Ethics News
News: Family
>> = Important Articles; ** = Major Articles
**Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child (townhall.com, 100527)
**Government, Yes! God and Parents, No! (townhall.com, 100223)
**Your Brain Without Dad (Christian Post, 100101)
More homes in U.S. go solo (Washington Times, 050817)
The True Path to Love? Sorting Out the Options (Christian Post, 051021)
California’s assault on the family (townhall.com, 051114)
Joseph in the Stable: The Importance of Fathers (Christian Post, 061231)
America’s Emerging Family Problems Not New to World, Says Expert (Christian Post, 070320)
Traditional marriage continues slide, Statistics Canada says (National Post, 070912)
Pro-family Group Identifies Worst Offenders of Faith, Family Values (Christian Post, 071224)
Study: Parenthood Does Not Make for Active Churchgoers (Christian Post, 100525)
==============================
by Marybeth Hicks
If you’re a parent, you’re probably too busy doing the day-to-day work of raising your children to worry about an international treaty that could actually undermine your authority over them.
But if you’ve ever insisted that your teenager drag himself out of bed on a Sunday morning to attend church with the family, or required him to find a part-time job to pay for the increase in your car insurance, or – heaven forbid – if you’ve ever spanked a young child for an act of willful disobedience, there are folks who’d like to override your parental judgment.
Folks like President Obama, in fact.
The issue of parental rights is at the heart of the ongoing debate over the US’s failure to ratify the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Mr. Obama thinks it’s a travesty that the US and Somalia – a country not known as a beacon of human rights – are the only two nations that haven’t ratified this treaty. Not only does he support its intrusions into our national sovereignty on behalf of children, he’s openly embarrassed to be on the short list with Somalia.
Up to now, it’s been a worried American homeschool community that most vocally opposes the CRC. That’s because the treaty clearly places responsibility for the education of children in the hands of the federal government. Such a mandate would certainly threaten the freedom of states to allow, and of parents to choose, homeschooling as an option to educate their children.
But it’s not just homeschooling parents who ought to be nervous about the CRC. We all should because the language of the treaty – which would supersede all American law other than the Constitution – radically changes the authority structure between parents, children and the state. In short, in line after line, it applies the standard of “the best interests of the child” to determine what’s permissible and what isn’t.
For example, the treaty creates “the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” So if your child doesn’t want to go to a religious school, the law would favor his preference, not your desire to instill your faith.
It prohibits “arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy,” which means you’d better not snoop in your son’s pockets while sorting the laundry. This could literally be illegal, and too bad if you find something to set off your parental alarm.
In fact, in Scotland, a CRC nation, a pamphlet for Scottish children explaining how they are helped by the treaty says, “In Scotland, the law recognises that your parents should normally be the people who care for you, if it’s the best thing for you.”
That’s very different from a provision that might say, “You have the right to the protection and care of your parents and can only be removed from your family if you are the victim of abuse or neglect.” The reason it doesn’t read this way is because that’s not what the CRC intends.
And who decides what’s “the best thing”? Take a guess.
It makes sense that the US stands nearly alone in refusing to ratify this treaty, since we live in the safest, most prosperous, most desirable country in which to be a child.
The CRC makes sense in places where girls can be sold into marriage at age 10, or where children are routinely victims of the sex trades, or of child labor abuse.
But in the US, the only logical reason to sign the CRC is to expand, through that new “international order” the president mentioned this past weekend, the role of the federal government into the daily lives and decisions of American parents and families.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced S.R. 519, opposing ratification of the CRC. He hopes to find 34 co-sponsors and thereby signal to the president that there’s no need to send the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent since it wouldn’t pass. This is the end-run play; the game winner is a Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
It’s a good time to call a Senator or two and encourage them to join in co-sponsoring Sen. DeMint’s resolution.
==============================
by Dennis Prager
One of the major differences between the right and the left concerns the question of authority: To whom do we owe obedience and who is the ultimate moral authority?
For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-Christian values), followed by parents. Of course, government must also play a role, but it is ultimately accountable to God and it should do nothing to undermine parental authority.
For the left, the state and its government are the supreme authorities, while parental and divine authority are seen as impediments to state authority.
Let’s begin with God.
From Karl Marx — “man is God;” “religion is the opiate of the people” — to today’s left in America and elsewhere, God and God-based religion, specifically Judaism and Christianity (Islam, too, but in the West, Islam has played little role) have been the primary obstacles to leftist victory.
That is why the further left a government or an ideology, the more it has opposed religion. The first targets of Lenin and Stalin were churches, synagogues and clergy. At the modern Western university, the epicenter of leftist ideology, the same has held true. A clear, if unstated, goal of modern liberal arts education is that as few college graduates as possible hold values rooted in traditional Judaism or Christianity.
This also explains the left’s passion about maintaining and furthering secularism — under the banner of “separation of church and state.” Anything — any value, any idea, any person — rooted in Judeo-Christian values must be confined to as narrow a place in society as possible.
That is largely why there is such intense leftist opposition to the pro-life position. Since most opposition to abortion (when the mother’s life is not threatened) emanates from religious values, “pro-life” means that transcendent values are authoritative, not a woman’s wishes.
It is the major reason for left-wing loathing of those who oppose embryonic stem cell research: That opposition usually emanates from religious sources and therefore places Judeo-Christian values higher than science’s capabilities.
It explains leftist opposition to even mentioning God in public schools — students must graduate as secular as possible.
It is not secularism that animates those positions; it is leftism.
One proof is that there are many secular people who are not on the left. Prominent examples include Wall Street Journal editorial and opinion page writers and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer.
Take, for example, Krauthammer’s position on embryonic stem cell research. Though Krauthammer is secular, he opposed creating human embryos for the sake of stem cell research — a position all the more noteworthy in light of his own paralysis as a result of a spinal cord injury incurred as a young man.
Another proof that it is leftism, not secularism, that animates the left’s attacks on Judeo-Christian public expressions and influence on public policy is that when left-wing positions are enunciated by religious spokesmen, the left supports them. Clergy that are anti-war, “green” or for same-sex marriage, for example, are celebrated by the left.
Many left-wing Jews and Christians believe in God. But the God that most leftists believe in is the same in name, not in characteristics. The God left-wing believers affirm is largely a non-judging God, a loving friend in heaven (or increasingly likely, in nature). He is found in trees much more than in moral demands.
The second most powerful obstacle to the state and government assuming primary authority is parents.
It was no meaningless phrase when baby boomers on the left declared, “Never trust anyone over 30.” Who was over 30? First and foremost, their parents.
As with religion, the further left the state or ideology, the more it seeks to undermine parental authority. In the Soviet Union, Komsomol, the Soviet Youth League substituted for parents. Mao, too, did what he could to destroy the family’s authority. Although no way comparable to Stalin or Mao, the American and European left also seek to undermine parental authority.
The battle over parental notification in the case of abortion is primarily about parental authority.
The battle over sex education in schools is largely about that, too — who gets to teach youth about sexuality and homosexuality? Parents or schools (i.e., the state)?
The battle over school vouchers is in large measure also a battle over governmental authority versus parental authority. Who gets to choose where one’s child attends school — the state or the parent? The battle over who gets to actually educate our children has already been lost to the state in the vast majority of cases. It is why the left is so uncomfortable with home schooling — parents, not the state, get to teach children.
As the late James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth University, said in a commencement address in 2002, the purpose of a college education is “to question your father’s values.”
Just as the left has substituted the authority of the state for the authority of God, it has substituted the authority of the state for that of parents. And just as God has been reduced to a non-judging, non-disciplining pal, so, too, the left wants parents to become non-judging, non-disciplining pals of their children.
In a nutshell, the left wants to have ever-expanding authority over people’s lives through ever-expanding governmental powers. It does so because it regards itself as more enlightened than others. Others are either enemies (the right) or unenlightened masses. It is elected by demonizing its enemies and doling out money and jobs to the masses.
==============================
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Do children need fathers? Fascinating research on that question is reported by Shirley S. Wang of The Wall Street Journal. Anna Katherina Braun, a German biologist, has been working with colleagues to understand the biological impact of single parenting. Her research has focused on the degu, a small rodent that is a distant relation to the guinea pig.
The research indicates that little degus raised without dads “exhibit both short-and long-term changes in nerve cell growth in different regions of the brain.” The research also reveals that “fatherless degu pups exhibit more aggressive and impulsive behavior than pups raised by two parents.” Sound like anyone you know?
The specifics:
The researchers then looked at the neurons-cells that send and receive messages between the brain and the body-of some pups at day 21, around the time they were weaned from their mothers, and others at day 90, which is considered adulthood for the species.
Neurons have branches, known as dendrites, that conduct electrical signals received from other nerve cells to the body, or trunk, of the neuron. The leaves of the dendrites are protrusions called dendritic spines that receive messages and serve as the contact between neurons.
Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.
