Tag Archives: Child

News

Academic researchers gather for conference on… pedophilia?

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From the Daily Caller. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013.  Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.  According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. “The DSM should meet a higher standard than that,” Kline continued. “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

My previous article (see below for link) along these lines talked about how arguments are now being made to advance polygamy, using the same reasoning that was used to push for same-sex marriage. Social conservatives always get a bad rap for being party poopers and raining on everyone’s fun and “liberty”. I wonder if things will ever go far enough to where normal people realize that children need to be protected, and that can sometimes mean telling grown-ups NO.

Right now, it seems as though society is in a place where moral judgments have been outlawed, because it makes people feel bad to be judged. It seems to me that the people who say that there should be no moral boundaries are winning.

Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with the Obama administration’s laws restricting speech on controversial topics.

UPDATE: My friend ECM just linked this story on Facebook and also put this post by Robert Stacy McCain as a follow-up.

Excerpt:

Since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the Freudian concept of “repression” has been hijacked by the advocates of liberation, who insist that it is an infringement of civil rights to expect people to resist sexual urges. I’ve sometimes called this the “Desire Is Destiny” theory of sexuality, but you could also think of it as a particular manifestation of the Veruca Salt Syndrome: I want what I want and I want it now!

Given the high-profile status of the Official Gay Rights Movement as a loudly influential constituency of the Democratic Party, we most often encounter this liberationist argument in association with homosexuality, and most people never even notice how this dangerous idea — the belief that we are entitled as a matter of right to the satisfaction of our erotic desires — is well-nigh ubiquitous throughout our society.

When you see a businessman divorce his wife of 30 years in order to marry his receptionist, or when Mary Kay LeTourneau wrecks her life to pursue a taboo romance with Vili Fualaau, these are manifestations of the same basic concept at the root of the gay-rights lobby’s “born that way” argument: Desire is destiny, and of all the happiness that we are free to pursue, no pursuit is more important than a sexual partner who fulfills our deepest longings.

When a belief so pervades a culture as this one has pervaded our culture, it becomes impossible for most people to understand it rationally, for they have no other frame of reference. We might compare it to liberal bias in the news media. As I’ve often said, most journalists don’t notice liberal bias for the same reason fish don’t notice water — it’s everywhere, and it’s all they’ve ever known.

So, too, with the Desire Is Destiny theory of sexuality, promulgated so relentlessly (first by Kinsey, then by Hugh Hefner, and then by damned near everybody) that we cannot think about sex in any other terms. What is overlooked is that this liberationist theory denies the power of human will and human choice. If we desire someone, the liberationist argument would have us believe, we must act on that desire or else suffer psychological trauma as a result of the (harmful) repression of our desire. The only “moral” standard by which any such pursuit may be judged is whether the resulting sexual encounter is between consenting adults.

Stacy wrote a lot about this in that post. I recommend reading the whole thing. Although he is a popular conservative blogger, Stacy is not afraid to take on these cultural issues. In fact, I am linking to him on another topic in the 6 PM post.

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If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013.  Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.  According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in the August 17 conference. “The DSM should meet a higher standard than that,” Kline continued. “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

APA spokeswoman Erin Connors told The Daily Caller in an emailed statement that her organization was not participating in the conference and would not comment on its aims.

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

How feminism led to increased child abuse and child neglect

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Casey Anthony, feminism and abortion
Casey Anthony, feminism and abortion

Here’s a fine article on the long-term consequences of feminism, written by Carolyn Moynihan at MercatorNet. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Despite decades of feminism and gender role revision, we are still more shocked when mothers neglect, abuse and especially kill their children. But one does not have to look far into the lives of most of these women to find that the other side of the sexual revolution — what’s politely known as the “evolution” of the family — has played a significant role.

Casey Anthony is a single mother, living with her own parents, the father of her child nowhere to be seen, although there have been rumours of incest. Macsyna King was cohabiting with her twins’ father, Chris Kahui.

