[Prudence]

Someone at another newsgroup I sometimes read says something about not letting the best be the enemy of the good. We use it as applied to medieval recreation -- as in, don't let your quest to replicate the perfect 1547 Flemish gown paralyze you and leave you doing nothing. Rather, make a good recreation and enjoy that and learn from it and you will at least have something.

I think of this everytime this sort of legislation crops up. You know what? I agree that the ideal environment for kids is where they have a parent of each gender who stay married, don't beat each other, don't get fired from their jobs and lay around on the couch in their underwear for 6 years while the kids eat out of dumpsters, don't send their kids out to play in traffic while they pretend they're still kid/carefree, and can model appropriate intergender and interpersonal relationships, while instilling in the child both a sense of self-worth AND a sense of responsibility.

But requiring all parents to be perfect leaves a lot of kids without homes, or parental love, or any positive role-modeling. My parents don't completely fit that mold above, and I probably won't either. Lots of parents are divorced. Do we take away their kids? What about widowed parents? Are the kids who've had a parent die any less vulnerable? Don't they also deserve the perfect man/woman parenting pair?

But the best becomes the enemy of the good. Because another parenting arrangement *might* be best, they want to throw out the good of giving each kid a bed to sleep in that's theirs, a home where they're a person and not a tick mark on a list. Instead they do nothing.

Don't let the best become the enemy of the good.