The end result can be a pup without normal cognitive and emotional function that experiences brain activity like “a horse without a rider.” Since the basic wiring of the brain is similar in both the human child and the degu pup, Dr. Braun believes that a very similar process is likely to emerge in the brains of fatherless children. Even so, the human brain is far more complex.
Similar research at the University of Ottawa has found a similar pattern in young voles (another rodent). As a result, it appears that biological evidence now exists that would suggest that fatherless children (and especially boys?) are at greater risk of cognitive and emotional instability - and eventual delinquency - without dad in the home.
Of course, we should not need biological studies to demonstrate and validate what we should already know - children need fathers in the home. The epidemic of fatherlessness has brought disaster on a society-wide scale, and has brought harm into the lives of millions of young children, both boys and girls.
Girls raised with biological fathers in the home begin to menstruate at later ages than girls without a father in the home. Boys raised without dad are far more likely to drop out of school, be arrested, be unemployed, and be designated as delinquent. In sum, fathers matter.
Christians recognize this as a theological matter, long before we consider biology. We know that the Creator’s intention in marriage and the family is for children to have both mother and father. One of the most vulnerable designations in the Bible is the fatherless.
So, read the reports on biological research with interest and connect the dots from the data to the biblical worldview. This is about far more than young degus and voles. This is about the lives of children who deserve both mom and dad.
==============================
Single-adult households have displaced two-parent families with children as the most common kind of U.S. household, the Census Bureau reported yesterday.
The change demonstrates “the growing complexity” of American households, researchers said in a new report, “Examining American Household Composition: 1990 and 2000.”
“It’s breathtaking how many people still think that the ‘mom, pop and two kids’ is the majority of households,” said Peter Francese, the founder of American Demographics magazine.
Nuclear-family households — two married parents and a child — were the most common as recently as 1990, when there were 25 million such households.
But by 2000, nuclear-family households fell to second place, both because there were almost a half-million fewer of these type of homes and because the number of single-adult households surged past 27 million.
Married households without children remained the third most common, with 20 million in 1990 and 22 million in 2000.
Mr. Francese, who has studied U.S. demographic trends for 35 years, said single-adult households are continuing to grow and might even hit 34 million by the 2010 census.
This is because people are most likely to live alone “at either end of the life cycle” — in youth or as senior citizens — he said, and baby boomers are just starting to move into their 60s.
The sex disparity — more women live alone than men — is also likely to continue, he said. Women are most likely to live alone because of the death or divorce of a partner. Already, among those 65 or older, there are 6 million more women than men.
In contrast, he said, men are most likely to live alone if they’ve never married, and both widowers and divorced men are likely to find a partner.
However, not all of those adults living alone are living completely alone, said Mr. Francese, who tracks trends for the Ogilvy & Mather marketing communications firm.
Professional, commuter couples might live alone during the week, but share weekends together, he said. Single parents might regularly have their children in the home, and single adults might have lengthy visits from friends or lovers.
“There is a tremendous diversity in this [living-alone] group,” he said.
In its report, the Census Bureau also found an increase in multigenerational households.
Fifty-five percent, or 57.7 million of the 105 million U.S. households, had only one generation living in it, researchers wrote, referring to a person who lives alone or who lives with a spouse, unmarried partner or sibling.
However, 41% of households included people from two generations, such as a child or a grandparent, and 3.9% of households had three generations. The latter category saw the most dramatic growth, rising from 3 million multigenerational households in 1990 to 4.1 million in 2000.
The bureau offered details on the “top 20” types of living arrangements because those represented 92% of all U.S. households. However, the nation’s broad diversity in living arrangements can be seen in the 786,000 possible household combinations that the bureau now tracks, researchers said.
==============================
The issues of dating, courtship, and marriage have become hot-button concerns among American evangelicals—and especially among young people, their parents, and those who would minister among them. This much is clear: The model of dating, “hooking up,” and romantic involvement that prevails in the larger culture is incompatible with the Christian understanding of marriage, love, sex, and romance.
So, what are Christians to do? In one sense, Joshua Harris lit the fuse on the current discussion with the publication of his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye in 1997. Since the publication of Harris’s book, writing books on courtship and dating has become something of a cottage industry among evangelicals.
Now, Alex Chediak attempts to clear the air with the publication of Five Paths to the Love of Your Life: Defining Your Dating Style. Chediak hopes to assist parents and young people as they try to determine a truly Christian model for the development of romantic relationships in preparation for marriage.
Chediak is currently an apprentice at The Bethlehem Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota under the direction of Dr. John Piper. While serving in Nevada as a pastoral intern, Chediak had presented a series of messages on singleness, romance, and biblical wisdom to a local congregation. In the process of preparing those messages, he encountered the very confusion he now attempts to clarify.
Chediak has pulled together a top-rank team of writers, each of whom has given serious thought to these questions. Some are already publicly identified with these concerns, while readers may be introduced to at least some of these authors for the first time.
In Five Paths to the Love of Your Life, Chediak brings together authors Lauren F. Winner, Douglas Wilson, Rick Holland, Jonathan Lindvall, and Jeramy and Jerusha Clark. Through these authors, the book introduces the reader to five different “paths” toward romance, love, and marriage. This much is clear—Five Paths to the Love of Your Life will plow new ground and prompt many energetic conversations.
“Deep down inside, many Christians are frustrated with their dating experiences,” Chediak advises. “They’ve been wounded. They’ve given in to sexual temptation. They’ve compromised their standards to avoid being lonely. They know, instinctively, that it should not be this way. Most do not desire to position themselves for lifelong singleness, but very few know how to go about finding true, lasting, committed, exclusive love.” Thus, “This book is here to help.”
The structure of the book allows each of the five “paths” to be presented with both theoretical explanation and practical application. Readers are almost certain to find some questions unanswered in these presentations, but this book offers a fair and informative analysis that will inform and prompt further thinking.
Lauren F. Winner argues for what she calls “the countercultural path” to love. Winner is perhaps the most interesting writer to be included in this collection. Just a few years ago, her writings on the issue of unmarried sex sparked considerable controversy in evangelical circles. Her new book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, offers a truly counter-cultural perspective on human sexuality. Clearly, Winner has been thinking seriously about these issues, even as she has spoken openly about her own spiritual pilgrimage and intellectual path.
From the onset, Lauren Winner offers the most comprehensive cultural analysis of dating, courtship, and the big picture. In a very helpful section of her chapter, she traces the historical development of dating, offering the interesting insight that dating has served to weaken the role of girls and women in the romantic equation. When the female (or her parents) held the power to determine whether young men would be allowed to come “calling” on her at the family home, the young woman had considerable protections, as well as considerable opportunities to make certain that the relationship did not get out of control. Dating, defined in contemporary American life as a couple going out and spending money—with the romantic context now explicitly outside of the home and the male in almost total control of the setting—changed the picture significantly.
Winner’s “countercultural path” is based in an embrace of chastity, community, love, and marriage. Chastity, she admits, “is one of those uncomfortable, old-fashioned, exceedingly churchy words.” Nevertheless, “it is unavoidable when talking about Christian dating.” She acknowledges the pervasiveness of sexuality within the ambient culture, but insists that chastity stands at the very center of a truly Christian vision. Chastity, of course, “means reserving sex for marriage and safeguarding marital sexuality.” Thus, Winner’s path to true romance, love, and marriage starts in a rebellion against the promiscuity of a generation now accustomed to “hooking up” and to references such as “friends with benefits.”
Winner also pushes her countercultural agenda by insisting that community must also be involved. She roots this in a Christian vision of the church as the believing community, drawn together in obedience to Christ and encouraging one another to faithfulness. “Our surrounding society tells us that marriage is a private endeavor,” she acknowledges, “that what happens between husband and wife behind closed doors is no one else’s concern. But in Christian terms, marriage is not merely for the married, it is also for the church, because marriage hints at and reminds us of the eschatological union between Christ and the church.”
Love, she reminds, “is not merely—or even primarily—an emotion.” That is a profoundly countercultural (and profoundly biblical) assertion. Looking beyond the initial experience of love, Winner acknowledges that all dating “involves, at least implicitly, the question of marriage.”
Yet, beyond her incontrovertibly countercultural guidelines, the reader is likely to be left somewhat confused about what Winner would have Christian young people to do. She clearly wants them to be motivated by the Great Commandment, understanding that our primary duty is to love God and then to love our neighbor, but Winner does not suggest any particular structure for dating or courtship. She does state that “breaking up or even dating for the sake of dating isn’t necessarily improper.”
The very next chapter indicates just how controversial that assertion has become. In “The Courtship Path,” Douglas Wilson, of New St. Andrews College in Idaho argues for a more traditional model of courtship. In Wilson’s understanding, “courtship is the active, involved authority of the young woman’s father in the formation of her romantic attachments leading to marriage.” Wilson’s vision is rooted in a biblical understanding of patriarchy and will take the reader into an even deeper rebellion against the prevailing culture.
