They’ll call me a bigot, but I prefer to see myself as a realist.  So let’s jump into it.  The Today Show’s Jenna Wolfe dropped an unexpected bombshell into the national conversation over “gay marriage.”  She announced on air (and in her blog) that, “My girlfriend, Stephanie Gosk, and I are expecting a baby girl the end of August.”

First and foremost, I am pro-life.  Let’s just put that up front.  I love babies.  Children are life changing, and I’m sure Miss Wolfe is already finding that out.

However, I’m also like that little kid who yelled, “The king has no clothes!”  If there’s something to be said and no one wants to say it for fear of hurting the feelings of others, well, you’ll find me there.  Sorry to rain on your parade, but truth is truth.

So here we go.  The headline on the Today Show’s website starts out with the word “Surreal.”  But, in truth, it should read “Unreal.”  Jenna Wolfe and her girlfriend, Stephanie Gosk, are most certainly not expecting a baby girl at the end of August, not in the biological sense, anyway.

When a man and a woman unite in a sexual union, the woman provides the unfertilized egg and the man provides the sperm.  Those two things — biologically exclusive to members of the opposite sex — merge and the miracle of life begins.

So herein lies the crux of our dilemma: Miss Wolfe and Miss Gosk are both women.  That’s not an anti-“gay” statement; that’s a true statement.  Biologically speaking, they cannot, of their own volition, produce a child.  I’m sure they’re both nice women, but they need a man in order to have a baby.

And if they need a man in order to have a baby, then who can honestly say that this is the only contribution a man can make?  Who can honestly say that Miss Gosk can replace — truly and completely replace — the father who should be present in that child’s life?  Consider, if you will, all the social science data to date that shows that children do better in a traditional mom-and-dad household.  Which parent does the child not need?  A young lady asked that very question to a state legislature recently — “Which parent do I not need?” — and no one could answer her.

It may be politically correct to celebrate the news of Miss Wolfe’s pregnancy.  It may be politically correct to celebrate Miss Gosk’s role as the child’s “other parent.”  But it is selfish, and supremely so, to deny the child — and others like her — the benefit of either a mother or a father.  Two men cannot produce a child.  Two women cannot produce a child.  And neither of those familial arrangements is fair to the overall development of a child.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m sure Miss Gosk will be supportive and loving and caring to Miss Wolfe’s child; but she will never be — can never be — the child’s father.  And, to me, that’s just sad.

Today’s guest blogger is Christian Shelby, a volunteer with Concerned Women for America.

Few people have had such a profound influence on American culture, yet Judith Wallerstein was not a household name.  When her book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (2000), was published, it prompted a national debate over the effect on children when their parents divorced.  Beginning in 1971, Mrs. Wallerstein interviewed 131 children from 60 divorced families every 5 years for 25 years.  She found, not surprisingly, that the children were “extremely distressed” after their parents’ divorce; she also found that the children’s problems continued for 10 to 15 years with half of them suffering permanent damage.  She found that the grown children of divorced parents often become “worried, underachieving, self-deprecating, and sometimes angry young men and women.”

More recent research by Elizabeth Marquette and others has corroborated Wallerstein’s analyses. In addition, Wallerstein continued to write about the affect of divorce on children, publishing 70 articles in professional journals and five books. In a PBS interview in 2000, she said, “It’s hard for me to believe that 45 percent of marriages are so bad that they really need to divorce, and that’s what’s happening in this country.” Among her findings: children of divorce have a harder time forming intimate relationships (half the rate of those in the general population) and were more likely to divorce than are children from intact families.  In her second book about divorce, Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce (1989),  Wallerstein offered advice to couples who divorced, including ensuring that custody arrangements were beneficial to the children rather than convenient for the parents.

With divorce rates relatively stable, but still too high and no-fault divorce still an option in many states, Wallerstein’s research (and that of numerous others corroborating her findings) needs to be introduced to a new generation who have grown up hearing that divorce is better than living in an unhappy family.  Wallerstein showed, through her careful longitudinal research, that casual divorce is not always the best solution for children.

We’ve all heard the taunting tune.  Many of us sang it in kindergarten, ribbing older siblings and starry-eyed lovers with its lyrics:

“—– and —– sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!  First comes love…then comes marriage…then comes the baby in the baby carriage.”

