Not every "situation" is a "model"

"cohabitation, the single parent relation, and the reconstructed family can be individual choices or situations forced upon a person, but in no case can they be models comparable to the stable union of a man and woman who are married.  It would be more fair to speak of experiences and tendencies of affective association than of the 'pluralism' of contemporary models of the family.  Each person is free, or believes himself free, to live as he pleases—or can; but can society order itself by legitimizing all the situations that would like to present themselves as so many models, when they are in fact symptoms of the disintegration of what holds society together?"

     Tony Anatrella, "Disappearing fathers, destabilized families," trans. from chap. 1 of La différence interdite: sexualité, éducation, violence (Paris: Flammarion, 1998) by Michelle K. Borras, Communio: international Catholic review 36, no. 2 (Summer 2009):  321.