Increasingly the news media, along with televised entertainment, have been paying attention to experimental romantic and familial arrangements: polyamory, “throuples,” communes, and the like. Naomi Schaefer Riley, focusing on two recent magazine articles on the subject, notes a glaring omission:

In the thousands of words expended by Andrew Solomon in his piece on polyamory, not one is about the well-being of the children raised in these environments. . . . [H]e never feels the need to ask one child about living with a rotating case of unrelated adults or look at the research on the greater risks to kids living in these unusual arrangements.

At the Embassy, [a] communal-living building in San Francisco, we learn that this arrangement has actually led some people to give up on their actual families. Take Seth Frey, who “used to live in a house with a wife and a child. He decided that he preferred community and separated from his wife, but his son has not yet spent time with him at the Embassy.” Then [the author of the article] offers this aside: “The current members haven’t reached a consensus about kids.”

Are these authors really suggesting that we should consider such communities as viable future living arrangements for Americans when they can’t decide what they even think about children? What kind of future is this?

It is most certainly one that is geared toward the whims of single young adults. . . . Indeed, what the residents adore about communal living is exactly what may harm kids; . . . the reason that the residents of these communities like them is exactly the reason they are not suitable for children. But in the communities of the future, it seems, children are an afterthought.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.