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From: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: children's needs
Message-ID: <1815@reed.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 16:09:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1815
Posted: Mon Aug 19 16:09:58 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 08:00:05 EDT
References: <1761@reed.UUCP> <215@gymble.UUCP> <1780@reed.UUCP> <670@cyb-eng.UUCP>
Reply-To: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 28

In article <670@cyb-eng.UUCP> howard@cyb-eng.UUCP (Howard Johnson) writes:
>
>There is a very good reason why marriage partners vow to make their
>marriage permanent:  children need the attention of their parents in
>order to develop those traits which society acknowledges as valuable
>and good.  A child's happiness, self esteem, trustworthiness, etc.
>depend on that attention.  Both parents are responsible for providing
>their children the opportunities for learning how to be "good."

	I disagree. It is an incredible blanket statement to say that all
children *need* to have two parents in the home for happines, self
esteem, and whatever other traits society says are good. I'm not saying
that it's not a good thing if a child does have a stable home, but I
don't agree that children who don't have this are not going to develop
these same traits on their own. Sure, I think that parents are
responsible, and I think that too many neglect that responsibility,
through divorce and otherwise. (Not that divorce is always wrong
either.) But a child's happiness, etc. does not depend on the attention
of two parents. There are a lot of happy single-parent (by choice and
otherwise) families out there. In fact, I don't believe that every
child's happiness and self esteem depend on the attention of even one
parent, (although it certainly does vary from child to child.)

	cheers -

	elizabeth g. purtell

	(Lady Godiva)