“In the everyday biblical circumstance, sons leave and daughters are given,” Wilson explains. “A Christian father, therefore, has the duty to live for his wife and daughters in such a sacrificial and Christlike way that they see that he always has their best interests at heart, and having their best interests at heart means that he has a biblical responsibility to look sideways and squinty-eyed at any suitor that comes around.”
Why? Wilson understands the nature of male desire and the romantic equation. “When a guy singles out a young woman in some romantic fashion, this means one of two things is happening. Either he is trying to get her into bed dishonorably, or he is attempting to get her into bed honorably. In either case, there is a sexual element involved.”
Wilson understands that his patriarchal approach runs into head-to-head conflict with the contemporary egalitarian values of the culture. But what he is calling for is represented by parents who genuinely love and respect their children, and want the very best for them—not an overbearing patriarch who exercises his will by whim.
Rick Holland, pastor of College and Student Ministries at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, argues for what he calls “the guided path.” Holland, who also teaches at the Master’s College and Seminary, writes out of vast experience in working with young people and their parents. His wise advice that Christians should avoid endless debates over terminology is grounded in his pastoral experience and in the fact that he is certain that the Bible speaks adequately to how Christians—both young persons and parents—should understand the challenge of romance and love.
Holland offers “ten principles for a God-centered relationship” that he uses to guide those in his own ministry. His principles cover the waterfront from character and the involvement of parents to contentment and the proper relationship between men and women according to Scripture. His principles protect the integrity of marriage and are intended also to guard the moral purity and emotional integrity of the young people involved in establishing romantic relationships.
“We live in a world stained by sin,” Holland reminds. “No relationship system can undo the personal and cultural consequences of our depravity. The only hope for us is in the death of Jesus Christ and the gift of His righteousness.” Therefore, given the fallenness of the world and the sinfulness of human beings, young people should be guided by Scripture (and by their parents) in applying biblical principles to courtship.
Jonathan Lindvall, a well-known proponent of homeschooling, house churches and presenter of “Bold Christian Youth Seminars” around the nation, proposes the most tightly structured option found in the book. His “betrothal path” is rooted in his conviction “that God ordained betrothal and marriage to reveal something about His heart that no other metaphor reveals.”
Lindvall helpfully defines biblical betrothal as “a covenant relationship that defines the process between singleness and marriage.” As in the Bible, this covenant is as irrevocable as marriage but does not yet authorize sexual union. “The betrothal period is a season of preparation for marriage—particularly for preparing one’s heart,” he explains.
The betrothal path requires the active involvement of parents, who protect their children until they are ready for covenant commitment and an irrevocable commitment to marriage. The goal is to present a husband and wife who are sexually undefiled and free from the emotional damage of previous entanglements.
Jeramy and Jerusha Clark argue for the least structured option, “the purposeful path.” They urge that Christians should not adopt a definition of dating that is so restrictive that they must “turn down opportunities to enjoy the company of the opposite sex” simply because the context does not fit their definition. Nevertheless, they also argue that Christians should not accept such a broad definition of dating that would serve to excuse “worldly ways of interacting with the opposite sex.” The Clarks insist that teenagers should accept the authority and rules set by parents, but their main concern is that young people should exercise “forethought, good judgment, and good communication” in order to date wisely.
Until the publication of Five Paths to the Love of Your Life, readers were required to assemble a small library of individual volumes in order to consider the arguments represented by these five positions. Of course, these five “paths” are only a hint of how this issue is being debated, discussed, and developed among evangelical Christians. Nevertheless, it is an invaluable introduction.
I am greatly encouraged to see this discussion emerge, and now is the time for Christians to address these questions seriously, soberly, and scripturally. The rejection of the prevailing secular model of dating and the emergence of a Christian conversation about courtship is a sign of hope. Five Paths to the Love of Your Life will be helpful to young people, their parents, and church leaders. The book is almost surely to become text for group study in many local churches and student ministries. But this discussion shouldn’t start or stop there. Parents should read this book, put it in the hands of their teenagers and young adult children, and use this framework in order to define and develop their own biblical understanding — even as they exercise their responsibility to lead their own children into maturity.
_______________________________________________
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
==============================
by Star Parker [comments by Kwing Hung: a black conservative]
November has been a banner month so far in California for assaulting the traditional family. Last Tuesday, California voters rejected Proposition 73, which would have required parental notification before allowing a minor to receive an abortion. The week before, California’s wacko 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that parents do not have “exclusive” right in their children’s sex education.
Now, in the state of California, a 15-year-old girl has full and exclusive sovereignty over the production and destruction of life. However, her 40-year-old parents have only limited jurisdiction over the values that this child learns and how she lives her life.
The absurdity speaks for itself.
Aside from the angst that comes from watching the long-term implosion of a society, I have immediate concerns that California’s assault on the traditional family is simultaneously an assault on blacks and the poor.
The nation’s highest rate of teen abortions is among blacks. It is more than double the national average and more than three times higher than the rate among whites.
Data compiled by the Heritage Foundation show that teens from homes headed by single, never-married women are twice as likely to be sexually active than teens from homes headed by married couples. Black children are three times more likely than white children to be living in a single-parent household and are three times more likely to be poor.
So despite arguments from Planned Parenthood and other liberal advocates that inserting government between parents and their children protects children, things are quite the opposite. The reality of the black community is testimony that the formula for keeping children poor, and assuring that their children will be poor, is to destroy the integrity of the family.
Government subsidization and protection of irresponsible behavior has gotten blacks into the social black hole in which they now find themselves. Black kids are not suffering because they need more rights. They are suffering because they are not learning, from an early age, about responsibilities and consequences.
It’s not an accident that in polling before the Proposition 73 vote, blacks supported the initiative. It’s also not an accident that 75% of blacks supported the ban on gay marriage that passed in Texas in the week past.
Blacks are increasingly appreciating that the No.1 challenge in our community is the restoration of family. This is a challenge under any circumstances. All the more so today, in the midst of a prevailing culture that increasingly goes in the opposite direction in the values it promotes.
The 9th Circuit Court ruling upheld a decision by a local school district to ask kids ages 7 to 10 to respond to a questionnaire asking explicit questions about their sexual feelings.
Parents sued claiming that the school had intruded on their fundamental right to “control the upbringing of their children” regarding matters of values and sex.
No, said the court. Parents have no “exclusive” right here. The school is their partner in raising their children. According to the court’s Justice Reinhardt, parents have no right “to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so.”
This is a supposedly free country, right? However, you don’t have a choice whether to send your kid to school. And, if you don’t have resources, you don’t have a choice but to send your kid to a public school where, certainly in California, the government will be your partner in teaching your kid values.
The very decision of the court tells you what values the government will teach. Marginalize the traditional family and have Justice Reinhardt, or his equivalent, join you as the co-parent of your kids.
Poor black kids, already coming from broken homes, are forced into broken schools where they are taught the very values that will increase the probability that they will stay poor, as will their children. And liberals think they are our friends?
Blacks see and feel the crisis. We are trying to rebuild our families and communities.
==============================
By Ken Connor
Earlier this week, churches around the world marked the birth of Jesus Christ. In celebrating this joyous event, many congregations read the account of Christ’s nativity from the Gospel of Matthew. Though most Christmas cards and paintings appropriately emphasize the relationship between mother and child, Matthew’s gospel highlights the role of another main character: Christ’s earthly father, Joseph. According to Scripture, Joseph was a righteous man who planned to quietly divorce Mary (to save her from public humiliation) when she was found pregnant before their marriage was consummated. Before Joseph could leave, however, an angel of the Lord appeared to him explaining that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Following the angel’s instructions, Joseph took Mary home and raised Jesus as his son.
God, the Heavenly Father, ensured that His Son had a human father. This, of course, was not technically necessary. God could have easily sent Gabriel to Mary before she was engaged to Joseph. Because no human father was involved in the conception of Christ, the character of Joseph may seem superfluous. Yet in God’s wisdom, Joseph was there with Mary in the manger. Jesus was obedient to Joseph as a child (Luke 2:51), and, no doubt, learned to be a carpenter by following Joseph’s example. Even though Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, God apparently regarded the role of an earthly father sufficiently important that he made provision for His Son to have one. Today, our post-modern culture minimizes the role that fathers play, and, in many instances, has reduced fatherhood to the role of a mere “inseminator”.
Recently the Washington Post ran an article entitled “My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor”, written by an eighteen year-old girl named Katrina Clark whose mother was artificially inseminated. Miss Clark described how she was angry for many years about the fact that she did not know even minor details about her father. “I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the ‘parents’—the adults who can make choices about their own lives,” Miss Clark wrote. “The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his ‘donation.’ As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?”
Clark answers this question with a simple “no.” She says that when she was young she would “daydream about a tall, lean man picking me up and swinging me around in the front yard, a manly man melting at a touch from his little girl. I wouldn’t have minded if he weren’t around all the time, as long as I could have the sweet moments of reuniting with his strong arms and hearty laugh. My daydreams always ended abruptly; I knew I would never have a dad.” Miss Clark even describes being jealous of other school children who were raised in broken families because at least they had fathers that they occasionally saw.
