[Durin]

Just thought I might add my 2 cents. I personally noticed that many of the people I knew as I grow up, and some that I still DO know, tended to be worse off if there parents were not married and together. And active in the childs life.

To me, it does seem that parenting is a thankless job (note that I am not a parent, and have no intention of becoming one for quite some time). Nonetheless, just like sticking a hand into the toilet to remove a clog, it must be done. By one of the two parents, while the other works hard to provide for the extra members of the family. Traditionally this has been seen as the mans job to work and the woman to be more active in raising the child. This could be due to biological reasons (at least originally), with men having a greater physical strength and women having the mammary glands that were necessary for feeding the child.

Todays work doesn't exactly require a vast amount of strength and physical labor (some does however) and science has gotten around the needing mammary glands to feed a baby problem. However, the problem is when one parent allows the marvels to today to change their "job" (breadwinner to child-raiser, or the other way around) and the other partner does not, thus having either two breadwinners (child doesn't get properly raised) or two childraisers (family starves).

Divorces and bastard babies cause additional problems. The partnerhood of parenting is absent in those cases quite often, with the breadwinner fucntion often taking precedence of the child raiser function. Naturally some exceptions exist, and some people remarry, which can allow stability to return, and some parents of bastard babies eventually marry someone to fill the hole. But there are still many who do not.

All in all, sacrifices must be made by BOTH parents. The husband is going to have to work more at the expense of free time, same for the wife and child raising (or vice versa on the gender roles).

What I'm saying here is DON'T FUCKING HAVE SEX AND MAKE A BABY UNLESS YOU ARE FULLY PREPARED (or as fully prepared as one can be, of course).