Former vice president Dan Quayle brought the issue of single parenthood into the limelight in the early 1990s, when he criticized the television show Murphy Brown for its positive portrayal of single parenthood. Quayle and a number of other commentators argue that teenagers from single-parent families are more inclined to engage in risky behavior than those from traditional two-parent families. David Popenoe, a critic of single parenthood, maintains that “the decline of fatherhood is a major force behind ...crime and delinquency; premature sexuality and out- of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; [and] depression, substance abuse, and alienation among adolescents.”

Those who allege that single parenthood puts teenagers at risk cite two reasons for their views. First, they claim, children in single-parent families receive half of the attention, supervision, and financial resources as those from two-parent families. Second, critics...