Ruth Institute Blog

Best line: “Thanks to a society that no longer believes in healthy boundaries nor explains why they are important, students on college campuses are learning to be experts in infidelity; they are studying how to lie and cheat with their bodies and affections.”

by Viviana M Garcia

Students on college campuses are learning to lie with their bodies and affections, but some are working hard for change. 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…

Good stuff to keep in mind for parents of teenagers. Heidi (one of our blog followers) being one, what do you think?

by Katie Hinderer

Last week’s post about attire and the male versus female mind has drawn a lot of comments. (I love hearing what you have to say, so keep the thoughts coming.) All the discussion got me thinking about where the solution can be found. I was toying with the role parents’ play when Carlos hit the nail on the head; saying girls “need strong fathers to say NO and strong mothers to explain why!!” Read more…

The thought of kids having kids is really disturbing to me. I had my first child when I was 25, and I can say, it’s serious business. I can’t imagine doing it while trying to go to high school or even college. And who is really going to be raising these children anyhow? My guess is, the grandmothers. Let’s do a survey of how mothers of pregnant teens feel about teen pregnancy.

The picture a 13-year-old boy sitting next to his baby, which accompanied an article on this topic a while back, still burns in my memory. It was such a heart-wrenching sight. The thirteen-year-old  looked so tiny. Plus his face spoke volumes of “What have I gotten myself into?” This dad is still asking to have his pb and j cut into triangles and for rides to the library. I wouldn’t let a 13-year-old boy babysit my toddlers. Babies deserve more. Read more…

From One News Now comes this article about a high school student who dared to wear a T-shirt to school that promoted….(gasp)…..abstinence!

A middle-school student in Minnesota has regained his right to wear at school a T-shirt bearing an abstinence message.

Officials at Hastings Middle School had initially prohibited seventh-grader Johnathon Kinney from wearing the T-shirt with the message “Virginity Rocks!” On April 26, two school teachers confronted Kinney about the shirt, informing him that it was offensive and should be covered up. School officials also warned Kinney against wearing the shirt again.

After contacting the principal about the incident — and finding he supported the teachers’ decision — Kinney’s parents contacted The Rutherford Institute. John Whitehead, Read more…

I agree. And Ray Guarendi is a real top notch guy who knows his stuff. This makes sense.

by Carolyn Moynihan

Most kids are dating way too early

That’s the opinion of family psychologist Ray Guarendi, and judging from the schoolkids I see smooching on the street and at the mall he is right. Read more…

Perhaps a good response to the information in the previous post.

Facts About Youth (Facts) is a resource created by health professionals to provide policymakers, parents and youth with the most current medical and psychological facts about sexual development.

Amid debate in the medical and mental health fields concerning the causes and proper approaches to youth with non-heterosexual attractions, Facts is a non-political, non-religious channel presenting the most current facts on the subject. Facts is committed to advancing a school environment in which all students will experience the opportunity to achieve optimal health and safety, even in the midst of differing worldviews. Facts is intended to be a resource to promote the factual and respectful discussion of these potentially divisive issues. This is a web site for and about youth and their needs.

Keep reading.

by Carolyn Moynihan

A group of American paediatricians concerned about policies that encourage teenagers to think positively about same-sex attraction has set up the website FactsAboutYouth.com and sent a letter to the superintendents of all public schools in the United States. Read more…

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, takes the MSM to task for its flippant and irresponsible reporting on the CDC’s figures on teen births.

The press has rushed to report a minuscule drop in “teen births” based on data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As usual, the mainstream media are focusing on a trivial, politically correct story while ignoring the real story buried in the data.

Here’s the real story: According to CDC, a record 40.6 percent of children born in 2008 were born outside marriage — a total of 1.72 million children. The overwhelming majority of the unwed mothers Read more…

Sex ed programs aren’t working. The solution: keep having them!

By Professor Brenda Almond

After 13 years in power, a sense of chronic disappointment hangs over the Labour administration.

Yesterday, another of the Government’s shameful failures was exposed: the bankruptcy of its policy to tackle Britain’s awful record as western Europe’s teenage pregnancy capital. Read more…

Way to break it down. This is what they wanted to do. This is what they did. Thanks a lot. I miss the 50’s (had I lived during them).

by Joanna Bogle

As possibly one of its last acts as government, British Labour bids to make sex education compulsory.

Sex education. The very words strike a note of gloom. Long, long ago, back in the 1950s when schoolgirl pregnancies were a rarity, and anyone who gave children contraceptives and urged them to enjoy “safe sex” would have been arrested, things looked different. Read more…

The British schools secretary is under fire for making allowances to religion-based schools to teach sex ed according to their beliefs. Those complaining against him sound like intolerant whiners to me.

