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There's at least one more possible response:
3. Bring back shotgun marriages. Make impregnation result in an automatic marriage and enforce much stricter rules for divorce in such marriages.
What if someone would rather be a single mother than marry the other person?
Too bad. Vanishingly few would truly rather be a single mother--rather they expect the benefits men normally bring to relationships be provided by society so they don't have to suffer the compromises necessary to make a relationship work. Such selfish entitlement shouldn't be encouraged by society.
Yes, everyone would like a good partner to raise their child. But sometimes the partner may be a net negative. Especially in a scenario where the father wouldn't have married without the law. In this case shouldn't it be allowed for someone to be a single mother? Because it would be better for the child. There are many cases where the traditional benefits men may normally bring to a relationship don't exist. For eg., some people stay unemployed and steal off of their partners. Or they spend all the money, including the one earned by their partner, on their vices like alcohol, gambling, drugs, etc. They also bring a lot of instability to the relationship in many different ways.
In my experience the much more frequent cause of single motherhood is not that the father is a net negative but that the mother is and society is so blinded by unwarranted sympathy for her that it refuses to do anything about it nor let the father, leaving the child to suffer while the mother's poor behavior is continually subsidized.
Yes, but that doesn't have anything to do with this scenario right? Like I said, if the father wants to be in the child's life then court can decide custody. And if the mother is being a net negative, then it is still better that the child have some stability in their life atleast some of the time.
No, it has everything to do with this scenario. Right now the default is single motherhood and the father has to fight in court to change this default. This would make it so that the default is shared parenthood and the mother has to fight in court to change it. She still could be a single mother if she convinces the court that his behavior is bad enough to warrant divorce, but that requires actually demonstrating his bad behavior rather than simply her not wanting to cooperate with him.
Couldn't you make the default to be shared parenthood without the marriage part? I don't see why that can't be done. I don't know what area you live in, but where I live, fathers have a right to raise their children as much as mothers(as per my understanding).
No. Shared parenthood without marriage too easily degrades into single parenthood as the parents are incentivized to sabotage each other to go about their lives independently. Even if it doesn't, being "shared" by two independent households is harmful to children. The default needs to be at least cohabitation and a binding relationship, with the possibility for the courts to adjudicate abnormal situations.
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