W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia:

Dads are disposable. This is the story now being told in certain precincts of our culture, from the Hollywood Hills — “Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child,” in the words of Jennifer Anniston — to the Ivy League — Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler recently wrote a book, Raising Boys Without Men, that celebrated women raising children without fathers.

There is only one problem with this story: it is a myth that does not fit the facts.

Do not get me wrong. I was raised by a single mom, and I think I turned out OK, as do many children raised in fatherless homes. But as a social scientist, I can also tell you that one consistent conclusion from hundreds of studies on child well-being is this: on average, children are much more likely to thrive when they have the good fortune to be raised in a home with their own married father. -- Deseret News