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Abstract
In this article I argue that public discussions of demographic issues are often conducted
in a troubling pattern in which one extreme position is debated in relation to the
opposite extreme. This pattern impedes our understanding of social problems and is
a poor guide to sound public policies. To illustrate this thesis I use the case of
social scientific research examining how children are affected by not living with
two biological parents while they are growing up. Over the last decade, I maintain,
most of the public, and even many social scientists, have been puzzled and poorly
informed by this debate. In particular I consider Judith Wallerstein's clinically
based claims of the pervasive, profound harm caused by divorce and, at the other extreme,
Judith Rich Harris's reading of behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, which
leads her to dismiss the direct effects of divorce. Neither extreme gives a clear
picture of the consequences of growing up in a single-parent family or a stepfamily.