Katrina Clark’s entire article is well worth careful reading. Her overall point is clear: it is not irrelevant whether or not a child has a father. When a child does not have a father, that child lacks something important. True, sometimes a tragedy occurs that renders a child fatherless. Some fathers die young, others desert their families. Historically in these circumstances the community would step in to help the mother, and provide the child with healthy father figures whenever possible. It was never considered noble to intentionally have a child out of wedlock, regardless of the woman’s desire for motherhood. The needs of the child were put first.
Today, many people have false illusions about fatherhood, imagining that it is entirely optional. Some people have had negative experiences with their own fathers, and they therefore assume that their children will do better without a potentially negative male influence. Social scientists do not share these false illusions about fatherhood. In category after category—poverty, health, education, crime, drug use, teen pregnancy—children with fathers are healthier than children who are raised by single parents.
Though the benefit of having a married father and mother are now well known, the incidence of fatherlessness continues to rise. This fact was highlighted in another recent Washington Post article which found that 69% of black children are born to single mothers. Many young black men have no role models when it comes to fatherhood because they do not know their own fathers. In some families, many generations of children grow up without any positive male figures in their lives.
This fact is not only a tragedy, it is an injustice. As a society, we should strive to ensure that every child has a mom and a dad. When this does not happen, we should see it as a regrettable failure, not a clever new type of family structure. It is a tragedy when it happens in the inner city because of family breakdown, and it is also a tragedy when it happens in upper class communities where aging women decide to go forward with motherhood even when they have not yet found a husband. It is not that such women do not have what it takes to be a mother—they do. The problem is that they do not have what it takes to be a father. When we, for selfish reasons, try to redefine the norm of two parent families, it is the child who suffers.
God, in his wisdom, did not deprive his Son of a human father. As wonderful as Mary was, God apparently felt that there were some things she could not give her son—things that were important to Jesus’ upbringing. Therefore, on Christmas day, the holy family huddled close together in the manger: mother, father and child. It was a good model then, and it’s a good one now. We abandon it at our peril—especially at the peril of our children.
___________________________________________________
Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case. Connor was formally President of the Family Research Council, Chairman of the Board of CareNet, and Vice Chairman of Americans United for Life.
==============================
A ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that municipal employers have the right to censor the words “natural family,” “marriage” and “family values” because that is hate speech and could scare workers.
The ruling came in a case being handled by the Pro-Family Law Center, which promised an appeal of the drastic result.
“We are going to take this case right up the steps of the United States Supreme Court,” said Richard D. Ackerman, who along with Scott Lively argued the case for the Pro-Family Law Center.
“We are simply unwilling to accept that Christians can be completely silenced on the issues of the day – especially on issues such as same-sex marriage, parental rights, and free speech rights,” he said.
“If we fail to get U.S. Supreme Court review, however, it will be up to each individual Christian in the United States to stand up for their rights to be heard on the issues of the day. If we choose to be silent, silenced we shall be,” he said.
The decision came in an unpublished “memorandum” from the court, and was in a dispute over the promotion of the homosexual lifestyle within the city offices of Oakland, Calif.
It found that municipalities have a right to dictate what form an employee’s speech may take, even if it is in regard to controversial public issues.
“Public employees are permitted to curtail employee speech as long as their ‘legitimate administrative interests’ outweigh the employee’s interest in freedom of speech,” said the court’s opinion by judges B. Fletcher, Clifton and Ikuta, who noted that their writings are “not appropriate for publication.”
“The district court appropriately described [the Christians’ speech rights] as ‘vanishingly small,’” the opinion continued.
However, as the Pro-Family Law Center noted, the court “completely failed to address the concerns of the appellants with respect to the fact that the City of Oakland’s Gay-Straight Employees Alliance was openly allowed to attack the Bible in widespread city e-mails, to deride Christian values as antiquated, and to refer to Bible-believing Christians as hateful. When the plaintiffs attempted to refute this blatant attack on people of faith, they were threatened with immediate termination by the City of Oakland. The Ninth Circuit did not feel that the threat of immediate termination had any effect on free speech.”
The case had developed when two city employees who wanted to launch a group of people who shared their interests posted a notice on a city bulletin board – after a series of notices from homosexual activists were delivered to them via the city’s e-mail system, bulletin boards and memo distribution system.
The notice said:
Good News Employee Associations is a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family values.
If you would like to be a part of preserving integrity in the Workplace call Regina Rederford @xxx- xxxx or Robin Christy @xxx-xxxx
But Robert Bobb, then city manager, and Joyce Hicks, then deputy director of the Community and Economic Development Agency, ordered their notice removed, because it contained “statements of a homophobic nature” and promoted “sexual-orientation-based harassment.”
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker had ruled in 2005 that Oakland had a right to prevent the employees from posting that Good News Employee Association flier promoting traditional family values on the office bulletin board.
That decision was made even though homosexuals already had been using the city’s e-mail, bulletin board, and written communications systems for promoting their views. In fact, one city official even used the e-mail system to declare the Bible “needs updating,” but no actions were taken against those individuals.
The case was argued recently at a special session of the 9th Circuit at the Stanford University Law School.
“The city of Oakland has interpreted this district court’s ruling to mean that Christianity has no place in our society and should be subject to punishment. I want to believe that our Supreme Court will ultimately decide this case on the values and instructions set forth in motion by the nations Founders,” said Ackerman.
Ackerman’s’ firm represents the women and said the Pro-Family Law Center and Abiding Truth Ministries have helped underwrite the thousands of dollars it has cost to fight the city’s aggressive promotion of the homosexual lifestyle.
==============================
WASHINGTON – The United States is coming to grips with some of the family problems that other countries have long faced, a pro-family expert said Monday at a press conference for the upcoming World Congress of Families IV.
Dr. Janice Crouse, senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Beverly LaHaye Institute, said that issues such as sex trafficking and sex selection abortion are emerging problems in the United States which have long occurred in other countries.
“Sex trafficking is an issue that has affected the whole world with more than 700,000 victims,” noted Crouse, who has been involved in the Congress since the Geneva gathering in 1999. “Here in the United States we have just begun to recognize there are victims in this country right under our noses – some 50,000 a year.
“That is an issue that we are just coming to grips with here; it has been more of an international concern for the United States and now it is becoming a very personal concern.”
The World Congress of Families is the only regular and ongoing international gathering of activists, scholars and politicians in support of the family. This year the Congress will take place on May 11-13 in Warsaw, Poland where more than 3,000 pro-family activists from over 65 countries are expected to attend.
“The fact is most of the world’s people are pro-marriage, pro-family,” declared Bill Saunders, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Human Life and Bioethics.
“They resent what is trying to be done to them by these international bureaucrats and the World Congress of Families allows them to join together, resist that and advance a very positive vision of marriage and family,” he added.
Christian co-sponsors of the Congress include the American Family Association, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.
Speakers at Monday’s press conference explained that Poland was chosen as the host of the conference because it is the largest nation in Europe which has supported traditional marriage and human life in the midst of strong pressure from international government bodies.
The president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, will give the opening address at the World Congress of Families.
The Congress will discuss issues including gender rights or family rights; demographic winter as the new population crisis; the family home as the center of upbringing and education; how abortion undermines the family; the impact of pornography on family unity; and the harm of “same-sex marriage.”
The World Congress of Families was founded in 1997 by Dr. Allan Carlson, president of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society. The Congress offers an opportunity for pro-family organizations around the world to network and seek to restore the “natural family as the fundamental social unit and seedbed of a civil society.”
==============================
OTTAWA — Love and marriage are fading like the horse and carriage.
OK, not quite, but married couples, and couples with children, have continued a slide that began in the ‘60s, the latest Canadian Family Portrait report by Statistics Canada reveals.
In fact, for the first time ever, more adults have never been married than have. And the slowest-growing households were those with couples with children under age 25, which edged up just 0.4%.
But while fewer Canadians are getting married, the institution remains the single most common foundation on which Canadians build a family, noted Anne Milan, senior analyst with Statistics Canada’s demography division.
“The fact that married-couple families with children is still the largest group certainly indicates that marriage is an important component of family life,” Milan said in an interview. “We’re seeing more diversity with the increase in common-law families but marriage overall remains an important family structure.”
According to 2006 census data released Wednesday, there is a married couple living in nearly 70% of all families. Even so, over time, the traditional family structure is giving way to alternatives.
For example, there are more adult children are now living at home with their parents, and more youngsters living with their grandparents.
Moreover, common-law and same-sex couples are on the rise.
Indeed, the 2006 Canadian family portrait shows that the number of same-sex couples surged by 32.6% since 2001, five times the pace of opposite-sex couples.
Of Canada’s 45,345 same-sex couples, 16.5% were married, according to the first-ever census count of same-sex marriages, reflecting their legalization for all of Canada in mid-2005.
