It doesn’t have to be one or the other at an individual level, but the social and legal norms we create have aggregate effects, not just individual effects, and we should be able to talk about those as a distinct issue. From 1960 to 2010, in the US, the percentage of kids living apart from their fathers has tripled, and the percentage of kids living apart from their mothers has doubled.

My culture (and that of like 3/4 of the world’s population) says that’s a bad thing for kids and society as a whole. I used to think westerners were enlightened and had the right idea on allowing and encouraging individual freedom in this area, but now I think they’ve got it wrong. And it’s hard to really know without focusing on what’s been the aggregate effect.