Think Barbie ever lusted after anyone but Ken? What if Ward had cheated on June, or - gasp! - the Beav was openly gay and wanted to marry Lumpy?

Few issues suffer as much from nostalgic distortion as the history of coupling and family in America. These idealized images from the past tend to reinforce the belief that family life in the United States - what we like to term the “traditional” family - had a golden age, from which it is rapidly falling. Too bad such a traditional family rarely ever existed.

Interesting how, when it comes to something as central to people’s happiness as whom they love, the facts get all screwed up.

National issues Mary Sanchez

Interesting also how, at election time, our shared assumptions about how the family was in those good old days make a nice platform for grandstanding - and not just for conservatives. Barack Obama has taken up the Bill Cosby act of chastising black men for their absence as father figures. A speech he delivered on Father’s Day reprised Cosby’s theme that the troubles of black families are largely self-inflicted.

Both men are no doubt sincere. And a mountain of research shows that the absence of either parent - or suitable surrogates - has real detrimental effects on children. Yet the bad-dad rap is partly political, calculated to show that the speaker is “tough on” the problem. And it misses the context that a whole lot of men, of every race, are now not married to the mother of their children.

Out-of-wedlock births have been bemoaned for generations as a sign that society is about to crumble. Rather than being nostalgic about the past, we as a nation would be better off recognizing that family life has shifted markedly throughout history - and will continue to shift.

The term “sanctity of marriage” is bandied about a lot in these conversations. As if it is the bedrock upon which the nation was founded. Not so.

Historian Stephanie Coontz has studied marriage and families for decades. She aptly notes that throughout its long history, marriage was primarily an economic and political institution, rather than a union of love.

Moreover, her research shows that until the mid- to late 19th century, most Americans were very informal about marriage. Basically if you acted like you were married, society recognized you as such. Common-law marriages were an ordinary, accepted arrangement.

It wasn’t until after the Civil War - when to some it became more of an issue just who was coupling up - that marriage began to be regularized by law. And then it was to keep white people from linking up with Native Americans, black people, mulattos, Filipinos - you get the idea.

Only in more recent times have marriages in the United States been more about love than gathering or keeping wealth and power.

When Obama told a black church congregation, “More than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” he was correct. That’s shocking; men abandoning their children is not a good thing. Also eye-opening is the fact that 40 percent of all births are to unmarried couples.

But there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Years ago, for a mother to be abandoned by her man - who was usually the breadwinner - was to sink into almost hopeless hardship. Today, the default assumption for women is that they are already in the workforce. Only the better off can afford to leave paid work when they become mothers. So when a father leaves, families struggle. But the hardship is not as extreme, and it is sometimes preferable to the costs, physical or psychological, of remaining together.

During the past three or four decades, Coontz points out, there has been a dramatic revolution in the expectations Americans have of marriage. Non-marriage families will become even more prevalent. According to Coontz, the fastest-rising cohabitation rates in the nation are among seniors. Expect this to continue as the huge baby boomer demographic ages. Many will be widowed or divorced but obviously still very interested in a “marriage-lite” arrangement that won’t screw up the inheritance rights of their children by legally marrying.

All of this is not to say that marriage, or some other form of committed relationship, is not preferable; I’d say it is, whether between men and women, women and women, or men and men.

But let’s quit this idealistic notion that in the past family life was some kind of Shangri-La, and let’s stop assuming that the changing scope of things today is all bad. Rather, realize family life moves on a continuum with many forces at play.

There are many ways to address the problem of fathers abandoning their responsibilities. Preaching about morals is just one, and alone it probably won’t do the trick.

Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.