Parenting & Family Quote by Leah Ward Sears

Commitment is doing double-duty here: it is framed as both a moral preference and a child-welfare policy. Sears carefully opens with the language of practicality, not chastisement. "Optimum arrangement" sounds like a judge writing an opinion: measured, evidence-flavored, supposedly neutral. That register matters. It lets her smuggle a normative claim (two-parent partnership first) through the doorway of "what's best for kids", a phrase that tends to end arguments because it implies dissent is selfish.

The second clause is the tell. "Not to take anything at all away from women who have to rear their children by themselves" is a prophylactic against the backlash she anticipates. She knows the line between advising stability and condemning single mothers is thin, so she draws it explicitly, almost anxiously. That disclaimer also reveals the subtext: she is speaking into a culture where family structure is politicized, where "personal responsibility" rhetoric often lands hardest on women, and where single parenthood is frequently treated as a social problem rather than a social reality shaped by economics, policy, and unequal gender expectations.

As a judge, Sears isn't just describing choices; she's implicitly underwriting a legal and civic worldview in which marriage (or at least long-term partnership) is the default container for legitimacy. The quote's intent is to sound compassionate while re-centering a traditional ideal. Its effectiveness comes from that balance: a softened reprimand, delivered as concern, buffered by empathy, and calibrated to be defensible in public life.