The Demise of Fatherhood

In this day and age, we are being told to come to terms with the fact that marriage is on the decline. What we don’t often hear about however is one huge consequence, as pointed out in an article by author and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Bradford Wilcox: and that’s the decrease of genuine and holistic fatherhood.

Why’s this? Wilcox points out that as society retreats from marriage, there’s a growth in fatherless families. With cohabitation, these couples are already more likely than married couples to end up on the rocks. But the institution of marriage is the only one that binds men to their children, the only one that can keep them under the same roof. Statistics make it clear that while the number of married middle-aged women in America fell from 82 per cent in 1970 to 62 per cent today, the share of children living in fatherless homes has doubled from 14 to 28 per cent.

Read it all here.

Social Science Study Spooks Gay Advocates

By Austin Ruse


WASHINGTON DC, April 12 (C-FAM) Homosexual advocates seem obsessed by a social science study that goes against them. They say the research is unimportant but can’t stop talking about it.

A year ago Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas published a 15,000-person study showing that children do best in a household with their married mother and father. He further found that no other family structure works this well and by contrast often did worse.

A tsunami of protest and personal attacks engulfed him. His university and the journal where he published his findings investigated the research and cleared him of any suspicion. Even so, the attacks on him and those who use his research continues.

Dr. Susan Yoshihara, research director of C-FAM, used the Regnerus study before the legislature in Rhode Island and came under attack by political fact checkers who claim some of her testimony was false. Yoshihara countered the popular wisdom that it makes no difference whether gay or biological parents raise a child. She said such claims have been “shattered by the latest and best social science research.”

Yoshihara also pointed to a study that challenges social science claims that sexual orientation of parents makes no difference. Loren Marks of LSU analyzed 59 studies used to make this claim and found all of them scientifically wanting.

Politifact, a self-styled watchdog of political truth, branded Yoshihara’s claim as false. Yoshihara, however, says the Politifact piece itself backed up her claim when they quoted a “prudent scholar” who said the issue is not settled in the scientific literature, which was Yoshihara’s claim in the first place.

The Regnerus study came up again this week in the pages of the New York Times. Former Times executive editor Bill Keller said, “The study was pretty well demolished by peers.”

And the Huffington Post got into the Regnurus act this week by reporting that he had media training before his study came out last year and that he received money for his study from a conservative foundation and had spoken to conservative groups.

The Huffington Post also pointed out that Regnerus signed a friend of the court brief submitted to the Supreme Court in their deliberations on same-sex marriage. They called his “little noticed” though out of nearly 50 briefs from both sides it was one of the only ones discussed during oral arguments.

Yoshihara said she brought the Regnerus study to the Rhode Island legislature because at similar hearings last year the committee chairman insisted there was no “peer reviewed” literature rebutting the “it makes no difference” claim. The Regnerus study scientifically rebuts that claim and is peer reviewed, which appears to have spooked the New York Times, Politifact, the Huffington Post and many other advocates for homosexual marriage.

France: Homosexuals Protest Against Gay Marriage

By Wendy Wright

NEW YORK, January 18 (C-FAM) Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.

“The rights of children trump the right to children,” was the catchphrase of protesters like Jean Marc, a French mayor who is also homosexual.

Even though France is known for its laissez faire attitude toward sex, pro-family leaders were quick to organize huge numbers. When President Hollande announced his intentions to legalize homosexual marriage last November, a demonstration against the proposal gathered 100,000 protesters. And then what started as a debate about homosexual rights changed to one about a child’s right to a mother and a father, and the numbers in opposition exploded and has come to include unlikely allies.

Xavier Bongibault, an atheist homosexual, is a prominent spokesman against the bill. “In France, marriage is not designed to protect the love between two people. French marriage is specifically designed to provide children with families,” he said in an interview. “[T]he most serious study done so far . . . demonstrates quite clearly that a child has trouble being raised by gay parents.”

Jean Marc, who has lived with a man for 20 years, insists, “The LGBT movement that speaks out in the media . . . They don’t speak for me. As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural.”

Outraged by the bill, 66-year old Jean-Dominique Bunel, a specialist in humanitarian law who has done relief work in war-torn areas, told Le Figaro he “was raised by two women” and that he “suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation."

"As soon as I learned that the government was going to officialize marriage between two people of the same sex, I was thrown into disarray,” he explained. It would be “institutionalizing a situation that had scarred me considerably. In that there is an injustice that I can in no way allow." If the women who raised him had been married, “I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of Human Rights, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad."

A pro-family coalition that includes homosexuals is certainly different than in the United States and likely most places around the world. It is unclear why at least some French homosexuals would not only favor man-woman marriage only, but would campaign against homosexual marriage. It could be that France has allowed for civil unions, for all couples, for more than a decade. Whatever the reason, this potent coalition may stop homosexual marriage in France.

France’s National Assembly will take up the bill on January 29.

Related reading:  Marriage is Worth the Fight; Intact Biological Families Nurture Better; Genesis and Homosex: Beyond Sodom

Intact Biological Families Nurture Better

Dr. Nicholas Cummings, President of the American Psychological Association from 1979 to 1980, recently reported that “By the mid 1990s, the Leona Tyler principle was absolutely forgotten, that political stances seemed to override any scientific results. Cherry-picking results became the mode. The gay rights movement sort of captured the APA.” So, not surprisingly the organization has not presented reliable studies on the quality of life of children parented by gay and lesbian couples. They will hate Mark Regnerus' study.