Looking back, it’s amazing how much our simple nursery rhymes taught us about life, including the natural progression of relationships.  Intuitively, we knew these axioms to be true and passed them down throughout the generations.  But these days, as conventional wisdom is increasingly convoluted, it isn’t surprising that many have rejected the order of romance first, marriage second, and finally childbearing, instead creating their own rules of the game.  Indeed, gone are the days of Brady Brunch families and June Cleaver-style households; they have morphed into ABC’s “Modern Family“ — a show promoted as “redefining what family means,” and portrayed as “one big straight-gay, multicultural, traditional, happy family.”  Hence, every day it seems, a new tide of case studies surfaces on the shores of our Hollywood-esque world of hook-ups, shack-ups, babydaddys, and babymommas, attempting to prove how “liberated” we are, unbound by the shackles of tradition.

Riding on this bandwagon is Russian tennis star and Biggest Loser trainer, Anna Kournikova, who claimed in the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine, “[Marriage] isn’t important to me. I’m in a happy relationship — that’s all that matters.”

While this creed sounds good to some, realistically, it isn’t true.  On the contrary, marriage does matter!  Social science research and demographic data make the case that marriage matters and has far more impact on adults than most people acknowledge.  Researchers indicate that married people have better health, longer and more productive lives, greater general happiness, and better mental health than non-married individuals.  Further, they agree that marriage performs a critical function for society.

Cultures globally consider marriage the link that unites parents with their children and families to their communities.  In fact, as author Caitlin Flanagan proclaims, “There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage.”  Marriage provides the context within which the next generation establishes lifelong habits and develops character, preparing young people to become well-adjusted, productive adults and involved, law-abiding citizens.

Still, the overwhelming message for youth today is that marriage can wait or be disregarded entirely, as the Anna Kournikovas of society suggest.  It’s time for the reams of research and the common experiences of teachers, social workers, and law enforcement officers, who daily observe the outcomes of family breakdown, to penetrate the media fog to change the attitudes of the public and convince young people that marriage matters — for each of them and for all of us.

Some experts like to debunk the idea of a dad’s importance and talk about the “myth of the perfect family.” Such thinking, however, merely sets up a straw man and is erroneous.  There is a voluminous body of research that is clear and unambiguous: The very best family for a child’s positive development and good outcome is a married mom and dad. As Time magazine put it: “Growing up in a home in which different men cycle in and out is not good for a child’s health or well being.  Think of these families as having ‘domino dads,’ with each one’s departure putting pressure on the next.”

This is no small problem.  The negative consequences for both the mother and the child are so well documented they have almost ceased to register on the public’s radar.  The number of young women who are cohabitating instead of getting married is increasing; the number who have children before getting married is increasing; and the number of children who live in blended households as a result of divorce or prior cohabitation is increasing, as my research and writing reveals.

Single moms of children from multiple fathers are far more likely to be “under-employed, to have lower incomes, and to be less educated.” The children in these households live with enormous stress: “Everyday decisions are more complex and family rules are more ambiguous.” Just figuring out logistics, such as “whose turn it is to spend time with the kids and who gets more attention,” and dividing up time, responsibilities, and finances — who lives with whom when, who is responsible for what when, and who pays for food, clothing, and incidentals, as well as who pays child support for what child — is daunting and sometimes impossible.  Sadly, and most damaging to the children, is that the conflicts that lead the parents to separate in the first place tend to go on and on, with the kids often caught in the middle.

Cassandra Dorius, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, presented her findings from a recent study at the Population Association of America. She studied data from up to 20 interviews with each of 4,000 women over a 27-year-period.  The data for the study came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.  Dorius called the trend an “intergeneratic transmission of disadvantage.”  She said, “Juggling all the different needs and demands of fathers in at least two households, four or more pairs of grandparents, and two or more children creates a huge set of chronic stressors that families have to deal with for decades.”

While opposition to the findings was immediate, others believe the situation is not “inherently bad or good” and, in a flight from reality, they argue that any group of people can successfully parent.  They contend that the larger problem is whether the dad plays a role in his child’s life, whether married or not.  Yet research is clear and unsurprising: When a mother finds a new man or has a child by another man, fathers typically become less involved financially and emotionally, and they are far less likely to be a physical presence in their children’s lives.

