On Parents

Mary Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, are going to be parents. Pass the popcorn while we watch the right's collective head explode.

I really don't understand the fuss. Cheney and Poe will probably do just fine as parents. Sex and sexual identity have so little to do with good parenting that if I had to name the top 100 traits that good parents exhibit, they wouldn't even make the list.

I do think a two-parent family is crucial but that's more a statement of practicality than ideology. It is damn hard work to raise kids and no matter what anyone says, it's just way easier for everyone involved if you've got more than one person doing it. Bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan, and feeding it to a screaming toddler with a dirty diaper borders on humanly impossible. And no matter how well you do it, you can definitely do it better with a partner.

This is not to say that a male-female unit isn't desirable, especially when raising a child of the opposite sex. For example, I love my son but he's a bit mysterious to me, and me to him. I don't think he'd be damaged goods for not having had a father but I'm glad he gets the experience of having a good one. And that's really the key, right? A good one. We hold the male-female pairing up as the ideal but really there are very few ideal parents. It's almost a moot point from the start.