Never the Simple Life

Almost no matter which way you turn, today's pop-path is fraught with legal complications.

Good men may be snared by the legal bramble of modern life. Or, as Richard Collier, law prof and author of Fragmenting Fatherhood: A Socio-Legal Study explained (?) in a recent interview:

Now what we see, with the disintegration of the ideal father as the marital father – as a result of such social realities as non-marital births, genetic families spread across households, same-sex couples, assisted reproduction – is a vertical relationship direct to the child, with an increasing tendency to split a bundle of rights and responsibilities between different men.

Others will find such explanations just so much blah, blah, blah as they forge a different trail through life. Among those seemingly ready, able and more than willing to stroll the crooked and wide are Illinois' hairbrain Governor Blagojevich who will, someday, have to explain to his daughters what he was really up to and single dad Camille Bouchard, who a Canadian court has ruled is eligible for child tax credits for taking care of his daughter while he was hanging with his homies in Her Majesty's gaol.

Again, no matter the choices, a father's life is never simple.