The shifting portrait of the Canadian family found there were 8,896,840 families in Canada on May 16, 2006, 6.3% more than at the time of the previous 2001 census.
For the first time in census history, there were slightly more couples without children at home than with them, reflecting both the aging of the population and lower fertility rates among younger couples.
Also, for the first time in census history, more Canadian adults have never been married than are married, reflecting an ongoing long-term lifestyle change.
Just over 51% of adults, aged 15 or over, were unmarried, up from 49.9% in 2001, while 48.5% were married, down from 50.1.
Twenty years ago, more than 60% of adult Canadians were married and just 38.6% unmarried.
Since 2001, there has also been a 3.5% increase to 6.1 million in the number of families in which there is a married couple. However, this was only a fraction of the 18.9% surge in common-law-couple families, which has now reached almost 1.4 million. It is also well below the 7.8% jump in lone-parent families, now just over 1.4 million.
In light of these trends, married-couple families now account for 68.6% of all families, down from 70.5 five years earlier and 80.2 two decades ago.
The proportion of common-law families, meanwhile, rose to 15.5% from 13.8 five years ago, and 7.2 two decades ago. The proportion of lone-parent families rose to 15.9% from 15.7 in 2001 and 12.7 two decades ago.
Common-law relationships are still most popular in Quebec, where they have been “one of the defining family patterns” for years, the report said. Their numbers soared by more than 20% since 2001 to account for 44.4% of the Canadian total in 2006.
In fact, nearly one-quarter of Canadian common-law couples live in the two cities of Montreal and Quebec.
“The increase in common-law relationships suggests greater social acceptance of this family structure, as well as a desire to be part of a couple, but perhaps with fewer perceived emotional or financial obligations than those generally associated with marriage,” Statistics Canada said.
While Quebec City has the highest proportion of common-law couples, at 34.5%, Toronto has the lowest, at 7.8%.
Meanwhile, Canada’s three largest cities were home to half of all same-sex couples, with 21.2% in Toronto, 18.4% in Montreal, and 10.3% in Vancouver.
Same-sex couples accounted for 0.6% of all couples in Canada, in line with the 0.6% in Australia and 0.7% in New Zealand.
Here, males accounted for 53.7 of same-sex couples and women 46.3%, roughly the same as at the time of the previous census.
About 9% of same-sex couples had children under the age of 24 living at home, although that was much more common among lesbian couples, at 16.3% than for gay male couples, at only 2.9%.
Another trend confirmed by the census is the growing tendency of young adults to remain in, or return to, the parental home.
In 2006, 43.5% of the four million young adults aged 20 to 29 lived with their parents, up from 41.1% in 2001 and 32.1% 20 years ago.
Adult children could be living with their parents longer for a variety of reasons, including being in school, lacking job opportunities, the high cost of living in some areas, the breakup of a relationship, or lower expectations about establishing an independent household, Statistics Canada speculated.
The proportion of young adults living with their parents was greatest in Newfoundland and Labrador, at 52.2%, and Ontario, at 51.5% - including 57.9% in Toronto. It was lowest in Alberta, at 31.7%, and Saskatchewan, at 31.8%.
Meanwhile, there has also been a large increase in people living alone over the past five years, with the number of one-person households rising by 11.8%. The number of households of couples without children has also increased sharply, rising by 11.2%.
Meanwhile, the size of the average household continued to slowly shrink to 2.5 persons from 2.6 in 2001, down from a baby boom peak of 3.9 in 1961.
==============================
Reflecting back on 2007, a California pro-family group has identified what it considers the worse cases of hostility toward faith, family, and freedom in the state.
At the top of Pacific Justice Institute’s “National Hall of Shame” was a California bill allowing public school children to arbitrarily choose their gender or sexual orientation. In October, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the legislation, known as SB77 or the “homosexual indoctrination” bill, which adds gender and sexual orientation to a list of traits protected under the state’s education code on discrimination.
Pro-family groups, however, say the legislation, which will take effect in January, will not only promote transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality to impressionable children but also lead to situations where children can enter any bathroom or locker room they choose because prohibiting them would be discriminatory under the law.
The issue has many pro-family groups seeking legal recourse to overturn the law. Capitol Resource Institute, a Sacramento-based pro-family group, is in the process of gathering the 400,000 petition signatures required by Jan. 10 in order to place the issue before voters on the 2008 ballot.
“This is absolutely one of the most radical pieces of legislation we have ever seen,” Karen England, the group’s executive director, told USA Today.
Another group, Advocates for Faith and Freedom has filed suit in U.S. District Court, contending the law “will eliminate the biological understanding of the term ‘gender.’ “
Ranking second on list of PJI’s top offenders was a Hate Crimes Bill (HR 1592), which would add “actual or perceived” sexual orientation and gender identity to a list of federally protected classes.
The institute said the legislation “could criminalize speech by clergy,” who may preach to churchgoers that homosexuality is sinful.
Earlier this month, congress dropped the legislation, which was tacked onto the 2008 Defense Authorization bill.
Other instances of hostility toward faith and freedom that made the list include a school’s attempt to censor God out of private yearbook ad, the suspension of over 100 students for wearing t-shirts displaying a Bible verse, and the refusal by the Red Cross to accept Bible donations to California fire victims.
Recent events show that the growing sense of antagonism toward faith and religion, particularly Christianity, is not an isolated case in California.
Two weeks ago, a 24-year-old killed five people, including himself, after opening fire at two ministry sites in Colorado in what appeared to be an act of revenge against Christians.
Police officials later discovered an anti-Christian online message posted by gunman Matthew Murray in between shootings, and some believe that he had acted out of revenge against Christians. Subsequent reports also revealed that Murray, despite his religious upbringing, had been studying the teachings of Aleister Crowley, the late occult author who is considered a mentor to the founder of the Church of Satan.
Dr. Gary Cass, founder of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, who authors a book entitled Christian Bashing, called the incident the worst case of Christian bashing and bigotry this year, according to World Net Daily.
“It is clear that persecution has not ceased to exist in the modern era,” said Cass in a statement. “Defamation, which leads to marginalization and persecution, is not an irrational fear for Christians.”
==============================
By Kate Fraher, Researcher, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada
“WANTED: Parents willing to bear, rear and educate children for the next generation of Social Security taxpayers and to carry on the modern culture of learning and progress. Quality parenting preferred. Large commitments of time and money required. At least one parent must be willing to work a double shift and/or sacrifice tenure and upward mobility in the labor market. Salary: 0. Pension benefits: 0. Profits and dividends: 0.
Will anyone be answering this ad in the twenty-first century?”
—Excerpt from “The Feminine Economy & Economic Man” (1997) by Shirley P. Burggraf
This beginning excerpt or “ad” featured in a book published ten years ago paints a very uninviting picture of parenthood. Parents know firsthand that having children forces them to forfeit resources such as time, money and energy, into a product with no “economic return,”—or so we are told, at least. But as most parents would tell you, they’re not raising kids for the money. Despite economists’ claims that raising children is a more expensive prospect today than in any other time in history, Canadians are still having babies—even if they are having fewer. Is it in their economic interest to do so? No. This leaves some economists scratching their heads wondering, what precisely are parents thinking?
Economists will not uncover reasons why parents are bearing children by crunching numbers. Complete a simple cost-benefit analysis of childrearing in the twenty-first century and some economists will claim that raising children now is more expensive than ever before. Contrary to most societies in human history, children today are no longer seen sources of economic ‘gain.’ While in agricultural economies of days gone by children were considered an economic “asset” to parents because they could contribute to the generation of family wealth; in today’s post-industrial economy, children aren’t making their parents any richer, economically speaking. In fact, some economists would say that quite the opposite is true: children are draining parents of their economic resources. [1]
It’s with this view of children as an economic drain, that economists pull out their calculators and start estimating the costs of children. They find out that those costs are not small. In 2004, Manitoba Agriculture estimated that babies cost over $10,000 in their first year alone. And for every year following, they said parents will spend roughly between $6,700 and $10,000 every year until the child reaches 18. In total, they estimated that the cost of raising a child until the age of 18 is just under $167,000, not including the cost of post-secondary education. [2]
Already confused as to why parents would bear children at such a glaring expense, economists proceed with their calculations, this time calculating the “unseen” costs, apart from the “seen” costs. They compare what mothers could be making outside the home with the $0 they receive by staying home raising their children. They argue that the higher the education level and earning potential of the mother, the more they forego if and when they decide to drop out of the workforce. They classify the $70,000 she would otherwise take home as the “opportunity cost” of having children along with other opportunity costs including losses in the form of pension, tenure, and opportunities for career advancement. Economist Shirley Burggraf says “parental love has never cost so much.” [3]
Children: Consumer durables? Or people?