By Wendy Wright and Lisa Correnti

WASHINGTON, DC, June 15 (C-FAM) A groundbreaking study reveals that adult children of homosexual and lesbian parents experience far greater negative social, economic and emotional outcomes than children raised within intact biological families.

The quality of University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus’ study highlights the deficiencies of previous studies that homosexual advocates have relied on to grant same-sex couples a right to marry and adopt children.

"The empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go," said Regnerus in his study published in Social Science Research.

Regnerus’ comprehensive study examines nearly 3,000 adult children from eight different family structures and evaluates them within 40 social and emotional categories. The results reveal that children who remain with intact biological families were better educated, experienced greater mental and physical health, less drug experimentation, less criminal activity and reported overall higher levels of happiness.

The greatest negative outcomes were found among children of lesbian mothers. This contradicts defective studies popularized by the media claiming children fare as well, or better, with lesbian mothers. Regnerus’ study showed negative outcomes for these adult children in 25 of 40 categories including far higher rates of sexual assault (23% of children with lesbian mothers were touched sexually by a parent or adult, in contrast to 2% raised by married parents), poorer physical health, increased depression, increased marijuana use and higher unemployment (69% of children from lesbian households were on welfare, compared to 17% of those with married parents).

Regnerus’ study debunks an often-cited 2005 American Psychological Association (APA) brief that concluded, “[n]ot a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents."

In contrast to Regnerus, previous studies compared children of homosexual parents to children of stepfamilies and single parents. Regnerus also relies solely on information directly from adult children rather than opinions from their parents.

A second new study confirms the studies touted by the APA are unreliable. Loren Marks, an associate professor at Louisiana State University, found the APA’s studies had limited data and focused on gender roles and sexual identities. They neglected to examine the children’s education outcomes, employment, risk of substance abuse, criminal behavior or suicide.

The discredited APA-endorsed studies have been used in attempts to impact international legal decisions.

Amicus briefs submitted in E.B. v. France in the European Court of Human Rights defended adoption rights for same sex couples citing APA studies with claims that no objective scientific evidence exists to justify “different treatment of same sex couples who wish to adopt because (to the knowledge of FIDH, ILGA-Europe, BAAF and APGL) all reputable scientific studies have shown that the children of lesbian and gay parents are no more likely to suffer from emotional or other problems than the children of heterosexual parents.”

In the case of Karen Atala and Daughters v. Chile in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), an amicus brief defending lesbian parents who lost custody of their children noted that the American Academy of Pediatrics “recognizes that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.”


Related reading:  Former APA Presidents Says “ultraliberals” beholden to the “gay rights movement" have Taken Control of the Organization

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Humor Alert: AU Greens Are Bigots

Bill Muehlenberg 

Shame on those intolerant and discriminatory Australian Greens. How dare they exclude so many people from their basic right to love and marry? They are determined to prevent loving and committed polyamorists from marrying. Unbelievable! In this day and age!

This is 2012 for heaven’s sake. When will this fundamentalist and fossilised political party get with the times? How dare they prevent those in love from exercising their rights? This is an horrific case of irrational discrimination and despicable bigotry. As the press reported the other day:

“The Greens have declared they have a clear policy against support for polyamorous marriage as they pursue their case for same-sex marriage. Greens marriage equality spokeswoman Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has declared the Greens have a clear policy against support for polyamorous marriage. ‘Our bill clearly states marriage “between TWO consenting adults” and that is the Greens' position. No, we don't support polyamorous marriage - the only person who seems to want to talk about this is Senator Cash.’

“It comes after Senator Michaelia Cash, Liberal Senator for WA, today challenged the Australian Greens to state their position on polyamorous marriage. This follows the disclosure that polyamorists have made submissions to the Greens' Senate Inquiry on Marriage Equality. ‘Sarah Hanson-Young must explain whether she does support "marriage for all", as advocated by the Greens, who wish to "legislate to allow marriage regardless of sexuality or gender identity",’ Senator Cash said. ‘Using these benchmarks it would really be a case of “anything goes”’.”

If you think that polyamorists are imaginary, think again. They are gaining momentum every day. Strengthened by homosexual militancy, they are demanding their “rights” -- with the same arguments.

An interesting piece in a recent issue of The Australian offers an example:

“The power couple of Australia's increasingly open polyamorous community, Rebecca and James Dominguez, have made Senate submissions urging the legalisation of same-sex marriage, as they promote greater acceptance of multiple-partner relationships. The couple have led the way in publicly outlining their own journey from monogamous marriage to one in which each has another lover as well.

“In her blog, Ms Dominguez, who is an administrator with IBM in Melbourne, writes: ‘My life rocks… I am incredibly happy and have almost everything I could possibly want… I've built a house with my husband and my husband's boyfriend so there are four of us living together in nice harmony. (The fourth household member is Rebecca's boyfriend.)

“‘James outed himself to me as bisexual a year after we got married. Remarkably, this didn't really phase me. He talked to a nice female friend of ours that was interested in him, informed her about my boundaries and they agreed to have a sexual relationship. I felt more secure in my relationship with James… I knew that James wasn't going to leave me, that he could have sex with and love another woman and still love me and want to be married to me.’

