From the halls of academe to the hills of Hollywood the cry of ‘family diversity’ rings out ever more confidently.
Let’s start with a little warm-up exercise. Here are three people who have made pronouncements on the family: a government advisor on families and parenting; a filmstar; an academic. See if you can correctly match them with the following quotations: Read more…
This is a refreshing headline. Family time is important for good mental health, especially family dinners, which would be totally cramped by sports.
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Mark Breier sees big benefits for his three sons in playing sports. But when his teenage son Travis, dreaming of a pro career, wanted to join an elite traveling basketball team in junior-high school, Mr. Breier said no. Read more…
Book outlines stark divisions
By Cheryl Wetzstein, The Washington Times
Young parents Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston may have gotten engaged again recently, but they are still a quintessential “red” family trying to swim against the tide of family change, say two family law professors who have launched a debate about “red” and “blue” American families.
The 2004 and 2008 elections showed a divided America — and that division extends even to families, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone write in their book, “Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.” Read more…
Let’s play a little game. A husband and a wife have a baby via, er, natural insemination. For some reason, a court needs to determine parentage. What objective standards could the court use to make that determination?
Well, DNA tests can be used. That gives an objective answer.
There are other scientific tests that can also be used. These tests may be less reliable than DNA, but these tests are a tool that can give an answer that is accurate to a given degree.
Then there’s the presumption that any child born to the woman during the marriage belongs to her husband. This rule takes advantage of a phenomenon that is well known– that a wife’s most frequent (usually only) sex partner is her husband. This is a clear rule founded on observable reality. One can objectively determine whether the rule has been followed. Furthermore, the presumption is rebuttable to take care of those situations in which there have been some, um, indiscretions. (Some would say not nearly rebuttable enough, but that’s beside the point). So, objective facts can counteract the rule when warranted.
Okay. Let’s try a different scenario. Two women come to the same court. They have been raising a child together. Read more…
This is interesting. Yet another reason having kids is a good thing.
A study showing the contagious nature of divorce among social networks has been receiving a good bit of attention this week. Not only friends, siblings and people you work with, but also friends of friends are more likely to divorce if you do. Children can protect you from this contagion (although not, apparently, from more direct causes of divorce) — the more children the better. Read more…
Monday (July 5th) I listened to a broadcast on the Diane Rehm Show of an interview with James T. Patterson, author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama. That title was already on my long (long…) wish-list of books I’d like to buy if I had a few thousand bucks to spare (and a few years of leisure time I could spend to read them) so of course I listened with interest. But if what I heard was any indication of the kind of self contradictory ‘logic’ to be found in his book, then it’s probably no longer one of the must-have titles on my list. (So don’t take this as a review of Professor Patterson’s book, which I haven’t read. This is just my reactions to some of the assertions he made in his interview.) Read more…
Finally, some good news from a family court:
A Wisconsin court has told a lesbian that legal adoption, not merely nurturing a child, determines parental rights.
A lesbian identified as Liz K. and her former partner Wendy M. adopted two children from Guatamala. The couple decided that since Liz was a practicing attorney and could add the children to her health insurance, she should be the legal adoptive parent.
But after the couple’s relationship ended, Liz’z former partner sued for parental rights, saying she had a relationship with the children also. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel believes the court made the right decision in refusing to grant guardianship status to Wendy. Read more…
Family law Judges are famous for their truly disgusting rulings. But no matter how low they sink into the muck, they continuously find a way to achieve new lows of tyranny and immorality.
Witness this case: Read more…
It’s so true. Many studies have proven the lasting value of family meals on children especially, including improved test scores and health, and decreasing the chances of drug and alcohol abuse.
by Sheila Liaugminas
I have few T-shirts with words or pictures on them, preferring simple solid colors instead. But there’s one I couldn’t resist, and my family loves it….the blue one with a drawing of a little house and a family sitting around a dinner table with the caption “Value Meal”. I wore it on Father’s Day evening at the family table in the rare instance that we were all together. The value of that goes deeper than we think we know…
A few years ago, Time magazine did a fine piece on ‘The Family Meal’ that so captured my attention, I’ve shared it in print and on radio time and again to reinforce the message. Read more…
There is a lot to be said for cultivating stoic virtues. The best people in the world, as far as I’m concerned are those that are determined to bestow upon others what they need. And they will make their own wants secondary.
The pursuit of happiness is fine. But assigning too high a priority to happiness and pleasure makes a person into a narcissistic jerk.
And here’s where I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there’s possibly some merit — if we persevere and have the sense to learn from it — in the other-orientation that is (good) parenting. It’s fine to go through life happy, in other words, but I suspect we also want to go through life without becoming big fat self-absorbed jackasses. Children really help in that regard. Read more…
Thumbs up from me for this article.
Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think. Bryan Caplan makes the case for having more children.
By BRYAN CAPLAN
Amid the Father’s Day festivities, many of us are privately asking a Scroogely question: “Having kids—what’s in it for me?” An economic perspective on happiness, nature and nurture provides an answer: Parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and much larger than it has to be. Read more…
Many of the discussions in the comments section of this site fall into a very familiar pattern. Take, for instance, one issue that we here at the Ruth Institute support: lifelong marriage. Lifelong marriage means that we are not particularly fond of divorce. (I’m sure my opinion as a Jew differs from that of Dr. J who is Catholic, but I think we can agree that divorce is, generally speaking, a bad thing).
And these discussions are usually not very productive because they are addled with illusion.
So, we don’t like divorce. How does this play out so predictably in the comments? And how are the comments beset by illusion?
Something a little light-hearted; plus, it makes sense!
Click here to watch this video featuring famous big family members. It cracks me up that many of these “big families” contain only three members, and that they show Mother Teresa a few frames before Madonna as though they were on equal footing, but I get their point. And I dig the song that comes with the video.
by Kamilah Thorpe
Don’t you love this video? It really puts some perspective to big families and the greatness that can come from them. Being from a large family myself, I was excited to get this post submission from a fellow oldest child. Kamilah has taken the lessons she learned in her family and has transferred those to the college scene, finding more than one similarity. Here’s what she has to day on the matter… Read more…
by Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council
Women in always-intact marriages who worship at least weekly are more likely to have had fewer lifetime sexual partners than those in other family structures who never worship. According to the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), women in always-intact marriages who attend religious services at least weekly have had, on average, 2.42 lifetime sexual partners, followed by women in always-intact marriages who never worship (4.71), those in other family structures who worship at least weekly (5.51), and those in other family structures who never worship (9.07). Read more…
Basically the gist of this article is that parents don’t spend enough time with their kids, and kids would like to spend more time with their parents. I suspect that many social ills would lose popularity if families spent more time together.
Here are my two favorite paragraphs, followed by the rest of the article:
There was a significant and rather sad gap between UK parents and children over the importance of family integrity. Only 51 per cent of parents agreed that, to have the best opportunities in life, a child needs a father and mother under the same roof, but three quarters of children did. Slightly more children (55 per cent) thought it was important that their parents were married than parents in general did (52 per cent). Read more…
Michelle Obama has lectured the nation on childhood obesity. It probably won’t shock you that her proposed solutions involve government action.
However, I would suggest a different solution– marriage and active child rearing by biological parents. This article discusses some of the causes of childhood obesity. The causes it discusses are less politically correct than blaming McDonalds and the Coca Cola Corporation.
Today, large numbers of elementary school kids are getting themselves ready for school without a parent. When my wife substituted at our son’s elementary school in California, kids were showing up at school with donuts for breakfast—because both parents had left the house hours earlier, expecting their kids to make their own way. After school, too many elementary school kids are returning to empty homes, and eating for comfort. I recall when my wife and I were out looking at houses Read more…
by Maggie Gallagher
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Townhall.com
I walked in late for the Susan B. Anthony List breakfast last Friday and, right away, Sarah Palin blew me away.
Trig. Read more…
This part cracks me up: The woman in charge of the sex ed program was upset saying that they had to “kow-tow to parents.” Oh, please forgive parents for caring what their children learn on the topic! She acts as though parents are idiots and know nothing. Well, they ARE parents.
by Brian Lilley
A government plan for explicit sex-ed gets shut down by parents.
Parents are the primary educators of their children. While this may seem to be a rather mundane statement, it is becoming radical in many parts of the world. Yet last week parents rose up to tell the politicians, experts and bureaucrats that run Ontario’s education system that they had had enough and a strange thing happened; the parents won the day. Read more…
This article states that mothers who stay at home, stay married more often than those who don’t. The stats for divorce and working mothers is highter. Interesting. Couples where the husband helps out, especially with the kids, have an even better chance of staying together.
Four jobs a week. Honestly, guys, that is all it takes after the birth of your first child to reassure your wife that you want to be helpful at home, and prevent your risk of divorce increasing. That is what a new study in the UK has found, and it suggests that those four tasks protect your marriage even more if your wife is not going out to work. Read more…
Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine tells a story that his mother told him, 30 years ago. I didn’t know that this kind of pressure was being exerted on the poor as far back as the Great Depression.
[My mother] continued: “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve told no one except your father. It was during the Depression years. The social worker came by to see how things were going. I told her that everything was fine except that I had missed two of my periods in a row.
“‘Oh that’s very bad news, Signora Rita! I’ll come back on Thursday afternoon and take you to see this doctor, and he will make your period come.’ Read more…
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