News

Do children make marriages more stable or more happy?

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A new study sheds light on how the presence of children affects marital stability and happiness. (H/T Reformed Seth)

Excerpt:

[…][C]hildfree couples divorce more often than couples who have at least one child, according to researchers, despite numerous studies that indicate marital happiness plummets in the first year or two after the birth of a child and sometimes never quite recoups.

Among the research author Po Bronson gathered for his various books, he notes the work done by sociologist Paul H. Jacobson as proof:

“For couples without children, the divorce rate in 1948 was 15.3 per 1,000. Where one child was present, the estimate rate was 11.6 per 1,000. The figure thus continues to decrease, and in families with four or more children, it was 4.6. Altogether, the rate for couples with children was 8.8 per 1,000. In other words, the rate for childless couples was almost double the rate for families with children.”

OK, but Jacobson’s study was published in 1950; is it still true today?

Yes, according to journalist Anneli Rufus, whose number crunching discovered that of the divorced couples in the United States, 66 percent are childless compared with 40 percent who have kids. Why? Evidently, the “absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness.”

[…]So if they’re so happy, why do more kidfree couples end up splitting?

“People assume children are the glue that holds a marriage together, which really isn’t true. Kids are huge stressors,” says Scott, head of the Childless by Choice Project whose documentary on childfree couples was just released. “Despite that, there is a strong motive to stay together. The childfree don’t have that motive so there’s no reason to stay together if it’s not working.” That’s why for Wilde, who says her relationship became too much work and “I don’t think love should be work,” it wasn’t too hard to kiss her prince goodbye.

The article is from an extremely liberal web site, which explains why they are quoting all of these anti-child web sites. There is some sort of doomsday overpopulation myth that people on the left often believe in, against all the evidence. It’s really just selfishness, though.

I think that one of the reasons why childless couples divorce more is because people tend to stay together for the children and try to work it out.

News

Child faces $535 fine and jail time for rescuing baby bird

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Baby Woodpecker
Baby Woodpecker

I am a bird lover, and this story just makes me sick.

Excerpt:

Eleven-year-old aspiring veterinarian, Skylar Capo, sprang into action the second she learned that a baby woodpecker in her Dad’s backyard was about to be eaten by the family cat.

“I’ve just always loved animals,” said Skylar Capo. “I couldn’t stand to watch it be eaten.”

Skylar couldn’t find the woodpecker’s mother, so she brought it to her own mother, Alison Capo, who agreed to take it home.

“She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go,” said Capo.

But on the drive home, the Capo family stopped at a Lowes in Fredericksburg and they brought the bird inside because of the heat. That’s when they were confronted by a fellow shopper who said she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“She was really nervous. She was shaking. Then she pulled out a badge,” said Capo.

The problem was that the woodpecker is a protected species under the Federal Migratory Bird Act.  Therefore, it is illegal to take or transport a baby woodpecker.  The Capo family says they had no idea.

“I was a little bit upset because I didn’t want my mom to get in trouble,” said Skylar.

So as soon as the Capo family returned home, they say they opened the cage, the bird flew away, and they reported it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“They said that’s great, that’s exactly what we want to see,” said Capo. “We thought that we had done everything that we could possibly do.”

But roughly two weeks later, that same woman from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up at Capo’s front door. This time, Capo says the woman was accompanied by a state trooper.  Capo refused to accept a citation, but was later mailed a notice to appear in U.S. District Court for unlawfully taking a migratory bird.  She’s also been slapped with a $535 fine.

Why are we paying the government to take away our liberty? Liberty is the power to do what you ought to do. The government subsidizes abortion providers, and then they turn around and fine and maybe even jail 11-year old children who rescue baby birds.

My previous post on bird rescues is here.

Commentary

Are evangelical Christian women the new feminists?

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Rep. Michele Bachmann
Rep. Michele Bachmann

Here’s an interesting article from the Washington Post. (H/T Lenny from Come Reason)

Excerpt:

Religion historian Marie Griffith has been watching this shift, and recently wrote an essay titled “The New Evangelical Feminism of Bachmann and Palin.” She caught all kinds of heat from feminists on the left who say that neither Bachmann nor Palin, whom some have dubbed “the spiritual heads” of the tea party, can remotely be regarded as their conceptual colleagues.

While Griffith agrees that these women do not resemble traditional feminists in their political views, she believes that they have captured the hearts and minds of conservative Christian women in a historically significant way. Two generations ago, a conservative Christian woman would have been encouraged to have babies and keep house; work would have been seen as an economic necessity, not a higher calling.

“Now,” says Griffith, director of the new John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, “I really see evangelicals taking hold of that view that women can speak about righteous godly things, just as men can. They can make an impact on the world. Not only that, they should make an impact on the world.”

Nance points out that the abortion wars used to be fought by men. Today, the most prominent antiabortion warriors are Christian women, most of whom have young children.

It’s their focus on motherhood, I think, that makes these new Christian feminists so appealing to millions — their unflinching insistence that their families come first, that even the most ambitious among them occasionally have spit-up on their blouses.

Palin has her entourage; Bachmann, her brood, which includes that staggering number — 23! — of foster kids. Nance describes taking a call from a member of Congress while in her car with a baby screaming in the back seat. “Sir,” she said, “you’ll have to listen to the baby crying — or you can wait.”

Remember though that Michele Bachmann took time out from her career to homeschool her 5 children, so family comes first. Michele has denied that she is a feminist, and I agree with her. To be a feminist in the traditional sense, you have to favor state-run day care, state-funded abortions, selfishness, premarital sex, contraception, no-fault divorce and gender neutrality. Feminists also oppose marriage, limited government, personal responsibility, fathers,  and husbands. I don’t think that Michele Bachmann is a feminist in any way whatsoever. She is a woman, her way of life is being threatened, and it’s all hands on deck.