“For many years Ms Dominguez was president of PolyVic, which promoted the ‘practice of honest, open, ethical multiple relationships’. More recently the couple have taken up leading positions in Bisexual Alliance Victoria. The two organisations are closely connected and hold picnics which, the website says, are family-friendly with ‘food and drinks to share, picnic rugs or chairs, outdoor games, kids, dogs, kayaks’.

“As president of the alliance, Mr Dominguez, an IT specialist in the Victorian public service, wrote to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee in support of the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010. ‘The legal definition of marriage itself has changed over history, such as the removal on restrictions of inter-racial marriage and the provision for divorce,’ Mr Dominguez wrote in the submission.

“Ms Dominguez wrote in her own submission to the Senate committee: ‘Just as we have allowed changes in the past to things considered “traditional” (equality of women, humanity of non-white people), we can change “traditional” understandings of things now’.”

Do these “arguments” sound familiar? Oh yeah, they are the exact same “arguments” being used to support same-sex marriage. Absolutely identical.

Once you throw out the core criteria of marriage (proper gender, proper number, etc) then anything does go. And yet homosexual activists have the gall to mock those who warn of a slippery slope to group marriage.

Even the Greens discriminate. Every aspiring member must sign this declaration:

“I am not a member of another political party and will not join another political party while I am a member of The Greens. I agree to abide by the Charter and Constitution of the Australian Greens, and the Constitution of my state/territory party. I acknowledge that my membership is subject to approval by The Greens party in the state/territory where I reside.”

Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t this discrimination and intolerance? Why am I discriminated against simply because I don’t agree with this charter? Why am I being denied my human rights to join in fellowship with the Greens?

Of course the Greens will argue that to so bend the rules in this manner would undermine and destroy their party organisation. Allowing anyone in redefines the group out of existence. Obviously the Greens cannot alter their own rules and criteria to accommodate those who are bent on destroying it.

I can see common sense and logic in this policy. It is discrimination, obviously, but a vital, necessary and healthy one if the Greens are to survive.

                                                          

Er, wait a minute. Have I not heard this argument before? Yes, countless times -- about why heterosexual marriage discriminates against same-sex marriages and group marriages.

             

Discrimination, you see, is not a dirty word. It is a basic element of logic. If only the Greens could see that.

Bill Muehlenberg is a lecturer in ethics and philosophy at several Melbourne theological colleges and a PhD candidate at Deakin University.  From here.

Reduce Divorce with Love Drugs?

Two Oxford bioethicists have proposed a novel solution to the scourge of 50% divorce rates – use love drugs to keep the flame of love alive. Writing in New Scientist, Julian Savulescu, of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and Anders Sandberg, of the Future of Humanity Institute, argue that evolution made humans unfit for lifelong marriage.

In a hunger-gatherer society, they observe, “at least 50 per cent of mating alliances would have ended within 15 years. This figure is surprisingly close to the current global median duration of marriage, 11 years. It seems unlikely that natural selection equipped us to keep relationships lasting much more than a decade.”

However, neuroscience can help to vanquish evolution and “make up the gap between the health-giving ideal of ‘till death do us part’ and the heartbreaking reality and harms of widespread divorce”. Comparisons of closely-related monogamous prairie voles and polygamous montane voles suggest that at least part of the secret of pair bonding is the hormone oxytocin. “Taking oxytocin in the form of a nasal spray would promote unstressed, trusting behaviours that might reduce the negative feedback in some relationships and help strengthen the positive sides.” And to promote fidelity, another drug, corticotropin, could be used to enhance sadness at the thought of separation.

“We argue we need all the help we can get to liberate ourselves from evolution. It has not created us to be happy, but offers enough transient happiness to keep us alive and reproducing… Why not use all the strategies we can to give us the best chance of the best life?”

A longer article outlining their ideas will appear soon in the journal Philosophy and Technology.

The New Scientist article prompted some head-scratching from fellow bioethicist Iain Brassington, of Manchester University, in the Journal of Medical Ethics blog. Is Julian Savelescu channelling Bryan Ferry (see video) in the 1980s’s disco classic “Love is the Drug”, he wonders. How could chemically-enhanced love be authentic?

“…if you know that that feeling arose at about the time you started taking oxytocin… well, might it get in the way of the feeling? Would a person who knew himself to have taken the chemicals ever really be able to take his feelings seriously? That’s not at all obvious.”


From BioEdge

Is the Obama Administration Anti-Family?

In the strongest letter of his brief tenure as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Timothy Dolan called on President Obama and his administration to stop violating the law by actively lobbying against DOMA. The archbishop did not mince words, stating that the administration’s actions do not “stand the test of common sense,” and that unless rolled back, such actions would “precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.” He further wrote that Obama needs to “push the reset button” on DOMA. To do otherwise, “ignores the will of millions of Americans who have voted in favor of state constitutional versions of the law.”

Shortly after Archbishop Dolan’s letter, the Obama administration immediately denounced a North Carolina ballot initiative for a Constitutional Amendment that would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. In doing so, the administration repeated its earlier statement that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts.

