Now here’s a good idea. (Heavy sarcasm)
A high profile British homosexual activist wants the age of sexual consent lowered to 14, on the basis that currently underage sex “is mostly consenting, safe and fun”. 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…
My basic summary of this article? “Waaaaaaa!” -Parents
I have never been a fan of Time, so the recent news that the magazine is withdrawing a lot of free content from its online version did not cost me one wink of sleep. But this week’s cover story promoting the one-child family as the new American family model annoyed me — at least, what I read of it from other sources as well as the summary Time published online.
What’s at issue here is not how many children any particular couple have, which is their own business, but the suggestion that society as a whole has outgrown the need for more than one, or at least the ability to afford a bigger family. Read more…
by Colin Mason
Cyril Connolly once said that “there is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway.” Connelly is here suggesting that the distractions implicit in rearing a child will undercut an artist’s attempt to create, so children are to be avoided insofar as possible.
I have long believed that Connelly is wrong in opposing children to art. So I was pleasantly surprised, recently, to see my view validated by Frank Cottrell Boyce, a successful British screenwriter, novelist and actor. Boyce’s article, entitled “The Parent Trap: Art After Children” and appearing in Britain’s Guardian, makes the case that children, far from inhibiting or destroying an artist’s creativity, are actually a creative boon. He has this to say about fatherhood and art:
What is “me”, if not the sum of all my relationships and obligations? A customer, that’s what. The more you give, the more you are. Think of Chekhov, with his patients and his crowds of dependent relatives, whose living room became such a public space that he had to put up no smoking signs. His advice to young writers was “travel third class”. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s was to “buy carrots and turnips” … Read more…
by Dr. Miriam Grossman (Dr. Grossman will be the keynote speaker at the next It takes a Family Conference.) This article was originally published at Mercatornet.com on July 30, 2010.
It is not what you would want to read before breakfast, but it’s the sex menu they are serving up to children.
Sex education for tots is in the headlines. Last month it was a policy in Provincetown, Massachusetts making condoms available to first graders. Student requests were to be kept secret and parents’ objections ignored.
Now the news is from Montana. If the Helena school district has its way, kindergarteners will learn about “reproductive body parts”: the penis, vagina, breast, nipples, testicles, scrotum, and uterus. Ten year olds will be taught that “sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration”. Two years later they will discover this may involve “the penis, fingers, tongue or objects”. Read more…
(July 20, 2010) We’ve already podcasted Dr J’s talk from this rally, “Why Not Privatize Marriage?“ She also recorded two of the other speakers. Bishop John Smith, the ninth bishop of Trenton, discussed how marriage compliments the uniqueness of men and women. Jim White, former Supreme Director of the Knights of Columbus, encouraged civic participation and accountability of government officials.
(July 21, 2010) Though NOM’s Summer Marriage Tour continues through August 15, Annapolis, Maryland is Dr J’s last stop. Her final talk is entitled “It Takes a lot of Faith to Believe in Same-Sex Marriage.” Listen below or at our podcast page.
Here is a useful little nugget of information — an abstract describing a study that showed the protective effect of marriage for the health of newborn babies. The study concerned African American women and showed that the lowest risk for a low birth weight baby was found when marriage preceded childbirth for two generations. Read more…
Still going on strong, NOM’s Summer Marriage Tour was in Trenton, New Jersey yesterday (July 20). During her 10-minute talk, she addressed the question “Why not privatize marriage?” This is something a lot of libertarians like in principle, but as you’ll hear, Dr J gives examples of why it won’t be sustainable. Listen here or on our podcast page.
Local news coverage of the event available here and here (13:42 or headline “gay marriage”).
Dr J is in Providence, Rhode Island with the NOM Summer Marriage Tour. (You can also listen on our podcast page.) This talk, from July 18, answers the question “Why not privatize marriage?” She’s got a pragmatic answer for a slightly utopian viewpoint.
Click here to listen!
News reports from other sources also covered our rally in print (here, here, here, here & here, here, and here) as well as with audio and video (here, here, here, and here). Some of these detail the behavior of the rainbow protestors, who were holding a counter-rally nearby, and their attempts to engage and threaten those listening to the speakers from the Summer Marriage Tour.
Dr J is on NOM’s Summer Marriage Tour for the next several days–she’ll be traveling down the Eastern seaboard, meeting new people, and giving short talks in each city at which the bus stops. These talks will soon be available on our podcast page, but in the meantime, they’re available here.
In her first 10-minute talk (delivered July 14 in Augusta, Maine), Dr J answers the question “What is the essential purpose of marriage?”
Click here to listen!
Augusta, Maine
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…
Having children: you’ve got to do it. If you don’t Charles Darwin will call you a loser or something. And there’s that whole Demographic Winter thing too. So, both for yourself and your society, you’ve got to have children.
But having children is hard.
I thought of something a friend once said about the Children’s Museum of Manhattan—“a nice place, but what it really needs is a bar”—and rued how, at that moment, the same thing could be said of my apartment. Two hundred and 40 seconds earlier, I’d been in a state of pair-bonded bliss; now I was guided by nerves, trawling the cabinets for alcohol. My emotional life looks a lot like this these days. I suspect it does for many parents—a high-amplitude, high-frequency sine curve along which we get the privilege of doing hourly surfs. Yet it’s something most of us choose. Indeed, it’s something most of us would say we’d be miserable without.
People today, however, delay having children. Having children is hard enough. Delaying the process only makes it harder. “Oh,” you will say, “but if I have children later, I’ll have more money. I’ll be able to buy them more stuff. I’ll be able to hire more and better child care. That’ll make it so much easier.”
Dream on.
As this article from New York magazine puts it:
Not only did they find that couples’ overall marital satisfaction went down if they had kids; they found that every successive generation was more put out by having them than the last—our current one most of all. Even more surprisingly, they found that parents’ dissatisfaction only grew the more money they had, even though they had the purchasing power to buy more child care. “And my hypothesis about why this is, in both cases, is the same,” says Twenge. “They become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.” Read more…
As part of its Newly Wed In America series, National Public Radio today aired a segment titled Kids First, Marriage Later — If Ever.
A couple of quotes:
“Many of these parents are children of divorce… Today, these parents say they’d rather raise a child alone or with multiple partners than risk putting that child through a divorce.”
“As to what kind of consequences this new concept of marriage will have for the next generation… Experts say it’s too soon to say what the effects will be. We’ll have to ask these children in 20 years.”
Dr J has already written a blog article on this subject. We’ve also podcasted her Issues, Etc interview on the topic, and it’s available here.
It’s always interesting to me how we’re moving to extensively regulate what kids eat in schools, the subjects they can take, the games they play at recess, the equipment they wear when riding a bike or playing sports, and the messages they receive about cigarettes and drugs. Yet when it comes to sex, the experts say to give them a condom and let them figure it out. Why the inconsistency?
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…
The Social Retreat from Children and How it is Affecting America
Interesting for those who are interested. 
W. Bradford Wilcox
I have a lot of respect for Pamela Paul. So it pains me to say that her new piece in The Atlantic, “Are Fathers Necessary?”, gets it wrong, and in two very big ways. The gist of her argument is that sociologists Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey are right in claiming that fathers play no essential role in the lives of their children. Or, in their words, ”based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man…” 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…
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