Consider IVF, for example. When first introduced, it was intended only for otherwise infertile married couples. It is now routinely used to supply children to single mothers and gay and lesbian couples. The suggestion that such untraditional "families" might offer a less than ideal environment within which to raise children is now practically taboo. 

Ball shows himself in complete agreement with the new morality by vehemently disputing the suggestion that technologies such as IVF risk impairing the quality of care that children conceived by their means are likely to receive. Ball writes: 

"This is so astonishingly ignorant that one has to suspect it stemmed from some unvoiced fantasy. There is not [...] any firm evidence that adopted children or stepchildren are less fostered and supported by their parents, despite in this case even the absence of genetic kinship. Nor is there any evidence that this is so for children born of IVF."

Since, for all except married couples, IVF is still a very recent phenomenon, it is far too early to be able to tell what possible effects its use outside marriage might have upon children conceived by it. However, in denying there is any firm evidence that they might fare worse than those raised by both biological parents, Ball betrays astonishing ignorance, or else alarming indifference to due standards of scientific scholarship.

Is Ball truly unaware of the countless studies purporting to cite conclusive evidence that children in general fare best when raised by both parents? If he is, but thinks such studies flawed, why does he not explain where and why they are?  

To refuse even to consider them discredits Ball's entire book. It renders it nothing better than elegant erudite propaganda in the ongoing cultural war against the traditional family and the values and beliefs that have traditionally sustained it.