This is not the only example of the Obama administration’s complete disregard for the law in order to push its LGBT agenda. In addition to the actions cited above, Dolan also called attention to a June report that the Department of Agriculture had created another “ism” – “heterosexism” – for those who support DOMA, and the lifting of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the military.

And it is not only the Catholic Church that opposes the Obama administration’s overreaching in its push to redefine marriage. DOMA-like statutes currently exist in 39 states and 30 define marriage as between one man and one woman in their constitutions. Since 2004, 22 state constitutions have been amended to include this language by a popular vote of citizens. The six states, plus the District of Columbia, which have legalized homosexual “marriage” have done so through legislation or court order, not by the popular consent of the citizens of the state.

President Obama flagrantly disregards the will of the American people by not only ignoring the federal law that defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman, but also by openly opposing it. Can you imagine what would happen to a pro-life president who directed the appropriate agencies to ignore the law in order to withhold congressionally-approved funds to Planned Parenthood?

Like all who attempt to redefine marriage to suit an activist minority, the administration doesn’t appear to understand the important role natural marriage serves in securing the health of a nation. A recent study, “The Sustainable Demographic Dividend: What Does Marriage and Fertility have to do with the Economy?” focused on the marriage of one man and one women, the children resulting from that marriage, and the role of this natural family in sustaining economic growth. Its four key findings, cited from the executive summary, are:

* Children raised in intact, married families are more likely to acquire the human and social capital they need to become well-adjusted, productive workers.

* Men who get and stay married to one woman work harder, work smarter, and earn more money than their unmarried peers.

* Nations wishing to enjoy robust long-term economic growth and viable welfare states must maintain sustainable fertility rates of at least two children per woman.


* Key sectors of the modern economy—from household products to insurance to groceries—are more likely to profit when men and women marry and have children.


The “bottom-line message” of the report is that, “[B]usiness, government, civil society, and ordinary citizens would do well to strengthen the family—in part because the wealth of nations, and the performance of large sectors of the modern economy, is tied to the fortunes of the family.”

This is a direct contradiction to the actions taken by the Obama Administration with regard to the family. Its radical societal engineering will be felt by future generations as there will be fewer persons in the work force and consumers to generate the wealth that yields the taxes necessary to fund the government.
European nations are scrambling to halt the demographic decline that the Obama administration seems determined to foist upon America. Archbishop Dolan is correct. If not reversed, this action will most certainly harm our nation in ways that do not appear to have occurred to the President.

Words do have meanings, but actions speak louder than words. The Obama administration’s attempts to redefine marriage prove that its proclamations on Mother’s and Father’s Days ring hollow.

As Archbishop Dolan put it, it is long past time for the Obama administration to “push the reset button” on DOMA. The future of our nation depends on it.

Bob Laird is a fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International, and is the former Director of Tepeyac Family Center. This article was originally published on HLI America’s Truth and Charity Forum.

Children and the Value of Family

Coming in the wake of last month’s looting and burning riots in British cities, a UN report pinpointing materialism as a particularly British blight was bound to make the country sit up and take notice. The youths who rampaged through the streets of London and Birmingham seemed to both covet material goods and despise them at the same time. In a similar way, last week’s report from UNICEF shows both children and parents in the UK trapped in a cycle of consumerism that is wildly out of kilter with what they really want and know to be of value.

Asked what makes them feel happy, children were quite clear: time with their family, having good friends, and having plenty of things to do, especially outdoors. This was also true for kids in Sweden and Spain, which the study compared to the UK. But while parents in the latter countries managed to meet the family and activity needs reasonably well, British parents struggled to give their children time and instead bought them off with the latest iPod, PlayStation or Adidas sports gear.

It is not just that the children nag their parents for cool stuff; the parents feel tremendous social pressure to provide it, something that does not happen to nearly the same extent in Sweden and Spain.

The report, Child well-being in the UK, Spain and Sweden: The role of inequality and materialism, puts this down to time poverty among British parents, driven by long working hours, low pay at the lower end of the scale, and ultimately to income inequality. But, while this makes sense in comparison with Sweden, where the welfare state smooths the parental path, it does not explain the contrast with Spain, where income inequality is lower than in the UK but still significant, which has been hard hit by the recession, and where long working hours are also common -- for fathers.

What is it about Spain that allows parents to spend time with their children and makes its materialism ranking for under-25s the second lowest in Europe? The report itself provides the answer: the strength of the Spanish family.

It would be nice to be able to trace this strength to intact marriages. Alas, divorce, cohabitation and single motherhood has been trending up in Spain as in Britain and Sweden (the latter among the top countries for extra-marital births). In fact, the researchers for this report carefully selected eight families in each of the three countries to represent single and couple families (no mention of marriage) with different employment patterns.

Nevertheless, Spanish families stood out for two reasons: the role of the extended family in looking after children and, most importantly, the role of the mother. Here are a couple of quotes from the report:

In Spain, while fathers often work late, time spent together by mothers and children is often quite natural through the course of the day, with sporting or creative activities and mealtimes bringing the family together, while extended family are never far away and tend to play an active role in looking after children. The importance of spending time with children was a dominant theme of the discussions with all the Spanish mothers.
…

If the Swedish adults saw childhood as preparation for responsible adulthood then in Spain childhood was seen as a cherished, special time which is full of joy. The role of children was mainly to learn: be it to study or to learn an instrument or a language or a sporting skill. Supported by a willing extended family, mothers by and large nurtured the children whilst the father’s role was to provide financially. The allocation of roles in the households we observed was very different from Sweden (with Spanish fathers almost entirely absent from the ethnographies due to work commitments) but just as clearly defined. In the Spanish ethnographies, we saw that the mother was the epicentre of the family, providing stability and structure for children as they grow up. Mothers in Spain saw this role as their primary one, and often sacrificed other areas of their lives, such as socialising, to do this. Mothers in Spain saw time, rather than possessions, as the most important thing they could give their children.