Nathalie Rothschild

‘Every single one of you is the result of a good shag.’ Those were the opening words of my biology teacher as he introduced my class to its very first sex-education lesson. They were memorable words – indeed, they are all I can recall of the few, awkward and pretty useless lessons that our poor teacher was forced to deliver as part of the science curriculum.

As sex education will soon become compulsory for all schools in England, English kids will also have the chance to taunt and embarrass their teachers, just as me and my classmates did in our school in Sweden. Yet judging from the outrage caused by the UK government’s decision to allow faith schools a measure of freedom to tailor sex education according to their beliefs, for many people teaching kids about sex is a very serious business indeed. Read more…

I appreciate the author’s attitude on how ridiculous this is. Since when is it okay to usurp parental authority over a ten-year-old and teach them the “pleasures of sex”? When was sex ever a good thing for any child? Please, let’s teach children NOT to have any self-control. Let’s tell them to sneak around their parents so they can “do it,” get STDs to share with others, get pregnant, and have more abortions all for the sake of sexual pleasure. Fantastic idea, Planned Parenthood. Way to help them become responsible, healthy, well-adjusted adults. And I’m sure all parents would love their kids to start having sex as soon as possible. Get real!

Idiots.

Marcia Segelstein – OneNewsNow Columnist -

The International Planned Parenthood Federation is the umbrella organization for 180 Planned Parenthood organizations around the world. It recently released a report called “Stand and Deliver: Sex, health and young people in the 21st century.” The term “young people” refers to anyone over the age of 10.

The IPPF report includes a list of “Young People’s Human Rights.” Among them are the following: Read more…

Yet another fantastic way to screw up kids.

Carolyn Moynihan

The sexualisation of children’s entertainment has reached a new low with the arrival of an online game in which kids can “hook up” and play strippers and prostitutes with avatars. Read more…

Way to go, PM! Way to voice your opinion even when it’s so horribly unpopular. . . and when you’re right.

Carolyn Moynihan

Horrors! The next prime minister of Australia might be a man who advocates virginity for young people.

Here is this week’s shock-horror story from Australia: the country’s next prime minister might be a man who advises his daughters not to throw their virginity away on just anyone. Fair go, that’s what he dared to say during an interview with a women’s magazine. You probably heard the resulting outcry in America, above the President’s State of the Union address, above the iPad hysteria: ‘What a chauvinist! What a pontificator! What a hypocrite!’ — to recite only the more flattering epithets. Read more…

My money is on the horrible movies and tv shows geered toward teens. Just a preview for an American Pie movie was enough to make me want to retch.

Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow -

Teen pregnancies were up three percent in 2006, which is the latest reporting period available. Proponents of comprehensive sex education are blaming abstinence programs for the increase. Read more…

Marni Soupcoff points out that the main concern about sexting is that kids have gotten the idea to do it in the first place. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

“Sexting is just the silent canary in the coal mine. It’s the sign, not the cause, of the dangerously cavalier attitudes to sex and sexuality that have been building up in teen culture for years now. The only sure-fire cure is a full-blown evacuation — a complete retreat from the mainstream movies, videos, video games and songs of the day that sexualize kids before they’ve even reached puberty (or, in some cases, potty training).”

“Sexting” isn’t a good idea. That’s just common sense. At least it should be — the pitfalls of using a cell phone to send nude photos or sexually suggestive messages speak for themselves. Unless you are a teenager. (Or Tiger Woods, but that’s another column.)

This, I am told, is why the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has launched a website and pilot program, to be used in 100 schools, to warn young people off sexting.

The result — TextED.ca — offers up discussion pages and specific guidelines for “safe texting.” The latter include the reasonable, Read more…

We’ve touched on this topic before, but here’s a little more info. Disturbing.

Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow -

Pew Research Center has released results of a survey on “sexting,” the practice mostly among youth of transmitting nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves via cell phone. Read more…

by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member

Every presidential administration in Washington DC does some things that appear stupid in hindsight. It gets caught up in the moment, pandering to this or that political constituency, or reacting too precipitously to some big or newsworthy event. In our 24-hour-news-cycle world, and especially if we’re sophisticated news consumers, we simply discount the importance of poor presidential decisions and move on, even as we might grow incrementally more cynical over time about government in general. Read more…

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but still, nice to see some confirmation by someone overtly stating it.

Carolyn Moynihan

A British feminist is sounding the alarm about the effects on teenagers of easy access to pornography, saying that a skewed view of sex is becoming the norm in society and the idea of intimacy is dying. Read more…