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BE A MAN, GET A WIFE
Oh, say it ain't so, Dave!
When Britney got married-and-annulled in a Las Vegas minute, the headlines screamed. It was not just the standard anti-Hollywood moralizers. Pundits, talking heads and (judging from my mail) lots of regular people wanted to moralize that because Britney acted like, well, a 22-year-old pop tart, marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples. The state of Gwyneth Paltrow's womb was a matter of intense public interest. Elizabeth Hurley's spontaneous pregnancy grabbed similar public space.
But when a Midwestern icon (and at 56, a grown man) like David Letterman has a baby out of wedlock with his long-time girlfriend? Yawn. Silence.
This week Letterman made a surprise appearance on "The Howard Stern Show," where he talked about career ("I used to think I'd make some big deal about walking away and all that; now I'll just wait until they fire me"), fatherhood ("I wasn't prepared for the fact he'd be so amusing") and marriage.
Why hasn't he married the mother of his child? "I had one (marriage) years ago, and I suppose one day it'll happen again," Letterman responded desultorily.
David Letterman is a guy who makes a living off the clash between his reticent Midwestern persona and the zany life in the big city. So why does Dave get this great big pass on the whole marriage question? Because he's a guy? Because he's rich? Because at least he's living with his girlfriend and, well, what more can you expect in this day of deadbeat dads?
David Letterman, it turns out, is riding the crest of a big trend. Even as rates of divorce drift downward and illegitimacy rates overall are tapering off, a growing proportion of new parents are cohabiting rather than marrying. In 1999, 6 percent of children lived with cohabiting parents, almost double the proportion 10 years earlier. About 40 percent of these children are living with both biological parents (and indeed about half of all unwed births now are to single moms living with their boyfriends).
Does it matter? Research on child well-being in intact, cohabiting families is a fairly new field. Eighty percent of children in such families are under the age of 6, in part because these families are two to three times more likely to break up in a child's early years than married families. But the preliminary evidence strongly suggests that, even when cohabiting families stick together, children don't fare as well on average as when they are blessed with a mother and father who got and stay married.
That makes sense, if you think about it. What is a man saying when he marries? That he and his child and the child's mother are one family unit, and they will be his most important priority; that he will be faithful to his wife, and that he will share his time, love, energy and money. People don't always live up to their ideals, but it helps to begin with the right idea.
By contrast, when a man refuses to marry, what is he saying? Something like this: "I reserve the right to find someone better in the future, which includes the right to break up this family, the right to make love and children with another woman in the future. And by the way, my money is my own. What I choose to share with you, I hope you'll be grateful for." Naturally, no decent guy would say things like that out loud to the woman who is having his baby. But actions speak far louder than words, and so does inaction.
When it comes to having a baby, David Letterman confessed that at first, he was not totally enthusiastic, "But when he showed up, everything changed."
Dave, don't let him down. Be a man: Get a wife.
(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at maggiecontact@Yahoo.com.)