Only by facing facts and addressing problems realistically can we hope to see a brighter future and the inherent potential of the next generation realized.

Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

We Christian women are called to be confident in the love that God provides.  With our self-esteem constantly targeted by the media, it is sometimes difficult to remember that the Lord created us to be a treasure won by a determined and respectable man.  Unfortunately, our society encourages women to be the hunters instead of the hunted.

Nine out of 10 males I personally interviewed say that when a woman pursues them, it highlights two very unattractive attributes: insecurity and desperation.  So why do women do it?  Is it because we are impatient and unwilling to wait for Mr. Right to come our way or because we are craving male attention?

Both of these reasons are a result of not trusting the Lord.  He has provided a way to fulfill each of our needs.  When we feel uncared for, He assures us in places like Jeremiah 33:11 that His love is always with us.  When we feel that unattractive, He whispers through Psalm 139:14 that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

So when a man pursues us, we need to remember who God designed us to be.

1. We show obedience to the Lord by investing time and emotion only in solid Christian men.
2. We show respect for ourselves by giving our time only to men that have the courage to ask us for our number and not cowardly giving us his in case we want to hang out sometime.
3. We show value by accepting dates that require time and thought and not accepting “we can do whatever you want to do” pseudo-dates.
4. We show loyalty by humbly going to God in prayer concerning each gentleman that requests a relationship with us.
5. We show honor to God by saving sex for marriage and dating only men who are dedicated to following this command.

Even though movies like No Strings Attached and American Pie give a degrading view of male and female relationships, this should not be the reality in Christian dating relationships.  We must all guard our hearts from the lies with which we are daily bombarded and combat them with the truth God has made clear to us: He loves us, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and He is faithful to provide.

After all, we are supposed to be loved as Christ loved the Church.  So why would we settle for less?

Our guest author is Amy Royall.  She is a junior at Liberty University and an active member of the LU chapter of Concerned Women for America.

Two Notre Dame professors, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, analyzed data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, the National Survey of Family Growth, and the College Social Life Survey (and others), in their effort to understand premarital sex among young Americans. Their book, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, is a 312-page review of the current sexual situation for contemporary young adults. Naomi Schaefer Riley reviews the book for Commentary. Miss Riley reports:

• Young adults today do not associate sex with marriage.
• An “increasing share” of young adults don’t even think about getting married.
• 84 percent of 18- to 23-year-olds have had premarital sex.
• College students are less promiscuous than those who are not in college.
• Serial monogamy is the typical pattern for today’s young adults.
• Men tend to overestimate their peers’ sexual activity.
• Half of the women, and 25 percent of men, engaged in “unwanted” sexual activity in the two weeks prior to the survey conducted by one study.
• Young adults have bought into some significant myths:
  • They believe married sex is a “let down,” when, in truth, married couples have more and more satisfactory sex than unmarried couples.
  • They are under the mistaken impression that cohabitation is a good “testing ground” for marriage, when numerous studies disprove that myth and, in fact, show that cohabitation is more a guarantee of divorce and unhappy married relationship.
  • Pornography is a major source of sexual information and attitudes and has, in fact, replaced sexual activity with a real woman for many young men.
• Women continue to control access to sex (though many young women do not realize their power in the sexual realm); women are still the ones to decide if and when sex occurs.
• Regnerus and Uecker conclude that women are poor “sexual economists” — that is, they think their sexual power is their control over sexual desire in men (actually, men are thinking about sex all the time). In fact, women’s sexual power consists of establishing the terms and conditions for sexual interaction — a fact of which many young women are unaware.
  • On campuses with more women (the situation on most of today’s college campuses), there is more sexual activity (women have less power within the context of that environment than in situations where there are fewer women).
  • When the environment pushes women to have sex, they make choices that end up making them unhappy.
  • One study revealed that 70 percent of young adults regret the circumstances and timing when they lost their virginity, with women having the most regret.
  • Women are more unhappy the more partners they have (but men are not). And, regrettably, the younger the loss of virginity, the more sexual partners young people tend to have.

Source: “Premarital Wrecks,” by Naomi Schaefer Riley, a review of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying, by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, Commentary, February 2011, pp. 59-61.