Ruth Institute Blog

Commenters: Please, for the love of God, let’s not make this about gay parents, okay? (Where was this blog before SSM became a national issue?)

by Francis Phillips

An odd mix of common sense and gullibility from an American economist projects a positive message about large families.

Living in a society where children are often seen as a burden rather than a blessing, I was drawn to Bryan Caplan’s title. After all, the received wisdom is that selfish people have fewer rather than more children. The book’s dedication seemed to promise further proof of the author’s wisdom:  “To my parents who gave me life – and to my children who give me joy”. Read more…

By Ryan Murphy

A trend occurred in the early 20th century when many Americans moved away from rural areas and into urban centers. For the first time ever, their children ceased to become economic assets capable of contributing to the family’s prosperity and started to become a financial burden.  Read more…

by William Jeynes

by William Jeynes

Research shows the positive economic effect of two-biological-parent families on our society. Single parenthood and other alternative family structures not only hurt our economy, they hurt our children, those who care for them, and those for whom our children will care later in life. The first in a two-part series. Read more…

by Sal Gaglio, Jr.

In an era of expanding globalization and international governance, many Americans have espoused serious concerns about various treaties which could be ratified in the near future.  A prime example is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).    Read more…

The Declaration on the Authority of Parents and Guardians in the Education of their Children is a statement drafted by the Catholic Civil Rights League (Canada) and offered to all people of good will who accept the principles it affirms. It does not depend upon particular religious beliefs. Read more…

by Bill May

AB 499, the bill which permits 12 year old children to give consent, without their parents’ knowledge, for vaccines or other medication to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, was surprisingly pulled from the Senate floor July 7 and referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee. A new hearing has been scheduled for August 15. Read more…

Delivered June 3, 2011 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Faculty and Students of Providence Academy; Class of 2011; parents, friends and benefactors: this is a wonderful and memorable day. For many of you, graduating from high school was always a foregone conclusion. So maybe you feel this day is no big deal. For some of you, graduating from high school is the result of a significant effort. For all of you, this day is an important milestone, the first step away from the world of your childhood and into adulthood. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

Sue Schellenbarger at the Wall Street Journal has put together a great article on the importance of dad-style parenting.

As an estimated 70.1 million fathers prepare to celebrate Father’s Day in the U.S., recent research shows that their distinct style of parenting is particularly worth recognition: The way dads tend to interact has long-term benefits for kids, independent of those linked to good mothering. Read more…

British Prime Minister David Cameron has taken a lead in the battle against the pornification of culture and the sexualisation of children. A review he commissioned has come up with recommendations that would give more weight to parents’ concerns and encourage retailers and television and music executives to protect children from sexual images. Read more…

I’m sure you’ve already heard about this, but let’s talk about it anyway. Is anybody for this idea of a gender-secret child?

by Margaret Somerville

A Canadian couple is keeping their baby’s sex secret as an experiment in gender creativity.

Watch the video clip.

With same-sex marriage, we saw the advent of arguments for “genderless parenting” – the idea that all a child needs is love and it’s irrelevant whether the loving persons are male or female. Now we have “genderless kids”. Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, the parents of Jazz (5), Kio (2) and three-month-old Baby Storm want to rear and love each of their children, not as their daughter or son, not as a girl or a boy, but as just their child. Read more…

Michael Reagan, adopted son of President Ronald Reagan, says,

The recent headlines about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infidelities and the son he fathered out of wedlock have stirred many old memories and emotions…

I keep hearing chattering heads on TV referring to the boy as Schwarzenegger’s “illegitimate” son. It makes my blood boil. Listen, there’s no such thing as an illegitimate child. There are only illegitimate parents. Read more…

There’s a new movie on the way, from the makers of Fireproof.  And what Fireproof did for marriage, Courageous promises to do for fatherhood.

