I commend Ms Yoffe for tackling a daunting, yet ignored societal crisis. The effects of this crisis are most evident in the social services offices, public schools, juvenile detention centers of America. If one has never visited or taken part there in, one can watch The Wire, Season 4, to get a fictional, yet poignant and masterful portrayal of this crisis. But the difficulty for folks to realize is that the crisis is based on a fundamental 'system error' which people keep minimizing and leaving unresolved.

Poverty, underdeveloped problematic children, crime, drugs, etc. and the other sociological effects are obvious. But the next sticking point is that births out of wedlock are a result of sexual relations. And sexual relations between consenting adults are undertaken under the legal premise of 'personal freedom'. Are people willing to surrender their 'personal freedoms' of having sex outside of marriage? For eons, marriage was the institution wherein sex between man & woman was accepted and expected. And the natural outcome was children with parents and a family, ideally.

Today, "modern society has evolved beyond the archaic idea of marriage". Ok, but the effects of this "evolution" are becoming obvious much like the effects of global warming are becoming increasingly obvious. Millions of irreparably scarred children grow into adults. And what do these adults do?

So it goes back to 'personal freedom' to have sex outside of marriage. Is this a sacred right of an individual eventhough it adversely 'oppresses' the progeny of his and her implementation of this 'right'? And who has a right to tell anyone else how to live their lives?

If you want to take if further, it goes further:

how does MAN, struggling with competing interests (economic profit and greed, political ideological interests, cultural bias, etc) do at concocting "evolving, living systems" of life in realtime?

BTW, I reject the Scandanavian models. The Scandanavian nations are homogenuous, small, rich, have been recipients of America's and Europe's globalization and expansionism with limited risk, and are geographically and politically isolated in comparison to America.

You posed a tough question, Usama. I personally haven't gotten a whole helluva lot out of my personal freedom to have sex any time and with whomever I want to. I think I'd willingly trade it for marriage and family with someone who was loving and congenial. And while I'm too old, some would say, for the dance now, I can go further and say there's not a decade or even a year of my life where that wouldn't have also been true.