Here’s what economists are not able to measure. When it comes right down to it, children cannot be subjected to a cost/benefit analysis, because while the costs may be rather concrete, the benefits cannot be measured. Some academics have actually tried to measure the benefits of having children. They concluded, not surprisingly, that children bring benefits to parents that go far beyond mere economics. Professors from the Department of Population Dynamics at Johns Hopkins University in their study “Why Do Americans Want Children?” confirms the obvious: parents do not view their children as “consumer durables.” [4] Parents see their children as people. And people have inestimable worth. The value of their lives is not something we can put a price on –that’s where the economic model fails.
In their conclusion the authors of the study also mention social capital, known as the social benefits that children bring to our relationships and to our families. They conclude that having children is a “purposive behaviour that creates and reinforces the most important and most enduring bonds.” They continue: “we find that children are not seen as consumer durables; they are seen as the threads from which the tapestry of life is woven.” [5]
Indeed, most parents would say the opportunity cost of not having kids is greater than the cost of having them. 68% of parents say their lives are happier with their lives since having children [6] and happiness cannot be measured in dollars or cents. 59% of parents even say having children is a better experience than they imagined. [7] And Canadians say they would like to have even more children. In a 1997 Gallup poll, one in three Canadians said they thought the ideal family size was three or more children, which is not reflected in Canada’s current birthrate of 1.5 births per woman. [8]
Back in the 1980’s demographers such as John C. Caldwell saw that people would continue to have children despite the increased cost because of the intrinsic pleasure they bring to their parents lives. He said that parents would continue to have children even if they had fewer, “in the full knowledge that having children is not economic, but that one’s own children provide a unique form of pleasure which is not substitutable.” [9] Aaah, “not substitutable,” are those the words he used? In the end, even economists can find a way—albeit an unwieldy one—to say children are irreplaceable.
==============================
A new study debunks the common assumption that once a couple hits parenthood, they’ll put Sunday church services back on their calendar.
While children do act as a catalyst for millions of parents to return to the pews or become more active in the church, it is not the normative experience.
According to the Barna Group, half of parents in the U.S. said having children did not influence their connection to a church or change their involvement. And among parents who are Christian, 47% said the presence of children was unrelated to their church life.
Only 17% of parents said having a child helped them reconnect with church after a long period of not attending.
New commitments were even rarer. Only 5% said becoming parents helped them become active in a church for the first time
“Many religious workers assume that parenthood motivates people to return to their spiritual traditions and to church attendance,” said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group. “This perspective is especially common when it comes to justifying the frequent disengagement among young adults. Sometimes faith leaders go so far as to simply wait for parenthood to occur, when they figure the ‘real work’ of ministry can begin.”
But he noted that more young women are delaying having children. Thus, it is important to help shape young people’s beliefs and habits before they become parents, he said.
“Parenthood might help to clarify and enhance people’s pursuit of spirituality, but usually it does not fundamentally alter a parent’s spiritual trajectory. Getting people to transition from church involvement based upon religious inertia to activity driven by a sense of engagement is exceedingly difficult – and relatively rare.”
According to the study, only 20% of parents said they were already active and became even more involved in church after having children.
Meanwhile, 4% became less involved in church.
Younger parents – under the age of 35 – were more likely than average to say parenthood helped them return to church. And parents with children under the age of five were more likely than average to say that they reconnected with church. Parents of teens were likely to say that having children had no impact on them.
Notably, attendees of large churches were more likely than were those attending smaller congregations to increase their level of church involvement. The Barna Group speculates larger churches may be more attentive to the needs of families.
Findings are based on a nationwide tracking study, called OmniPoll. Telephone interviews were conducted on a random sample of 670 parents, age 18 and older, from across the U.S., Jan. 26-Feb. 10.
==============================
Dennis Prager
It is said that the one question about men and women that even the great Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, could not answer was: What do women want?
Whether or not Freud actually said that is irrelevant. The very popularity of the anecdote testifies to one incontrovertible fact: A lot of men don’t know the answer.
It is probably fair to say that a lot of women also don’t know the answer. If they did, all they would have to do is tell men. That would solve the riddle — and make most men and women very happy.
So, to the extent that this is a great riddle, it is so because most members of both sexes seem not to know the answer.
Adding support to the widespread belief that what women want is close to unknowable is the underlying presumption that just about everybody knows what men want.
The number of truly funny Internet jokes that describe what women want as complex and what men want as simple is a testament to how widespread these assumptions about the two sexes are. Three examples illustrate this:
The first example is the one that begins: “How To Impress a Woman.”
Listed beneath that heading is this: “Compliment her, respect her, honor her, cuddle her, kiss her, caress her, love her, stroke her, tease her, comfort her, protect her, hug her, hold her, spend money on her, wine and dine her, buy things for her, listen to her, care for her, stand by her, support her, hold her, go to the ends of the Earth for her.”
That long list is followed by: “How To Impress a Man.”
And listed beneath is this: “Show up naked. Bring food.”
The second Internet example:
“Q: What is the difference between men and women?
A: A woman wants one man to satisfy her every need. A man wants every woman to satisfy his one need.”
And a third Internet example shows a box divided into two parts.
Under the part labeled “Women” are 40 dials and knobs.
Under the part labeled “Men” is one switch, marked “On-Off.”
As with most generalizations, there is much truth to these.
Nevertheless, I take issue with both presumptions — that what women want is a riddle that would stump the Sphinx and that what men want is so easy it could be written on the back of a postage stamp.
In fact, I believe that both are relatively simple to answer (though neither is simple to achieve).
What does a man most want?
Answer: He most wants to be admired by the woman he loves.
One proof is that the most devastating thing a woman can do to her man is to hold him in contempt. That is so devastating to a marriage that, over time, it is often more toxic than an affair. I am fairly certain that more marriages survive an affair, as difficult as that is, than contempt. Of course, this goes in both directions, but when a woman shows contempt toward her man, his very manhood is called into question.
My father and mother were married 69 years. As my brother and I have heard countless times, “She put me on a pedestal” was the quality my father most often cited in describing what a wonderful wife my mother was. She admired him, and to him, that was everything. On the other hand, in describing her love for my father over all those years, my mother never once said, “He put me on a pedestal” (despite the fact that he constantly praised her). Rather, she always spoke of what a “great man” he was, how “brilliant,” etc. Of course, this is just one example, but I think it applies to the majority of men and women.
The obvious upshot of this thesis is that in order to gain a woman’s love, a man must make — and keep — himself admirable.
Boys know this instinctively. Studies that have observed boys and young men reveal how much harder they work at anything — sports comes immediately to mind — when they know girls are watching them.
That is why many single men in our society (often erroneously but understandably) place so much emphasis on what car they drive: They want to impress women. Yet, men couldn’t care less what car a woman drives. In fact, for most men, a woman arriving on a first date in a relatively inexpensive car renders her more desirable than if she showed up in an expensive luxury car — unless the man is looking to be supported by a woman. But few women are attracted to a man they know in advance they will have to support.
So, although the Internet jokes are right about men wanting sex, it isn’t sex men most want from their woman. They want to be admired — and sex is one manifestation of a woman’s admiration for her man. When a man is regularly denied sex, in his eyes that means that his wife does not hold him in high esteem. Worse, he actually feels humiliated as a man. That, not the sex per se, is why regular denial devastates a man.
So, then, if what a man most wants is to be admired by his woman, what is it that a woman most wants?
That is the subject of the next column.
But here’s a hint. If we begin with the assumption that men and women are made to bond with one another, what she most wants must be in some way related to what he most wants.
As we shall see, it is.
==============================
Dennis Prager
In my previous column, I offered an answer to the question: What do men want?
I made the case that what men most want from the woman they love is to be admired.
If my answer is correct, and if we presume that the natures of men and women are complementary (a presumption many men and women understandably doubt given how often men and women do not get along), what women most want must be related to that which men most want.
I believe it is.
What a woman most wants is to be loved by a man she admires.
I am well aware that to say this today is akin to announcing that the sun revolves around the Earth. For half a century, we have been told that what women most want is professional success and equality. And to the extent that a modern “liberated” woman does admit to wanting a man to love, she will say that she wants a “partner” who is her “equal.” And girls and women have been told — or, more accurately, have had drummed into them — that equality means that both sexes are essentially the same (except for the physical differences) and therefore want the same things. Equality and sameness have been rendered synonymous. That is why she cannot say — and ideally wouldn’t even admit to herself — that she wants a man to admire; that would be “sexist,” as it would imply an unequal relationship.
The notion that a woman most wants a man, admirable or not, has been scoffed at. This was encapsulated by the famous feminist slogan “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Even feminism that did not agree with the fish-bicycle metaphor communicated to young women that an “authentic” woman would not have as her greatest desire to bond with a man.
Today, feminism holds less appeal for young women than it did for the previous generation, but “equality” remains the liberal god of the day. That renders my theory — that a woman wants to be cherished by a man she admires — politically incorrect in the extreme.
It is problematic enough to say that a woman most wants a man. But that pales compared to the claim that she most wants a man whom she admires. That seems to affirm gender inequality. The image it conjures up is of a woman looking up to her man as if he were some sort of lord and she his serf.
