“The divorced mother of three…”
She is missing, has been for some time, and no one is looking
for her, certainly not in the new style books of modern newspapers.
Now she is a “single parent” and it doesn’t matter to editors how
she got that way or how she came to bear three children, if in fact
she herself bore them. The “Mr. and Mrs.” style of informing
readers of the social condition of those who make news is
disappearing. Marital status no longer matters. An occasional “Ms.”
gets thrown in. But by and large, children, like Topsy, just appear
in news copy.
It is part of the homogenization of society in which there shall
be no distinctions at all one day. Same sex partners won’t have to
be identified as such, not because whatever got them in the paper
has nothing to do with their sexual preference, but because
sexuality itself is being submerged in the blender. It may matter
only to the mortality tables of insurers whether the subject is
male or female because the latter live longer.
This will make the reporters’ job much easier. Just come back
with a name. If the given name is Joseph, chances are the subject
was male, at least in an anatomical sense, and readers will know
that. If Joseph and Gina were killed in an automobile accident and
three children with them were hurt, does it really matter that the
couple was married and those survivors are the fruit of their
union? Not really. Maybe they were “living together” and the
munchkins were the result of some prior experiences. And — well,
you get the point. What business is it of yours anyway what people
do or did in the confines of their own, or even somebody else’s,
bedroom? The important thing is the wreck, the make, year, and
model of the car and, for the truly nit-picking, who was
driving.
Time was if a child’s parents were not married he was a bastard.
(Now we are prone to say “they” were a bastard, bending grammar to
fit the new asexual form.) Today, he is a member of a single parent
family. That’s better, isn’t it?
Television, with its even more relaxed style book (so relaxed it
probably doesn’t have one), enjoys not having to deal in the social
niceties. On the soon-forgotten Nickelodeon program, “My Family Is
Different,” devoted to chastising Americans who still scunner at
the thought of men living as spouses with men and raising children,
or women doing the same, there appeared a New York City fireman who
professed to be homosexual and to have three children who were
occasionally jibed by other children over their father’s sexual
orientation. New York City Firemen are of course among the
currently adored of America because of their valor during the World
Trade Center disaster and his presence in the studio had to be
calculated to add stature to the basic argument which was “it’s
okay.” In keeping with the “keep ‘em guessing ‘cause it’s none of
their business anyway” policies described herein, the hostess never
asked how it was he came to have three children. Had he come to
homosexuality later in life? Or, were they the other guy’s? In
vitro? In hoc signo ignoramous. But it might have added texture to
the simplistic argument that it’s bad for children to tease other
children about adult behavior they cannot control if we knew
something of the fireman’s journey to where he finds himself today,
in a same sex relationship and with children. The argument can be
made and has been that that was not really the object of the show,
anyway, that it was in truth an advertisement for homosexuality,
employing children as the foil.
But we digress. The blender turns and having turned moves on and
not all your piety or wit can untangle a shred of it. Unless some
editor somewhere someday says, “Wait a minute. Let’s tell it as it
is. Let’s revive Mr. and Mrs. Or Miss, if that’s the case. As long
as matrimony is a legal status conferring certain standing, let
this newspaper hew to that.”
It is possible that somewhere in the stacks the “divorced mother
of three” will be found: not simply a “single parent” but a person
with a place and time on the page of life.
