Brave New Families

A major cultural milestone appeared the other night.

ABC’s Nightline aired a segment featuring…get this…a gay male couple who are raising triplet newborns that they acquired by way of renting one woman’s womb to incubate the fertilized egg they bought from another woman. And the whole show was set as “Oh…isn’t this sweet?”

My remarks were inserted into the story as “Oh, and there are some folks who don’t think this is such a good idea.”

I told the producer for the segment that our nation did this same thing as we were entering the no-fault divorce experiment with family in the early 70s, lots of hyped-up happy talk about how this would be so good for the adults and the children because it would create more, better families of love. Thirty years after that experiment played itself out, very few sociologists and psychologists who study such things believe that increased divorce really improved the lives of adults and children.

The past gives us guidance for the future, if we are smart enough to listen and learn.