Yet, any woman who believes that she is married to an admirable man would laugh at such a dismissal. Admiring one’s husband doesn’t render a woman a serf. It renders her fortunate.
The truth is that almost nothing — including job success — elevates a woman in her own eyes as much as being loved by a husband whom she admires. That is why when married women get together, they don’t talk about their jobs nearly as much as men do. They talk, among other things, about their man if they are proud of him, and complain about him if they are not. Even most feminists are happiest when married to a man they admire.
And what is it that women most admire in a man? From decades of talking to women on the radio and, of course, from simply living life, I have concluded that an admirable man is one who has three qualities: strength, integrity and ambition.
All three are needed. Strength without integrity is machismo. Integrity without strength or without ambition is a milquetoast. And ambition without integrity is a successful crook.
Women are drawn to strong men. Though many men, when asked the secret to their long marriage, answer, “I learned to always say, ‘Yes, Dear,’” the truth is that most women are not attracted to “Yes, Dear” men who always give in to a woman’s whim. They are attracted to a man who exhibits strength in the outer world and at home as husband and father.
But that strength must come with integrity. If it doesn’t, he is a strong bad man. And while more than a few women fall for bad men (precisely because of the power of masculine strength to attract women), most women do not want such a man over the long run.
And ambition does not mean that he is necessarily rich, but that he is a hard worker who wants to improve himself; plenty of men who earn relatively little are admired and loved by their wives. That is why a major “turn-off” to most women is a husband who sits and watches television all night (let alone all day).
The beauty of all this is that it all comes together for men, for women and for society.
Women get what they want most: to be married to and loved by a man they admire. Men then attain what they want most: to be admired by the woman they love. And society gets the thing it most needs: admirable men.
Unfortunately, none of this is taught at college.
==============================
Suzanne Fields
We’re moving swiftly into post-literate America, and more’s the pity. Many of us can’t write a coherent, straightforward, easy-to-read sentence. Nobody but a Tiger mother seems interested in teaching her cubs how to write clearly.
The ubiquitous e-mail message had just about done the language in, and then came texting and Twittering, with its abbreviations and inane speech conventions. OMG, soon we’ll all have sore thumbs and speak only a version of pidgin.
Pidgin is OK if you’re a backwoodsman in New Guinea come to town to buy tobacco and beans and neither you nor the storekeeper speak the other’s language, but it’s not what parents send their kids to Harvard (or Southwest Missouri State) to learn. We’re waking up to the hard fact that our kids are woefully deficient in math and science, and next must follow the realization that reading and good writing are necessary to learning math and science. Students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, whence come so much of our imported talent in the sciences, are far ahead of us already.
“The race to the top starts with knowing where we stand and how high the bar is over which we need to jump,” Gary Phillips of the American Institutes for Research said not long ago in a new report on international benchmarks in math. “We are shooting for a B.”
Elementary school students in the top Asian nations typically scored a B or B-plus in science and math classes, as measured in a study by an organization called Trends in International Mathematics and Science. American kids in 49 states scored no higher than a cumulative C-plus. Only in Massachusetts did they score a B.
Even that does not take into account the curse of grade inflation. Fads rule in the academy, and the latest fad among English teachers — who ought to be concerned with teaching the clear writing necessary to dealing with math and science — is to belittle Strunk and White, the authors of a little book, the “Elements of Style,” which has been the best known guide to effective writing — not necessarily literature — for nearly a century.
This little book has sold 10 million copies. William Strunk Jr. was a professor of English at Cornell University at the time of World War I, and E.B. White, once his pupil, was for years a writer for the New Yorker magazine. He was the author of the children’s classic “Charlotte’s Web.”
The latest skeptic of this guide to good writing is Stanley Fish, a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University and a columnist for The New York Times. He doesn’t like Strunk and White’s rules for good writing, which he regards as picayune and elementary. He’s also got a new book out, “How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One.” (But he likes Charles Portis and “True Grit,” which certainly would have delighted Strunk and White.)
Strunk and White offend certain professors because their “brief for brevity,” as one critic calls it, teaches in 43 brief pages what learned professors often fail to do in two semesters. Fish’s scorn for Strunk, White and “Elements of Style” follows an attack by Geoffrey Pullum, a professor of linguistics and English at the University of Edinburgh.
Pullum disdains the celebration of 50 years “of the overopinionated and underinformed angst. I’ve spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules.”
It’s the simplicity and utility of “the little book” that offend the professors — Strunk and White’s preference for the standard to the offbeat. “Vigorous writing is concise,” they wrote. “When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter.” And this: “Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome and sometimes nauseating.”
Strunk and White hardly set out to produce an F. Scott Fitzgerald, a John Updike or a Charles Portis, but to teach college students (and others who want to tap into the occasional magic of the written word) how to express themselves effectively. Somewhere, an aspiring author of a computer manual might learn a thing or two. The reader, they wrote, is usually lost in a jungle of badly written prose and appreciates all the help he can get.
Strunk and White appreciated the unexpected magic of words, too. Armed with a few rules for good writing and elevated by high purpose, White writes in his updating of Strunk’s classic that the writer might pattern himself on the cow in the Robert Louis Stevenson rhyme. “This friendly and commendable animal, you may recall, was ‘blown about by all the winds that pass/ and wet with all the showers.’ Stevenson, working in a plainer style, said it with felicity, and suddenly one cow, out of so many, received the gift of immortality.”
==============================
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Are Chinese mothers superior? Amy Chua clearly believes so, and her argument has just as clearly caught the attention of the American public. Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has made The New York Times bestseller list for the past ten weeks. This mom struck a raw nerve.
Chua, the John M. Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School, fired her first shot with a column published in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” It was a shot heard around the world - especially by other moms. The uproar followed immediately - and no wonder. Chua accused Western mothers of being lax and undemanding, and therefore producing underachieving children.
She began her column with these incendiary lines: “A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it.”
Yes, she has done it, and her daughters Sophia and Louisa were pushed into remarkable levels of personal achievement. They have been soloists on piano and violin with international orchestras, performed at Carnegie Hall, and boasted incredible academic achievements. They are beautiful and poised young women, and Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, are justifiably proud.
In her book, Chua begins by describing just how radical the Tiger Mother approach really is. With language calculated to reach the nerves of reading mothers, Chua announced that her daughters had never been on a sleepover, acted in a school play, gone on a playdate, watched television, played a video game, or received any grade lower than an A. They had also never been allowed to be anything less than the top student in anything other than gym and drama. And she means every word of this. What she presents is nothing less than a monomaniacal approach to mothering that is intended to produce superior progeny - and that means superior in terms of academic and artistic achievement.
Amy Chua is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, where she was, of course, an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She is married to another professor at the Yale Law School, who is a graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and who also studied drama at the Julliard School in New York City. The experience in drama, by the way, did not impress Amy Chua’s parents, who thought it lacking in seriousness. Amy Chua’s father and mother were immigrants to the United States, and her father is an internationally recognized scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There is no secret about the kind of achievement Amy Chua is looking for in her daughters.
She minces no words in contrasting the Chinese style of mothering with the Western style, which she sees as hopelessly indulgent and disastrously unlikely to produce offspring of which Asian parents would be proud.
She writes:
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her “beautiful and incredibly competent.” She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
There is a lot more to the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The book offers important insights into cultural differences and how these differences work their way out in parenting styles. She also writes honestly, if rather too candidly, about her struggles with her younger daughter. The book is a celebration of Amy Chua and her daughters. The rest of the world is only a stage for their achievements - and the achievements are truly impressive.
There are some real insights to be found in the book. Chua’s observations about Western styles of parenting hit home, especially when she points to the fact that many American parents only want their children to be happy — without any clear concern for what should make for happiness. Western parents care too much about the opinions of their children and often appear to be more concerned with gaining the approval of their children rather than their children earning the approval of their parents. She is certainly right about the parenting myths spawned by American entertainment and popular culture.
Yes, the children of American parents are often lazy and lacking in commitment. Amy Chua is right to argue that no one enjoys anything until sufficient practice has produced proficiency. As for the opinions of offspring, Chua reports, “My parents didn’t give me any choices, and never asked for my opinion on anything.” She seems to be making up for that now.
Most Western parents might see a strain of cruelty in Amy Chua’s mothering. She says awful things to her daughters and once threw a hand-made birthday card back to a daughter because it was not good enough. The account is riveting and stomach-churning.
Is she right? Is the Tiger Mother mode of parenting really superior? What should Christian parents think of this?
In one sense, statistics tell the story — or part of the story. There can be no question that Asian styles of parenting often produce remarkable high achievement in their children. Just look to the disproportionately high numbers of Asian students at the top universities and in the top ranks of their professions.