Although the Spanish families studied included some working mothers, as in the other two countries, this did not change the dominant impression of the mother’s role as the key to children’s happiness and general lack of materialism.

There seems to be a recipe for success here. A 2007 UNICEF report on child well-being in the rich countries -- the OECD -- ranked Spain 8th in family and peer relationships compared with Sweden’s 15th place and the UK’s 21st, and 2nd in child happiness (subjective well-being) compared with Sweden’s 7th place and the UK’s 20th.

As if to confirm this, another report published last week in the UK, where nearly one in three mothers with children as young as six months are working full-time, shows that many mothers regret what they see as a necessity. The The Price of Parenthood, commissioned by the Labour Party -- which spent most of its 13 years in power urging mothers to get back to work -- found that more than 80 per cent of parents of all ages agreed that one parent should, ideally, stay home with the children.

Louise Kirk, of Mothers At Home Matter (formerly Full Time Mothers) told MercatorNet her group has been trying to tell their government that for twenty years, and are pleased that UNICEF has put the spotlight on issues of work, family life and the happiness of children.

This is one lesson from the report.

The other concerns family stability, which any amount of research shows is greatest when based on lasting marriage. Nearly half of all babies in Britain are born to unmarried mothers, and although many are cohabiting with the father of the child, the relationship is far more likely than a marriage to break up before the child is 16.

However, the Price of Parenthood report revealed a “yearning for traditional family values” including "families with both a mother and father", and many of those questioned called for a tax system that “rewards couples who stay together”. Asked how they would describe the modern British family they said: “broken”, “juggling”, “hectic”, “fragmented”, “dysfunctional”…

The importance of family stability, not to mention wholeness, is recognised in the UNICEF report:

Children who did not live with both of their parents tended to mention visiting or seeing their absent parent as part of a good day, while others felt that their family being together (i.e. not divorced or separated by distance) was important in making them happy… The features of bad days that children told us about were strongly related to disruption to stable family life. Some Spanish children explicitly made the link between children being unhappy and disrupted family lives.
…

Amongst the UK children we talked to serious family problems were more strongly in evidence amongst more deprived children. Several children in these groups spoke of family separation, substance-abuse and fighting between parents when talking about bad days. This chimes with literature that documents the connection between poverty and family problems. Households where no one is in work and lone-parent families have been shown to bring not only economic disadvantage but also family tension.

A British girl aged 12, talking about what she would do if she won the lottery, focused on her broken family: First thing is to go on holiday with all my family together, instead of just one part of them, because the last time I did that I was 7 … even if it wasn’t somewhere fancy, just to be with them.

It is strange, then, that in its recommendations to the British government UNICEF makes no mention of family structure -- although respected think tanks like the Centre for Social Justice have been urging the government to make marriage the focus of its family policy for some time.

UNICEF’s most important advice is for the government to give a lead in the area of work-life balance by paying all its employees and sub-contractors a “living wage” -- a term which used to mean an amount that enabled a breadwinner to provide the essentials of life for his family. This is a sound idea, but how is it to be applied in a society that cannot even agree what a family is? In refusing to address this issue, the report, ironically, falls back on a materialistic basis for child well-being: income.

Being able to earn enough income is certainly vital, but enough for what? The report should have paid more attention to the messages coming from children about fractured families. Even Spain will find it difficult to maintain its record of nurturing motherhood and contented children if it cannot help mothers and fathers to stay together.

From here.


Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Divorce Wrecking British Society

Sir Paul Coleridge took the opportunity of a BBC radio interview to drive home a message he has repeated more than once: divorce is wrecking the lives of British children and the whole of society. If all parties agreed, he said, a couple could get a divorce in six weeks -- in less time than it takes to get a driving licence -- simply by filling out a form, but the result was 3.8 million children whose fate was at the mercy of the courts.

And there was no sign that the misery of large numbers of children hit by family break-up was diminishing. If anything the trend was getting worse. It affected everyone from the Royal Family down and rippled out into the whole of society, the Daily Mail reported.

The judge, who has been married to his wife Judith for 38myears and has two sons and a daughter, was highly critical of the cohabitation trend, which has accelerated the breakdown of relationships where there are children:

On the day official figures showed that nearly half of all babies are now born to unmarried mothers, Sir Paul blamed family break-up on social changes including the shift in attitudes towards cohabitation and increasing numbers of children born outside marriage.

He said that 50 years ago 'on the whole cohabitation was regarded as something you didn't do, to have a child outside marriage, so that created a framework that stopped very much breakdown.

'We've had a cultural revolution in sexual morality and sexual behaviour,' the judge said. 'We need to have a reasonable debate about it and decide what needs to be done – and I don't mean Government,' he said. 'They didn't cause the problem.'

