There's a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal titled "This Is Your Brain Without Dad" about the importance of having a father with respect to brain development.Now I admit I'm not much of a statistics girl. I read a lot, so I'm well versed in the latest stats; but I place my stock in common sense and experience. If you read this blog regularly, you know that. Still, this was interesting.

Apparently a German biologist is conducting research on this subject using animals that are typically raised by two parents as compared with one parent. When the animals were deprived of their father, the pups exhibit short and long-term changes in nerve-cell growth on different regions of the brain.

In the two-parent families, the mothers and fathers cared for their pups in similar ways. When the mother was a single parent, the frequency of her interactions didn't change much, which means the pups experienced significantly less touching and interaction than those with two parents.

So I was thinking about this issue with respect to the faux "women's rights" movement - more specifically, how feminists have no problem with single motherhood. In fact they encourage it. It's part of a woman's right to become a mother in any way she deems appropriate: without a father, without staying home, etc. The idea of being married in order to raise children is almost an afterthought. And divorce is considered a fait accompli -- not something we should strive to avoid. Indeed, feminists are the reason there is now a whopping 40% of single mothers in America.

Not only are feminists responsible for this pitiful statistic, they want to support single mothers by adopting policies that encourage it. When Ann Coulter told the truth about single motherhood in her book Guilty, she was of course pilloried by the Left. Feminists don't like facts and statistics; it messes with their plan. But those with open and independent minds can handle the following information from Guilty:

"Of all single mothers in America, only 6.5 percent of them are widows, 37.8 percent are divorced, and 41.3 percent gave birth out of wedlock. The 6.5 percent of single mothers whose husbands have died shouldn't be called 'single mothers' at all. We already have a word for them: 'widows.' Their children do just fine compared with the children of married parents.

According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent of all youth suicides, 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, 71 percent of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse, 80 percent of all prison inmates, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children.

A study cited in the Village Voice produced similar numbers. It found that children brought up in single-mother homes 'are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.' Single motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts.The illegitimacy rate has gone up by more than 300 percent since 1970.

In 1979, only about 600,000 babies were born out of wedlock and one quarter of them were put up for adoption. By 1991, the number of illegitimate births had doubled to 1,225,000 annually, but only 4 percent were allowed to be adopted. By 2003, 1.5 million illegitimate babies were born every year, but less than 1 percent were put for adoption. Not surprisingly, unwed mothers who care enough to give their children up for adoption also come overwhelmingly from responsible backgrounds. They tend to have higher education and income levels and to come from intact upper-middle-class families with highly educated parents."

Finally, this: "According to the US Justice Department crime statistics, domestic abuse is virtually nonexistent for married women living with their husbands."