No, Mary Cheney’s action doesn't set an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational. Young, poor women were having children out of wedlock long before Mary's mother was even born. It isn't Mary's action that sets an example, but our morally bankrupt society as a whole sets the tone which creates a fertile ground for actions like this to flourish.
To point out one individual as the cause celebre for dysfunctional families in America reaches a new low in the arena of melodramatics.
Would Mary's marriage to a financially successful man ensure the wellbeing of her child? Isn't it a fact that Mary's sexual orientation is an impediment to such a relationship, and no marriage to a man would change this fact?
The writer's position is that women shouldn't have children out of wedlock – and I agree with that. However, abortion isn't the solution to remedy such pregnancies.
It is true that a fatherless child might tend to derail, but so are the children of married heterosexual couples. There is more danger to our children's wellbeing from exposure to the sexual escapades and drug filled orgies of our pop culture icons and politicians, as well as the sexually immature antics of pop artists like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, than exposure to a woman choosing to NOT aborting her child.
As I see it, the problem isn't having a child, but the environment in which this child will grow up. Mary is a successful woman, I'm sure she doesn't need welfare or government handouts to raise her child, but it is her sexual orientation that will deprive her child of a a father figure, and he or she will grow up with a distorted sense of what family means.
Is she selfish for doing this? Yes, I believe so, and I might add that she is also wrong, but under such circumstances – being that Mary is a lesbian – marrying a man to have a child wouldn't have changed the view point of the child. As he/she got older, he/she would've realized that his/her mother didn't love nor even like his father, and that she preferred women, resulting in a child's distorted sense of traditional family values.
I agree with your sentiments entirely. Giving Mary Cheney too much credit or heat is misplaced. I don't know why some folks would be unusually fixated by her case.
I absolutely agree, however, the answer is to NOT HAVE A CHILD. just because you are a woman and capable of childbearing doesn't mean that it is ESSENTIAL that you give birth. that is where the selfishness comes in, in this or any case like it, the absolute need to bear a child, just because i can. it can't possibly be to experience the joy of making a child with her partner, because that isn't biologically possible. there is no way to produce a child that is a product of a lesbian relationship. so truly it is all about her and her need to have a child just because she wants to, and can. and i disagree that it is any sense of being better than someone else that has people up in arms on this thread. like i said, i have kids and i talk to them about our culture and what is right and what is wrong. there are far too many WRONG things that need to be explained. my 18 year old daughter was profoundly disappointed to hear this news.