He added that the change in social attitudes over the past five decades had given people 'complete freedom of choice'.

This was 'great' when they behaved responsibly, he added, but some seemed to think it was a 'free-for-all'. Sir Paul said the rate of family breakdown among unmarried couples was far higher than among married ones.

It was statistically proven parents were far more likely to stay together until their children's 16th birthday if they were married, he said.

Official figures suggest that an average marriage lasts around 11 years, but a cohabitation is likely to break up in three if the partners do not marry.

Sir Paul has also called for the government to set up an independent commission to reform marriage, divorce and family laws.

A Century of Marxist Feminism and no Real Gains

It is International Women’s Day and we are almost finished marking it Down Under. This morning the New Zealand Herald ran an opinion piece from the British newspaper the Observer as its gesture towards the occasion. As the writer complained, people (especially the men who still control most of the world’s media) tend to be apathetic towards this annual celebration of what women have achieved and heads-up about what still needs to be done for the fair sex.

I must say that I felt a yawn coming on myself when it dawned on me what day it was, even after realising it was the 100th such event and therefore particularly significant. The next feeling was impatience. After more than four decades of second wave feminism, women in countries like mine really are mistresses of their own destiny, and if they are working the double shift, or bringing up a child alone, or being subjected to gender violence, it is very likely their own fault. Yes it is.

Then anger. Women were supposed to bring their unique values to public life and transform our societies into better places. Instead, in too many instances, we have sold ourselves short, debasing our sexuality, depriving children of fathers and a proper home life and even agreeing to the killing of unborn children as a way of burying our mistakes. Men could not have come as far adrift from family life unless we had let them.

In New Zealand five years ago 30 per cent of households with children were headed by single mothers. The figure is probably higher now. In the United States in 2008 out-of-wedlock births passed the 40 per cent mark. Many of these mothers were cohabiting with the father, but such relationships have proved unstable and very likely to break down. To the great disadvantage of the children -- especially girls, to be quite feminist about it.

Women have proved that they have brains -- they now outnumber men in graduating from universities in the developed world. They have shown that they can do a wide range of demanding jobs and that they can look after themselves financially. All good. What they have yet to show is how their education and earning capacity can be combined successfully with the one career that is exclusively theirs: motherhood.

This essential vocation and service remains the aspiration of the vast majority of women -- as does marriage, without which motherhood is a burden to the woman and an insufficient support to the child. Yet, as research by the US National Marriage Project has shown, the erosion of marriage has penetrated far into the middle ranks of society. There are several reasons for this -- economic, cultural and civic -- but one of them is surely feminism’s antagonism to the family as a “patriarchal” institution and its insistence on female independence as a lifelong state.

It’s thanks to this ideological stance that we still have Ministers of Women’s Affairs, their bureaucracies and their international Big Sisters pushing for gender equality policies which assume that husbands and wives -- or domestic partners -- should each do exactly half of both childcare and domestic chores and half of the paid work to support a household. Research has shown that this is not what women with young children want.

If women want to have the choice to be wives and mothers in anything more than a nominal sense, it is time to knock this sort of nonsense on the head. Whatever good feminism was going to do has been done; now it is time to tidy up the house and start living again.

But what of the developing world? Don’t women there still need Michelle Bachelet and her new improved, half-billion-dollar UN Women organisation? It is true that women in the poorer countries are at an even greater disadvantage than men when it comes to education, personal safety and economic opportunity. There is still much to be done to recognise the equal human dignity and rights of women and to give them concrete expression.

But the developed nations, with their tenuous grasp on what constitutes the dignity of women and on the relationships that underpin a healthy society, are a poor model. Ms Bachelet has complained that the money for her work is not coming through. Good. I would not give UN Women or any women’s organisation another cent until it can show that it understands the importance of marriage and motherhood. In that order.

When we have found a few more of those, it will be time to celebrate International Women’s Day with enthusiasm.

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.


Related reading:  Alice C. Linsley, The Paradox of Feminism

Vatican Fights Radical U.N. Agenda

By Samantha Singson Lauren Funk


NEW YORK, February 24 (C-FAM) The Holy See delegation to the United Nations this week condemned the “attempt at wholesale social engineering” imposed on Africa by UN population control policies. In a series of powerful statements the Vatican delegation also called for the defense and safeguarding of the family.

The UN Commission on Social Development (CSD) does not normally attract much attention as the more controversial topics are covered by other commissions. However, in light of the upcoming UN Conference on Youth, observers paid closer attention to this year’s commission and its resolutions on youth, the family, and development.

The Holy See first expressed its strong reservations on references to the World Program of Action on Youth (WPAY) in the resolution on youth programs, and spoke out against the “attempted imposition of agendas” during the resolution’s negotiations.
 
When the UN General Assembly first passed WPAY in 1995, a number of delegations including Malta, Argentina, and Lebanon took exception to the language on youth “reproductive health services” and the document’s disregard for parental primacy in educating children. However, during last week’s negotiations on the youth resolution, the Holy See’s attempts to have those previous reservations reflected within the text failed.

It its statement to the General Assembly, the Holy See chastised the attempted imposition of "agendas" that “[do] not advance the well being of peoples.” The Holy See called for an “approach which respects the timeless values rooted in human nature, values which are essential for authentic social development.”

