Alright, you seem to be a very oppiniated person. I would like to know what personal experience that you have that makes you believe that you have even the slightest right to write this article. Also, I would like to know when it became the decision of ignorant people like yourself to decide what is best for everyone else. I believe that the only personal experience you have is that someone somehow made you angry with something related to this and this is you retaliating. I would also LOVE to know what research confirms that this information is true, how many families were experimented with, and how many of each kind of family there was. Exactly, your pretty much just talking straight out of your ass. From the personal experience that I do have of both sides of the fence, it is a lot less stressful for the child growing up to live with their parents seperated from one other than for them to have gotten married and have a strained relationship. Also, I am myself a mother who is not married to my daughters father and that dosen't make us any less of parents and my daughter is raised well. We take very good care of her and I know married parents who's children make the wrong decisions as you have listed and many single parents who's children are very intelligent and make good life choices. So, as soon as you get some personal experience at life itself...you should keep your mouth shut and attend to your own affairs and leave everyone else's buisness to theirselves. Oh and just to make you realize how ignorant you are, I'm sixteen years old and I have much more experience and life than you do and I also make sure that I have information to back myself up before I run my mouth.

Get off the line, little girl, you are embarrassing yourself. We are all MUCH older than you. We can read an article and distinguish fact from opinion, something my 6th grade students were learning before I recently retired as a principal. You are reacting in a personal way to an article with statistical information that most of us in the fields working with youngsters know to be factual. I know that I have seen the hurts & hardships these actions/situations bring over my 35 year career, and it is real.

TAXPAYERS will keep their mouths shut and tend to their own affairs when other people's affairs/mistakes don't cost them money.

The point of an opinion article is to express an opinion. The opinion expressed here is that children are generally going to have more difficulty in life if their parents are not married, and that we as a society should be alarmed that so many children are being raised in such homes. I would suggest you re-read the article, looking specifically for the information that the author used to back up her opinion. If you want to make an argument against her assertion, the best way to do so intelligently would be to research the topic and get more information. Personal experience is irrelevant. Statistics speak louder, and the closer you are to the subject, the less objective you will be. This author is not making a personal attack on you or your choices- she is asking society at large how we can prevent situations that will hamper our children's success in life. This is one such situation that, statistically speaking, has shown to cause more problems than it solves. You may well be an excellent parent. That's not a good argument to support all un-wed mothers. There is undoubtedly an un-wed mother somewhere who is not a good parent. Should her experience out-weigh yours simply because it is her own? This is why we examine general trends and numbers- we're looking for a bigger picture.

One more note- you accuse the author of not having personal experience. What you meant was, she doesn't have your personal experience. If you take another look at her article, she states that her own parents were married and that it was a turbulent marriage- she in fact says it would have been better if they had not been married. So in that point, she agrees with you. She also may well be a parent herself- I don't know that she's said either way. You are making assumptions about her competence based on anger- you feel attacked because this article is an argument against un-wed parenting, a situation that you find works just fine for you. Please check back with us in 20 years and tell us how well it's working for you then. STATISTICS will tell you that your parenting experience may have been much better had you waited to have a child with a man that you love and can have a committed relationship (read: marriage) with. Is this criticism? Sure it is. Is it an opinion? Probably. But it's an opinion supported by facts that you just don't like to hear. Final question- did you decide to have a child with a man you had no plan to marry because you felt, in your vast world of experience, that this would be the absolute best environment for your child? My guess is no. Rather than harbor anger about people's observations about your decisions, maybe some day you can choose to be proactive in helping make sure all children are raised in the best situation possible, rather than the most convenient one.

Wow! Sixteen? Who would have thought that one so young could be so wise? We are all so impressed by your amazing experience and the depth of your insights. Not. Yet, I feel we shouldn't be rude, even if you were. Credit where credit is due, it was brave of you to write, despite the fact that you are a nitwit. It's easy for the smart and accomplished and insightful to write, because they write from strength. Sorry, your note just beings out the rude in me. But come on, write it down: 16. Now under that, write down the following: 26. 36. 46. 56. 66. 76. See that last number? That's more or less your life expectancy (if you don't smoke, if you smoke, subtract 15 years). Now, wisdomewise and life experiencewise, where do you think someone on that list rates who is close to that first number? Higher, for sure than someone who is 6. But given the fairly significant difference between someone who is 16 and 26 (someone who is 16 can't even have sex in most states with someone 26 without the older person being at risk of going to jail..)You can't own property, vote, drink or sign a contract. You are not even BARELY an adult. You are PRE ADULT-- by several years. The "opinionated person" you were ranting about is everything you aren't: a married mom, of legal age, an adult with three times your life experience. Even better, she knows how to read, how to look at statistics, how to form opinions based on those statistics. She's smart. You're just pissed because you fall into a demographic (go on, take a minute to look up the definition) that she was saying is bad. She wasn't saying YOU are bad-- she was saying that your situation, multiplied thousands of times, is bad for everyone. And if you think it isn't, then you are not only young and ignorant (which you are, that's okay, we all were, and we survived) but stupid too-- and that's not okay. Grow up. Learning from mistakes is what people do as a society and what people do as individuals as well. I don't hold out much hope for you or your offspring doing much to advance the wisdom of society, but hey, that's the miracle of being a person: you or your kid could surprise us all. Make something of yourself. But the odds do not favor it. You could, however, if you tried really hard, try to learn, grow, become smart and make something of yourself. I hope you do. We all do. Good luck.