Ruth Institute Blog

(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.

Bishop John Smith

Jim White

(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.

Annapolis, Maryland

Yesterday my husband and I took our three children, ages 5, 2.5, and 3 months, with us to Macy’s to find a wedding gift for my husband’s sister. A helpful clerk, an older woman named Marjorie, spotted me looking around for a place to print a registry and immediately jumped to my aid. She walked me to the computer, gave me a helpful tip for pulling out the pages correctly, and took the time to explain a few things on the printed sheets before setting me loose to first relocate my family. I had walked off leaving my husband holding the bag–the diaper bag that is, as well as keeping tabs on our two free birds and the baby safely trapped in her car seat he had set on the floor. Not surprisingly, he had everything under control, so I simply stood near him as I perused his sister’s registry. 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…

Part 1. in a series of responses to a question posed by a student.

No one contract can treat same sex couples and opposite sex couples identically.

(Warning: this post is long! But Worth the effort if I do say so myself!)

1. If you believed that it is not possible for the government to be neutral in the definition of marriage, would that change your view of the desirability of your proposal? Read more…

Just this past weekend, I told the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers that the use of Artificial Reproductive Technology is the newest threat to marriage as the lifelong fruitful union of a man and a woman. I argued that the very existence of the ART option is distorting women’s marriage decisions. They believe that they can postpone marriage indefinitely, and if Mr. Right never shows up, they can still become a mother on their own, artificially.
As if on cue, Time magazine steps up to the plate with corroborating evidence:

New research from Belgium and the U.K. suggests that women may increasingly be considering freezing their eggs as a way to prolong fertility as they pursue a career — or find the right romantic partner. A survey of nearly 200 female students found Read more…

Is Father’s Day going to become obsolete? I guess those for whom it is actually celebrated are a dying breed.

By Van Helsing

Father’s Day is coming up a week from Sunday. MSNBC has begun to honor it already — by proclaiming that fathers are needed only for their sperm: Read more…

My last post dealt with the sampling and reporting problems associated with the latest study purporting to show that the children of lesbians are doing just fine. The fact is, that the study claims that the children of lesbians are doing better in every dimension than the children in the general population. The underlying message of this story is not simply, “leave us alone to have kids the way we want.”

Herewith, are the 3 Really Pernicious Messages behind the “Lesbians Make Better Parents” Story line:

1. Women are better parents than men. Therefore, Read more…

The great Theodore Dalrymple takes on the issue of fatherlessness.  Contrary to the promises of those who would redefine marriage out of existence, every indication is that mass fatherlessness leads to a world of Hobbesian horror, not of Kumbaya love and happiness.  (Emphasis added).

The worst child abusers in the country have been successive British governments. They have done everything in their power, by means of social reform and fiscal policies, to promote the very circumstances in which child abuse and neglect are most likely to take place. Read more…

Dr. J. discussed a decline in empathy over time in this post.  She discussed several possible causes of this decline.

I propose to add one more possible contributing factor– a decline in the influence of fathers.  David Popenoe in has book Life without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society, discusses the importance of fathers to families and to society.

Reading his description of what fathers do in their families, I began to wonder if Popenoe did field research by observing my own family.  His description of the differing parenting styles of mothers and fathers was absolutely uncanny.

After that discussion, Popenoe discusses the importance of active fathers for contributing to the development of a child’s intellectual competence, academic achievement and psychological well-being.  All of this should be obvious.  What is surprising in the research is this.  Citing two studies from learned journals including a twenty six year longitudinal study, Popenoe makes the surprising conclusion that the active presence of fathers in the family is important for the development of empathy.

But rather than acknowledging this, I’m sure the left will find some way to blame the decline of empathy on McDonalds or George Bush.  That’s just my guess.

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.

by Carolyn Moynihan

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…

This hard-hitting editorial makes many of the points I’ve been making: the combination of feminism and the welfare state is making fathers a thing of the past. The UK is further along this path than we are, but we could go this route, if we aren’t careful.

Men from the employable and educated classes are still in strong demand among women. But much lower down the socioeconomic
scale, among the least privileged, men have become — or have come to seem — entirely optional. …
In a study presented to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the sociologist Geoff Dench argues from the evidence of British Social Attitudes surveys since 1983 that there is a growing number of such extended man-free families: “Three-generation lone-mother families — extended families without men — are developing a new family subculture which involves little paid work.” …
The problem with this new type of extended family, Dench says, is that it is not self-sustaining but tends to be parasitic on conventional families in the rest of society. Read more…

Great article by a Ruth Institute Academic Advisory Board Member.

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC National Director

Newsweek recently reported a story about a 51-year-old man, who between 1980 and 1994 donated his sperm twice a week in order to make cash for medical school and to nurture his altruistic desires to help infertile women. Kirk Maxey states, “I loved having kids, and to have these women doomed to wandering around with no family didn’t seem right, and it’s easy to come up with a semen donation.”

Don’t get me started. Read more…

Such a nice article. I did see the Superbowl, as I’m sure many of you did too. The very end when winning quarterback Drew Brees held up his son was truly the highlight. Seeing a picture of it even now brings tears to my eyes. This article is a great perspective on the significance of that moment.

The poster says, “Life. Better than lifting the Lombardi.”

by Kathryn Jean Lopez

This Super Bowl MVP would rather hold his son than the Lombardi Trophy.

‘Don’t you live for that moment right there?” Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet.com

We are used to the sad stories of children who have never known their fathers, and of those whose fathers become estranged through divorce; but there are a growing number of children who risk losing the only father they have ever known because he discovers he is not their father after all. Read more…

By Patrick Welsh, Washington Post

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family court system. Read more…

by Dr Jennifer Roback Morse

Britain and Canada are well ahead in the race to make fatherhood completely redundant.

Last fall, I debated same-sex marriage at a university in Florida. I argued that treating same-sex unions identically with marriage would lead to marginalizing fathers from the family even more than they already are. At the time, I viewed that as a long-term prediction. I did not realize I would be proven correct in less than a year. Read more…