The stresses of single parenthood, with or without boyfriends, are well known. And the dangers of cohabitation for children are becoming clearer all the time. A recent US federal government study of child abuse and neglect shows the dramatically increased risks for children living in a home where there is an unrelated boyfriend — and even with their own parents if they are cohabiting. Sociologist Brad Wilcox comments:

This new federal study indicates that these cases are simply the tip of the abuse iceberg in American life. According to the report, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents. Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself in is a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend—especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.

But children living with their own father and mother do not fare much better if their parents are only cohabiting. The federal study of child abuse found that children living with their cohabiting parents are more than four times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than their peers living in a home headed by their married parents. And they are three times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, a child is not much safer when she is living in a home with her parents if her parents’ relationship does not enjoy the legal, social, and moral status and guidance that marriage confers on relationships.

So how does it work?

Well, Mrs. Moynihan is right to talk about the sexual revolution as a cause of the problems that children face. The whole point of third-wave feminism is for women to have recreational sex “like men” and to pursue their careers “like men” – at the expense of marriage and parenting. The kinds of men that women will choose today for this recreational sex are completely different from the kinds of men that women used to choose when they wanted protectors, providers and moral/spiritual leaders. And that’s why women end up having sex with men who are not qualified to be husbands and fathers. Today, men who want to get married and to have a mother for their children are to be avoided. All of their demands on women to be wives and mothers are just “too strict”.

If a woman’s goal is recreational sex and a career, then she won’t choose a man who has demonstrated his ability to perform traditional husband/father roles. She will choose a man who is physically attractive, entertaining, non-judgmental and who won’t expect her to be a wife and mother. That’s why courting has been replaced with binge-drinking, hooking up and co-habitating. Religion, chastity and economics are out, and drinking, hook-ups and abortions are in. The problem is that when women choose to drift into relationships that start with selfish recreational sex, instead of with chastity and courting, then any children who happen along are more likely to be abused, neglected and impoverished.

The most important thing to many women who have been influenced by feminism is that they are happy all the time. And they think that they can extend their selfish pursuit of happiness into a lasting relationship – that men and children will somehow celebrate their selfishness. For some women, if the demands of children and men don’t make them happy, then they can just abort the children and divorce the men for any reason. What abortion really amounts to in practice is the refusal by women to be selective about who they have sex with, followed by the willingness to kill in order to avoid having their own happiness diminished by having to care for babies. And abortion is supported by many women today. (Men are slightly more pro-life than women)

This Reuters article discusses the Casey Anthony trial, and has an interesting quote:

Roommates of Casey Anthony’s former boyfriend described on Wednesday how the Florida mother partied at nightclubs and remained outgoing after her 2-year-old daughter’s death on June 16, 2008.

“She seemed normal. Happy. Like everything was fine,” said Nathan Lezniewicz on the second day of testimony in Casey Anthony’s first-degree murder trial in Orlando.

The case has gained national attention and drawn TV personalities including Nancy Grace and Geraldo Rivera to the courtroom. Casey Anthony, 25, faces the death penalty if convicted.

Prosecutors contend that she suffocated daughter Caylee Marie Anthony by wrapping duct tape around her head, nose and mouth. During opening statements Tuesday, the defense said the toddler drowned in the Anthony family’s backyard pool and no one alerted police about the accident.

Caylee wasn’t reported missing until July 15, 2008, by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony, who called 911 and told the dispatcher she had not seen the little girl for a month.

Lezniewicz roomed at the time with Casey’s then-boyfriend Tony Lazzaro and two other young college men at an Orlando apartment.

Lezniewicz said he was at a local nightclub when Casey entered a “hot body” contest. Jurors saw a photograph of her and Lezniewicz grinning at the club.

“She was partying, having a good time,” testified Roy “Clint” House, another roommate.

Today, many women don’t want men who tell her what’s right and what’s true – especially about religion and morality. Those men are “too strict” and “too demanding” – they tell her about the moral obligations that women have to husbands and children, and she doesn’t want to hear or have to do anything about it. As I argued before, it’s important to understand that encouraging women to make better decisions about men and sexual activity as part of the effort to protect children, born and unborn.

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