregnant using a turkey baster?

The New York State Bar Association is seeking to change New York's divorce laws which require at least one spouse to held "at fault."

"Divorce becomes more civil when the law eliminates the 'he said-she said' dialog of divorce where fault finding is imperative," said Rochester attorney Brian Barney, the immediate past chair of the Bar association's family law section. The Bar association said it will ask the state Legislature to amend the Domestic Relations Law to provide for no-fault divorce in New York. Every other state in the country offers a version of unilateral no-fault divorce, according to the Bar association.

...The pajamas, thongs, bras, and T-shirts bear multi-colored polka dots, stripes and girlie slogans such as "I like boys."

Honoring intentionally motherless and fatherless families as marriages -- saying
they are interchangeable with mother-father families -- denies these deep
realities.