I wish people would get off Madonna’s case.
Ever since the 37-year-old Material Girl announced she is having a material child without making a stop at the altar first, people have been calling talk shows and pundits have been writing commentaries (“Get Married, Madonna,” shouts a Newsweek headline) to fulminate about how she should go out and get hitched to somebody to prevent her child from becoming a future drop-out or domestic terrorist.
The daddy is Carlos Leon, Madonna’s 29-year-old personal trainer and boyfriend since late 1994. Madonna reportedly has no professional commitments after she finishes filming “Evita,” nor does she have any apparent commitment to marrying Leon. Nor does she have any apparent commitment to marry anyone else. Nevertheless, in a real life enactment of the lyrics of her hit song, “Papa, Don’t Preach,” she’s keeping her baby, which is due in November.
Before that I am certain we will be hearing tut-tuts from politicians and other armchair sociologists. This summer’s party conventions and presidential campaigns will offer ample opportunities for repeats of attacks by Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992 against the fictitious Murphy Brown’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy and Newt Gingrich’s tacky comparison of Democratic morals to Woody Allen’s pairing off with his girlfriend’s adopted daughter.
The social argument that has been fiercely embraced by the pundits and pols in recent years goes like this: Children who grow up in single-parent families are far more likely to drop out of school, drop into unemployment and commit crimes. Therefore we should promote traditional marriage every day and in every way for everybody.
Unfortunately, what began as a sensible eagerness to promote married parenting has run amok into a curious form of marriage madness. What began sensibly enough as efforts to track down deadbeat dads has led some state legislatures to seriously consider repealing no-fault divorce. One thoughtful broadside in Atlantic magazine, titled “Dan Quayle Was Right,” has spurred efforts to make working mothers feel guilty for putting their children in day care instead of staying home to take care of them.
And gay parents? No matter how competent, responsible and God-fearing they may be, they are persecuted in some communities like Salem persecuted witches.
No one, not even a wealthy celebrity, is safe from this marriage madness. Quite the contrary, wealthy unmarried celebrity parents like Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Jack Nicholson and others have been singled out for a particularly vicious scapegoating.
I have nothing against marriage. For the record, I’m married and have a 6-year-old son who has benefited immensely from having two parents at home. I am endlessly amazed that so many single parents are able to perform the heroic task of parenting all by themselves. Yet many do.
The sensible question is this: Which is worse for a child–a single, loving and caring parent or two disgruntled parents whose daily tension is palpable and sometimes violently loud, yet they stick it out because marriage is the socially appropriate thing to do? What kind of role modeling is that?
Let’s rethink this. I admire efforts by Colin Powell, conservative social critic James Q. Wilson and others to restore a sense of shame in modern American life. But we need not carpet bomb when a surgical strike will do. Fear of crime, distress over broken families and dismay about welfare dependency has sent us into a frenzy that spurs an appalling variety of excesses, some silly, some tragic.
Instead of making it hard to get divorced, for example, I think we should make it harder to get married. Too many people get married for the wrong reasons. They need counseling and a “cooling off” period to think about more than their passions. Would that encourage more out-of-wedlock parenting?
If so, more rigorous pursuit of deadbeat dads by the states would at least help rescue the children from the threat of poverty.
As for the alleged damage done by day care, a new study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the most extensive ever conducted, shows that, contrary to some earlier studies, the relationship between infants in child care and their mothers is no less secure than that between infants and stay-at-home mothers.
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The fabulously wealthy Madonna need not worry about her baby’s dad becoming a deadbeat. She’s not a teenager seeking a welfare check and emancipation from home. She’s a grown woman and, while still quite a cutie, no spring chicken anymore when it comes to making the baby she says she always has wanted. At last the Material Girl wants to do something that requires serious spiritual growth–and we have a problem with that?
So, leave the lady alone. I don’t want to see a return to the days when Ingrid Bergman was vilified for having a child out of wedlock. Marriage is wonderful. Marriage madness is not.