The Holy See strongly objected to the inclusion of an African document called the Maputo Protocol that calls for a right to abortion. The Holy See delegate challenged the “false assumption that African countries are overpopulated, and that wealthy nations must work to reduce their numbers” as an “attempt at wholesale social engineering imposed on Africa” in violation of their human rights, most especially their right to life.

The Holy See also said “the traditional culture of respecting life which is characteristic of the region of Africa is something from which all countries can learn. The more we affirm respect for the right to life—throughout the life cycle—the more we will truly advance social development around the world.”

The Holy See spoke again on a commission resolution on the family, which did not mention mothers or fathers. The Holy See delegate said, “the institution of the family, which is a sine qua non for preparing the future generation, is being challenged by many factors in the modern world and the family needs to be defended and safeguarded.”

Many delegations have commented on what they see as a new tenor and tone of the Holy See delegation. Delegations are also talking about how much more active the Holy See delegates have been in actual negotiations. Some delegations have greeted this outspokenness with chagrin and even hostility.

END

Pope Leads Global Vigil for the Unborn

ROME, December 2 (C-FAM) Last Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI led an unprecedented global prayer vigil for unborn life in Rome that was repeated in countries around the world. Ten thousand faithful jammed St. Peter’s Basilica including many children who were presented to the Holy Father.

In his remarks, the pope offered support to those working in the pro-life movement. “I wish to express my thanks to all who have taken up this invitation and those who are specifically dedicated to welcoming and safeguarding human life in different situations of fragility, especially in its early days and in its early stages,” he said.

“The Church continually reiterates what was declared by the Second Vatican Council against abortion and all violations of unborn life: from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care,” said Pope Benedict.

Read it all here.

Are Evangelical Women Hypocrites?

Molly Worthen’s central thesis... seems to run thus: evangelical women with a gift for preaching, who claim to be “submissive” to their husbands and in favour of traditional views of gender, are hypocrites because they ostensibly reject feminism while reaping its benefits.

Dallas-based preacher Priscilla Shirer, for example, conducts a mega-ministry to women. She exercises leadership while her husband picks up at least half the tab for domestic and PA duties. All the while she insists that “the man is the head” and that there is a specific feminine way of being.

Ms Worthen is sceptical. I find Ms Worthen’s assumptions questionable. Here are some of my beefs with her.

In my reading of it, the whole essay turns on her suspicion of, if not rejection of, complementarity:

Many call themselves complementarians, signalling their belief that God ordained complementary — not identical or flexible — roles for men and women.

I suppose I am a complementarian, because, taking my cue from the science of biology, I believe, indeed I know that men and women are different. Based on common sense and lived experience (plus anthropology and sociology, which I have studied) I also believe that men and women have different strengths, and may have different, but complementary roles in life. Basically, these are the generative roles of mother and father, from which other roles (breadwinner, home-based parent…) may flow, although in different degrees and sometimes completely reversed. I do think that “complementary” includes “flexible” -- as Mrs Shirer clearly does in practice.

To critics, “complementarian” is code for sexist patriarchy, a license to keep women muzzled and homebound.

I am home by choice. Far from being muzzled, I have worked as a tutor (to my own children and others), as a freelance writer, a motivational speaker and a blogger. Indeed, how can anyone in western society be muzzled these days? If I want to say something, anything, it can be published within seconds on my blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or any of millions of online forums.

Conservative Bible teachers like Shirer have built a new paradigm for feminine preaching, an ingenious blend of traditional revivalism, modern therapeutic culture and the gabby intimacy of Oprah. This is the biblical-womanhood-industrial complex: a self-conscious alternative to secular feminism that preaches wifely submission while co-opting some feminist ideas to nurture women like Shirer to take the lead, within limits.

“Co-opted feminist ideas”? What idea did feminism ever promote (besides the bogus contention that abortion is a human right) that was truly innovative or unique to feminism? Concepts such as co-operation, mutual respect, justice, equality, feminine strength? These ideals hearken back somewhat further than the bra-burning 1970s—perhaps even to the teachings of a certain radical New Testament rabbi, who defended women against the prejudices of his time and warned men that even looking lustfully at a woman was a violation of her dignity -- and their own.

So Ms Worthen gets it exactly backward when she writes:

The only way to defeat secular feminism was to assimilate it. Conservative evangelicals stressed women's equal merit and urged men to lead by servanthood and sacrifice, like Christ himself.

To repeat: when men (and women) are behaving in a reasonable, loving, mutually respectful and supportive fashion, they are assimilating the teachings of Jesus Christ, not secular feminism.

It’s pretty clear that Ms Worthen doesn’t care for the style of ministry that people like Mrs Shirer provide, but style is not the issue here; the issue is sexual difference, and what it means in practice:

Liberal critics of Shirer’s theology don’t mind the weeping or the titillating language. What troubles them is the suggestion that women are intrinsically different from men and therefore destined to live a different — and subordinate — Christian life.

Women are intrinsically different from men, but it does not “therefore” logically follow that we are in any way “destined” to anything. The choice of “subordinate” in this sentence is clever but misleading. It is liberally (and literally) used all over the essay to evoke an illegitimate use of (male) power. But there is nothing essentially wrong with subordination -- don’t we all live with it in some form on a daily basis? Who doesn’t have a boss, a teacher, a professor, an editor or a project manager in his or her life?