There can also be no doubt that Christians should share many of Amy Chua’s concerns about the dominant style of American parenting. The Bible makes parental authority a matter of clear concern and priority, and the discipline and nurture of children are clear biblical mandates to parents. Christian parents reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother will share many of Amy Chua’s complaints and concerns.
Nevertheless, there is a huge problem with her approach. The problem is not that it does not work, if the goal is to produce remarkable children who achieve the highest levels of worldly success. The problem is her aims.
All that seems to matter to Amy Chua is that her daughters gain entry into one of the world’s top universities, make a name for themselves in their chosen (very serious) profession, and marry someone of equal achievement. Now, there must be more to her concern, but, if so, these larger concerns do not appear in her book. Nor does it appear that other concerns can have much of a place in the lives of her daughters. There is no spiritual or moral concern expressed in the book.
Her concern with achievement is stunningly one-dimensional. Amy Chua claims that Chinese parents have “higher dreams for their children.” But those dreams are academic, professional, and artistic. There is little concern for anything that might happen outside of the Ivy League or Carnegie Hall.
Lawrence Summers, who was one of the youngest tenured faculty in the history of Harvard University, and was later president of the university and Secretary of the Treasury, responded to Amy Chua’s arguments with the admonition that the highest achievers at the university were often not the highest achievers in later life. Achievement is just not so predictable. Furthermore, high achievement in terms of academic and professional status is no promise of happiness or fulfillment.
The Christian response reaches to even deeper levels of concern. A life lived in service to Christ on the mission field would be considered an embarrassment. The heroic service of a mother in the home is displaced by professional status. Parenting for deployment in the Kingdom of Christ is not even on the screen and would not qualify as a serious concern. The Christian worldview honors achievement and the stewardship of gifts, but not at the expense of faithfulness to Christ. Achievement, as the world sees it, may at times be a stumbling block to Christian faithfulness.
We can learn a great deal by reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, but we cannot read the book without being both impressed and grieved. The problem is not the seriousness with which Amy Chua takes her mothering task, but with her goals. There is much opportunity for reflection and thought in reading her book. There is a great deal to learn by observing the misplaced aims of the Tiger Mother.
==============================
Two months ago, The Telegraph of London announced the results of a survey that claimed the key to a happy home life is having precisely two daughters, with the unhappiest of all possible combinations of children being four daughters.
The authors of the survey polled 2,116 parents of children age 16 and under. They found that having two girls made for the “most harmonious family life as they are unlikely to fight, will play nicely and are generally a pleasure to be around . . . they rarely annoy their parents, make limited noise, often confide in their parents and are unlikely to wind each other up or ignore each other.”
On the other hand, a four-girl combo produces the most tension among parents because of the girls’ collective tendency to squabble and wind each other up. Parents of four girls supposedly find their children impossible to deal with when the children are ill and they spend the most time helping the girls try to get along.
“The mums and dads we polled obviously dearly love their children,” said Faye Mingo, spokeswoman for the parenting website Bounty.com, “but those with bigger families find it much harder to keep the peace on a daily basis.”
The premise of the article is interesting, if not a bit amusing. My defensive nature initially wants to go to bat on behalf of my family of four girls to let the world know that we don’t consider ourselves to be the unhappiest lot around; rather, we actually enjoy having four daughters. So there!
I recognize that some of the findings may seem true of my family (though I would argue the same can be said of all families, regardless of size or gender combos). But the study is flawed not because of what it “found” but because of what it presupposed—that happiness should be the primary goal in planning a family.
I’m not trying to debunk the desire for happiness in the family. I appreciate peace and laughter and pleasant times just as much as everyone else. I’m just questioning the idea of happiness as the pinnacle to which a family should aspire.
My husband and I didn’t have children because we thought they would make us happy; we had children because the Scriptures teach that children are a blessing from the Lord and one of the most significant ways He teaches us about Himself and the process of sanctification.
The key to happiness is not found in the number of children one has, it isn’t found in the boy/girl ratio of children, and it shouldn’t be looked for in a magical perfect family combo. It’s true that my family of four girls, two dogs, one mom, and one dad know how to argue with each other and push each other’s buttons. But we also know how to ask forgiveness of each other and seek to restore our relationships. These periods of restoration are sweet times indeed.
==============================
Ann Coulter
How many months of man-hours did Florida police spend searching for little Caylee Anthony back in 2008, while her mother, Casey Anthony, knew exactly where the child’s body was?
If you were the victim of a crime in Orlando, Fla., between July and December 2008, you should be enraged that the police couldn’t prevent or investigate your crime because they were too busy looking for a missing child whose mother already knew the kid was dead.
It’s a zero-sum game with police resources. Cops combing through the woods searching for a missing child are not going to be patrolling your street or arresting suspects.
From repeat domestic violence calls to Los Angeles car chases, hit-and-run drivers and the balloon-boy hoax, worthless louts consume vastly more law enforcement resources than the rest of us. Cops in any town will tell you all the domestic violence calls come from the exact same homes, over and over again.
As long as we’re looking for new revenue streams, how about billing these white trash low-lifes for their massive consumption of police resources? The dregs of society need to be assessed a fee for their abuse of government services and thrown in debtors prison in the unlikely event that they can’t pay.
As I described in my last book, “Guilty,” the leading cause of all social pathologies is single motherhood. One way or another, Casey Anthony’s refusal to give up Caylee for adoption was going to cost society — and cost Caylee.
The statistics are so jaw-dropping that not giving up an illegitimate child for adoption ought to be considered child abuse.
Various studies have shown that children raised by a single mother comprise about 70% of juvenile murderers, delinquents, teenaged mothers, drug abusers, dropouts, suicides and runaways. Imagine an America with 70% fewer of these social disorders and you will see what liberals’ destruction of marriage has wrought.
A 1990 study by the (liberal) Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime rates disappeared.
Meanwhile, adopted kids, on average, turn out better than even biological kids raised in two-parent families.
Of course, there aren’t a lot of studies of adopted children because they aren’t constantly mugging us. They’re too busy running Oracle (Larry Ellison), the District of Columbia (Anthony Williams), or fantastic political websites, like “Big Government” (Andrew Breitbart).
One four-year study by the Search Institute in Minnesota found that adopted teenagers had greater empathy, higher self-esteem and more close friends than non-adopted teenagers in public schools, and were also less likely to engage in high-risk behavior, such as stealing and excessive drinking. In all, they scored higher than the control group on 16 indicators of well-being.
They were as strongly attached to their parents as their non-adopted siblings. Indeed, contrary to Hollywood movies portraying adopted kids mystically driven to find their biological parents, the majority of adopted teenagers rarely thought about the fact that they were adopted. (Apple’s Steve Jobs has shown little interest in his biological father and corrects people who refer to his “adoptive parents,” saying, “They were my parents.”)
We could wipe out chronic poverty in America tomorrow — and the new iPad would be even more awesome, if such a thing were possible! — if only women would get married before having children or give up their illegitimate kids for adoption.
And yet, between 1979 and 2003, we went from about 600,000 babies being born out of wedlock, with about a quarter of them put up for adoption, to 1.5 million illegitimate births with fewer than 1% of them (14,000) given up for adoption. That’s why Angelina Jolie and Madonna are constantly having to break up tribal wars to adopt Third World children.
A 2008 study led by Georgia State University economist Benjamin Scafidi conservatively estimated that single mothers cost the U.S. taxpayer $112 billion every year — in addition to asking the rest of us to keep an eye on their kids while they go clubbing.
We could have had two Iraq wars — Obama could have “saved or created” half a million stimulus jobs — at that price.
But in fact, Scafidi underestimated single mothers’ burden to society by excluding additional costs of single mothers to poverty programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.
That makes his estimates very low: Single mothers are six times more likely to be in poverty than married families. More than 80% of homeless families are single mothers.
Scafidi’s study also did not consider the burden single mothers place on law enforcement because of their higher likelihood to neglect or kill their children.
Eighty-five percent of mothers who kill their children through neglect are single mothers.
The plague of single motherhood isn’t an inevitable decay brought on by stupid choices of the underclass. Destroying the family is the active social policy of liberals. They enjoy experimenting with other people’s lives and leaving the taxpayer with the bill.
The mainstream media and Hollywood studios are constantly issuing propaganda about the joys and triumphs of single mothers.
Thus, for example, the noted scientific periodical Us Weekly celebrated single motherhood with an article titled “The New Single Moms and How They Do It,” which delusionally proclaimed that the “sisters are doing it for themselves.”
No, they’re not. They’re “doing it” at an enormous and unasked-for cost to every man, woman and child in America. They’re doing it at incalculable cost to the children themselves, such as helpless, innocent Caylee.
A 2007 New York Times op-ed column about three gold-diggers fighting for custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s illegitimate daughter said: “Surely this change is a welcome corrective to the injustice of traditional marriage laws and family values that stigmatized ‘bastards’ for life.”
Except one can’t help noticing how many more illegitimate children there are — and the accompanying child abuse, neglect, suicide, runaways and murders — now that the stigma is gone.
==============================