This is nothing more then a thinly vailed Christ-stain attach on our Australian values.
Even the Libs aren't silly enough to take on any of the ideas in this article. The author shuld go live in one of the red states in the US.

"Furthermore there would be an educational disadvantage to children: those living with their biological parents who are married to each other do best in educational outcomes, and children living with single mothers are more likely to live in poverty."

Not quite true - there's no evidence of any difference between children living with both parents in a stable relationship regardless of exact circumstances. The parents can be both biological, one biological, neither biological, mixed-sex or same-sex, it doesn't appear to matter.

There *is* a difference though between children with parents in a stable relationship, and those without. The latter don't do as well, statistically. But individuals differ, a single parent can do as well as a pair, it's just much, much harder for them, and they can do with all the help they can get.

Unfortunately, the situation has been obscured by politically-motivated "junk science" to "prove" that "gay marriage is bad for kids".

"One of the most obvious flaws of Regnerus’s study is that it fails to compare married same-sex parents to married heterosexual parents. Instead, the study lumps together the children all family types that include a gay parent -- regardless of the family’s structure, history, marital status, etc. -- and attempts to compare them to children raised in a “still-intact biological family” (IBF)."

Well done Babette! I likewise am puzzled by the blank refusal to see a connection between the sexual revolution and the rise of the numbers of so called single parents and the poverty that that involves. Secular liberalism has won out to such an extent that the observation that morality has something to do with our lives is strictly forbidden.

I was saddened to read another article in this issue, that of Linda Atkins, and the moral dilemma that she is forced into by acceding to the immorality of human rights. When are we going to see this for the nonsense that it is?

Peter Sellick

Babette Francis... Australia has a younger populations than Europe or Japan, but we won't for much longer if our high abortion rates persist. Economists like Sloan need to make the connection between good economics and good family lives.

Babette does not acknowledge the huge rate of immigration
with numbers enough to people a regional city coming
into Australia every year.

I don't think we are in danger of a population shortage with
35million predicted in the latest Government commission on aging.
And although there may be a few million elderly there will still
be 30million non-elderly from the way I read the figures, anyway.
There will probably be someone who may quibble with a million this
way or that way but it makes no difference to the point I am making
anyway.

I do agree that our children are our cultural and economic future
but a return to the old very flawed institution of marriage is
not necessarily the answer. Half of marriages end in divorce
and a lot of the others stay together out of economic necessity
or just because they are used to each other and it is too hard
to change.

Ah, utter drivel! The general premise of your first two paragraphs is likely valid (let's have a discussion about the moral / social imperatives that underlie our economic decisions) but the remainder was a christian rant, drawing a very long bow between a very narrow set of social circumstances and a catastrophic economic outcome.
I come from a family of six children, my parents are still married after almost 40 years, and the education outcomes of each of the six of us is completely different. We all went to the same primary and high schools and often had the same teachers. Our educational outcomes had absolutely nothing to do with whether our parents were happily married or not.
One of my sisters is a single mother of three and she agrees with the new ruling for single parents to lose any government benefit after their youngest child turns eight. Why shouldn't single parents get 'back' into the workforce like any other parent to demonstrate the value and benefit (economic and otherwise) of work to their children? What better way to show children how to be economic contributors than by being one yourself?
As for the aborted future tax payers... that's a pretty sad sort of argument. Foetuses are not aborted in an effort to thwart the economic future of Australia, they are aborted for many thousands of reasons that is it none of your business to comment on. Better for the unwanted foetus that it does not become an unwanted child (if indeed that is even the reason for the abortion in the first place), and all the social and economic impacts that would bring - to the immediate family and the community as a whole - in the future.