ON PARENTING....

Before I got off the telephone a while ago, ending a conversation with Mama Bore, I wished her a Happy Father's Day. Since my paternal unit ran away from home when I was around 7 or 8 years old, she pretty much served both parental roles and she did a fine job. None of her five children have ended up thugs, and I never felt deprived not having a father around. I was not a Daddy's Girl.

Many years ago when I was enrolled in a college course that was called something like Sociology of the Family, I remember getting into a heated discussion with the instructor. He advocated that the children of divorced parents should be assigned an entirely new set of parents, thus alleviating all the so-called evils of single parenting. He theorized that the kids would be much better off that way. I was one of a few students in the classroom who had come from a "broken home," so I took the stance that one parent might just be able to manage quite nicely, thank-you, and there was no need to think that all children of divorce were deprived and tainted. The debate became rather heated, as I recall, and I now suspect he was just baiting us with food for thought to get our wee brains to thinking about more than just our social plans for the weekend.

Single-parent homes, two-parent homes...I don't think the number really matters all that much. If a kid has at least one parent who gives a damn, he or she is probably going to turn out okay. Of course, I'm no expert on parenting, so who am I to make such a generalization. I can't even get my cats to listen to a word I say.