A reporter writes,

“Courageous,” which is expected to be released in 2011, is about four police officers in Albany, Ga., who while giving their best to their job are not putting in the same effort to being a father. Tragedy strikes one of the officers’ family that causes the others to unite around him and vow to be more committed fathers. Read more…

by Carolyn Moynihan

Special note: Prof. Brad Wilcox will be a speaker at this summer’s “It Takes a Family” Conference sponsored by the Ruth Institute.

In the realm of parenthood today nothing can be taken for granted — not even that a mother and father are the best thing for children, at least according to certain elites. Read more…

from Yahoo News:
France’s top court refused Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States, in a ruling that affirmed France’s legal ban on surrogacy.

In a case straddling international legal rights and bioethics, the Court of Cassation ruled a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents.

Keep reading…

“Surrogacy is also banned outright in most European countries, including Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. But the French have articulated the reasons for this rejection most eloquently”: Read more…

Today CatholicVote.org published an article that covers a lecture Dr J gave in early February. In fact we already have a thread about it. (Pro-Family Speaker Challenges Students) But apparently people are still writing about her talk, it is a presentation well worth revisiting, and the author of the article very succinctly sums up what I consider be one of the greatest dangers – if not the very greatest danger – of same-sex ‘marriage’. (See the second quote box below.) Read more…

Some German parents continue to be jailed for protecting their children’s Christian beliefs.

Five sets of parents in a German town have been punished for refusing to allow their elementary school-aged children to participate in school sex-education programs (see earlier article). “[The children are] being put through an interactive sex-education play which teaches them that if something feels good, then you should do it,” explains Roger Kiska with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). Read more…

by Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley

Defenders of conjugal marriage must be careful to not obscure the true nature of marriage–and the state’s true interest in promoting it.

In Part One of this article, we argued that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, committed to sharing their lives together on the bodily, emotional, and rational-volitional levels of their being, in the kind of community that would be naturally fulfilled by having and rearing children together.  Since that kind of multi-leveled community cannot be formed by two persons of the same sex–such persons cannot unite biologically in the way that has always been understood to consummate marriage, and they cannot form the kind of community that would be fulfilled by conceiving, bearing, and raising children together–there cannot in reality be such a thing as same-sex marriage (any more than there can be such a thing as polyamorous marriage–that is, marriage involving three or more partners). Since same-sex (and polyamorous) partners cannot form what are, in truth, marriages, the state’s not granting them marriage licenses is not unjust discrimination. Read more…

by Anonymous

An anti-bullying program’s political slant leads one mother to reflect on the real meaning of diversity and dignity.

When I pulled my minivan up to the curb of the school sidewalk, my daughter, instead of saying the customary prolonged goodbye to her 4th-grade classmates while I look on rather impatiently, approached the van door without the slightest hesitation, waving a bright yellow paper. As soon as she opened the door, she exclaimed excitedly that a day-long field trip to a local college was planned and all I had to do was sign the permission slip so she could go. I asked her what they were going to do at the college. She hesitated for a second as she looked down at the paper in her hands and said that they were going to learn about bullying awareness. Since there had been many incidents of bullying at the school during the past year, I was hardly surprised to hear this. And I was relieved that the school was trying to address the problem. Read more…

My husband and I were both really disturbed when we saw a commercial for some sort of laundry detergent (who ever remembers what a commercial is actually selling?) Perhaps you’ve seen this one: A man was working on the car (I think) and he had grease or oil all over his hands. Spotting an opportunity, he grabs his teenage daughter’s white mini skirt from the clothes line and wipes his filthy hands on them, in hopes of ruining them. . . outraged daughter, mom saves the day with the wonder detergent and the commercial ends with her strutting out the front door all smiles in her perfectly white glorified butt-cover. Seriously, this thing was little more than underwear. The mom looks on approvingly, giving her daughter an up-down look that she’ll likely be getting from every post-pubescent male in her path. It was a really disturbing look that went beyond approval and satisfaction to, “Damn, my girl is fine!” Meanwhile, the father has a defeated expression. In case the problems with this scenario aren’t obvious, I’ll illuminate them: Read more…