That is, until now. Jennifer Aniston is starring in a new movie, The Switch, about an unmarried woman who gets artificial insemination in order to have a child. “Women are realizing more and more that you don’t have to settle. They don’t have to fiddle with a man to have that child,” she said about the movie. I completely support this position. If a woman finds a husband to have children with, that’s great; if they don’t, it shouldn’t hold them back from having children.
Bill O’Reilly apparently disagrees, though. “There are millions of single mothers who do a great job raising their kids…it’s possible, but it’s not optimum, and that’s where Miss Aniston makes her mistake. That she’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that hey, you don’t need a guy, you don’t need a dad…that’s destructive to our society.”
If O’Reilly had opposed Aniston’s comment based on the fact that she’s glorifying pregnancy and single motherhood for teens, I would grudgingly agree with him, but no. O’Reilly said that she’s wrong because she’s trying to send a message that threatens the nuclear family. (And to add insult to injury he calls her Miss, not Ms. Oy.) Is it so bad if the nuclear family is threatened and eventually destroyed? I don't see that it's such a horrible thing. Shulamith Firestone published her feminist classic The Dialectic of Sex in 1970, and in it she discussed the concept of a new family form where a fetus is sustained in a pod outside of the female and is raised by a family of 8-10 adults. While that's a little radical for today's society, at some point in the future, that could be a way of life. It's gotta start small, and selective single motherhood is only the beginning.
After O'Reilly blasted Aniston, she responded, “Of course, the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs on earth. And, of course, many women dream of finding Prince Charming (with fatherly instincts), but for those who’ve not yet found their Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.” I support this statement too. I don’t see why a one-parent household can’t be considered “optimum,” as O’Reilly put it. I’m an avid watcher of Dr. Phil, and he constantly says that kids would rather come from a broken home than live in one. Why should a woman settle with a man that isn’t up to her standards to have a child, or go without the joy of motherhood because she can’t find a husband?
I dub Bill O’Reilly a Black Hole of Davida for his misogynistic comments, and I induct Jennifer Aniston into Shining Stars of Davida for her positive comments about single motherhood.
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