The same applies in Christian life. Believers consider themselves subordinate to God, and if we belong to a denomination of any kind, we generally subordinate ourselves to church authority. But church authority represents the service Christ renders his members, and this is what Ms Worthen, though she acknowledges the idea, really fails to understand.

However, you don’t have to be a believer to accept the practicality of having an order of authority in the home. Many women can testify that it’s pretty easy to be subordinate to a husband who gives his wife and family love, respect, and every kind of support.

My husband is the head of our family; we believe it’s the best way to avoid serious conflict. We make most decisions jointly, because we do complement each other in knowledge, experience, and temperaments. But if we ever come up against a life-altering decision (careers, moving, so forth), the final decision is his. In my opinion, submitting to his decision is preferable to marital separation, not that the latter is very likely. He’s a good man; we have a good marriage. He has never yet made a decision I couldn’t live with.

In fact, the essay reveals that many women long for as much:

At the same time, “a lot of women would like a sort of benign patriarchy,” Hill said. “Women are tired of having to make a living for themselves, doing everything for themselves.”

Ms. Worthen seems to take offense that “Shirer describes her connection with God in ways she says reflect ‘a feminine heart’.” And she finds a Christian feminist who disagrees with that too:

“There is a sense in which their identity as a Christian is tied to first not who they are in Jesus as a human being, but their gender,” says Mimi Haddad, president of Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization that takes an egalitarian stance toward men and women. In Haddad’s view, “In Scripture, it’s your humanity” that matters.

Oh? Is that why we have feminist-oriented “women’s spirituality” retreats, feminist goddess worship, and feminist women’s studies courses in every university all over the western world? Because it’s only our humanity that matters? Hypocrisy indeed. If you are a feminist, you are allowed to possess a uniquely female way of understanding. If you are a traditional woman and you think men and women are hard-wired a certain way, you are stupid and oppressed.

“Biblical womanhood” is a tightrope walk between the fiats of old-time religion and the facts of modern culture, and evangelicals themselves do not know where it might lead.

Oh my, that sounds so dire. Where might it lead? Possibly to some people having more satisfying marriages? Possibly to women finding ways to minister in the church community—ways that satisfy themselves (and their peers) but not the official credo of feminism, which necessarily, inevitably wants so much more? Possibly to a drop in popular support for state-funded feminism and its plethora of perennially useless publications and programs? Gaia forbid.

Yes, women have been and continue to be oppressed –and worse—across times, places and cultures. But I think Molly Worthen of the New York Times is looking for oppression in all the wrong places. Modern secular feminists should get over their angst at seeing happily married, contemporary, suburban, evangelical housewives—even the ones who minister to packed auditoriums of cheering fans -- and spend their pent-up energy on something truly horrifying: female genital mutilation, forced marriage, child brides, stoning for adultery, sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, lack of decent maternal medical care, limited educational opportunities, dress codes that prohibit women from feeling sunlight on their faces…

Finally and fundamentally, the NYT essay seems to be flawed, because one cannot apply the ideas and values of secular feminism (or secular humanism) to how the church—any church—operates. You’re talking about approaching things from radically different perspectives. I wonder why Ms Worthen bothered with this exercise. She must be really concerned about those crowds of women who choose to listen to Priscilla Shirer. Women exercising choice in their lives: who knew that could be so offensive to feminists?


From here.

Being Religious: Liability or Benefit?

My local newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, recently published an opinion piece whose purpose was to discredit religion and show that people not only do not behave worse without it, but actually behave better. His ammunition was a couple of articles by a US researcher called Gregory Paul, who had discovered the following:

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, venereal disease, teen pregnancy, and abortion."

I immediately smelled a rat, because it contradicts every bit of research I had ever read about the effects of religious practice (practice, not nominal belief). And, funnily enough, this week Pat Fagan sent out a research brief from the Heritage Foundation, confirming my impressions.

Using data from the US National Survey of Family Growth (2002) Dr Fagan compared women who had had ever an unwanted pregnancy by current religious attendance and by the kind of family structure they grew up in. This is what he found:

Examining current religious attendance only, women who worship at least weekly have an average of 0.43 unwanted pregnancies in their lifetime, followed by women who attend religious services between one and three times a month (0.50), those who attend religious services less than once a month (0.57), and those who never attend religious services (0.66).1

But family structure turns out to be even more influential:

Examining structure of family of origin only, women who grew up in an intact married family have an average of 0.39 unwanted pregnancies in their lifetime, followed by women from married stepfamilies (0.54), single divorced parent families (0.69), cohabiting stepfamilies (0.79), intact cohabiting families (0.86), and always single parent families (0.9).

Together, coming from an intact family and currently practising one’s faith gave women the lowest risk of an unwanted pregnancy:

The number of unwanted pregnancies is lowest for women who grew up in an intact married family and who now worship at least weekly. According to the National Survey of Family Growth, women who grew up in an intact married family and now worship at least weekly have an average of 0.3 unwanted pregnancies in their lifetimes, followed by women who grew up in an intact married family and now never worship (0.51), those who grew up in other family structures and now worship at least weekly (0.63), and those who grew up in other family structures and now never worship (0.77).

So, religious practice correlates with two very desirable social traits -- at least.

From here.