Nonsense du Jour

This "opinion" piece by Greg Hampikian, from NYT. Titled "Men, Who Needs Them?" it attempts to make the case that women don't need men for bearing or raising children. You can tell he's operating from Neverneverland:

If a woman wants to have a baby without a man, she just needs to secure sperm (fresh or frozen) from a donor (living or dead).

Um, excuse me -- where does he think the sperm came from? Alpha Centauri?

He also tries to make the case that single-parent households are just fine and dandy -- noting that "the data for children raised by only females is encouraging. As the Princeton sociologist Sara S. McLanahan has shown, poverty is what hurts children, not the number or gender of parents." And how many single mothers are wealthy? (Note, he provides no link or citation for McLanahan's work.) I'm going to have to come down on the side of those studies that indicate that two parents are better for children than one, if only because they are less subject to the stresses that result from trying to go it alone. (I have known more than one woman who elected to raise a child without a father. It was hard on them.)

This is a fairly frivolous piece. I wish I could say I'm surprised to see it at NYT, but you know what? I'm not.