Tag Archives: Children

Commentary

Dennis Prager: Does a full-time homemaker swap her mind for a mop?

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On National Review, Dennis Prager argues that going to work full-time is not as intellectually fulfilling as being a stay-at-home mother – if it’s done right.

Excerpt:

I seek to refute the idea that full-time home making is intellectually vapid and a waste of a college education.

Let me first state that I have no argument with those mothers who need or even just wish to work outside the home. My argument is with those who believe that staying at home is necessarily mind-numbing.

Nor do I wish to romanticize child rearing. As a rule, little children don’t contribute much to the intellectual life of a parent (although older children who are intellectually curious can spur a parent to seek answers to challenging questions they may not have considered before). Any intellectually alive woman who is a full-time mother must therefore find intellectual stimulation elsewhere.

The point is that she can find such stimulation without leaving her house. Furthermore, the intellectual input she can find is likely to be greater than most women (or men) find working outside the home. There is a reason that about half the audience of my national radio show is female — they listen to talk radio for hours a day and broaden their knowledge considerably. To the Left, the notion that talk radio enhances intellectual development is akin to fish needing bicycles. But that is because the Left’s greatest achievement is demonizing the Right, and because they never actually listen to the best of us.

I am syndicated by the Salem Radio Network. My colleagues are Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. Two of us attended Harvard, one Yale, and one Columbia; one of us taught at Harvard, another at the City University of New York, and a third teaches constitutional law at a law school. In addition to reviewing the news and discussing our own views, we all routinely interview authors and experts — left and right — in almost every field. The woman who listens to us regularly will know more about economics, politics, current events, world affairs, American history, and religion than the great majority of men and women who work full-time outside of the home.

Lest the latter seem a self-serving suggestion, there are many other opportunities for full-time homemakers to broaden their intellectual horizons: recorded books and a few television networks, for example. And if a woman can get help from grandparents, neighbors, older children, or a baby sitter, there are also myriad opportunities for study outside the house — such as community-college classes, book clubs, etc. — and for volunteer work in intellectually more stimulating areas than most paid work.

Let me give an example of the woman I know best, my wife. She is a non-practicing lawyer with a particular interest in, and knowledge of, taxation and the economy. She decided to stay home to be a full-time mother to her two boys (one of whom is autistic) and her two nieces (who lost their mother, my wife’s sister, to cancer when they were very young). Between talk radio, History Channel documentaries, BookTV on C-SPAN2, recorded lectures from The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, and constant reading, she has led a first class intellectual life while shuttling kids, folding laundry, and making family dinners.

I guess by now everyone knows my view on this. I expect a good wife to have a college degree, and preferably a graduate degree, and then a couple of  years experience before the children start to arrive. At that point, her job becomes the most important job in the world: making sure that the children that the husband entrusts her with are able to have more of an impact for Christian than either the wife or the husband. That is one of the major reasons why Christians get married in the first place, in my view.

The husband’s job is to go to work and do mindless, useless drudgery in exchange for money. This is the more self-sacrificial role in marriage. He does this so that he can afford to keep a professional teacher in the house to bond with the young children, make sure that they learn empathy and relational skills, and then go on to get bachelor and graduate degrees and influential jobs. She has to plan all of this out and then navigate their path to success – which means she has to know how to follow the path, and how to neutralize any obstacles that may appear. The woman’s role in the home is a massive undertaking, and more significant (ultimately) than the man’s role outside the home.

It’s very important for a woman to choose a man to marry who has this vision for what a woman does in the home. He has to have set the pattern in courtship that it is his responsibility to help her to know as much as possible about all kinds of different subjects. She has to study more than the man, and then impart the knowledge the children. The man only has to have an overall big picture, but the woman has to know the details. In order for the woman to get the details of math, science, foreign policy, economics, etc., she needs to have a constant feed of intellectually challenging materials, and quiet time for study. And it’s the man’s job to provide these materials and that time, so that she can produce influential children.

Please note that I do not endorse any of the other hosts on the Salem Radio Network. In particular, Medved, Bennett and Hewitt are center-left and support Mitt Romney, with all that that entails.

News

Democrat introduces bill to defund adoption agencies that favor married couples

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From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

For the first time in Senate history, a bill has been introduced to encourage agencies not to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples seeking to adopt.

“As more and more LGBT couples are getting married and starting families, we have a great opportunity to place children without a family into happy homes,” said Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York Democrat and lead sponsor of the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, Monday at the Huffington Post.

The past year has seen many moves toward gay equality, and “the momentum is there to build on our progress,” she said, noting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” passage of gay marriage in New York and the “unprecedented assault” on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the U.S. Senate and in the courts.

Ms. Gillibrand’s bill would deny federal funding to any entity that considers sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status when contemplating prospective foster or adoptive families. A companion bill already has been introduced in the House by Rep. Fortney Pete Stark, California Democrat.

[…]In recent years, many religious organizations have protested when governments have begun insisting that unmarried couples be considered as foster and adoptive parents. Notably, Catholic agencies have withdrawn from child-placement services.

Still, many such adoptions occur. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute recently issued a report that said about 65,000 adopted children and 14,000 foster children live in homes headed by non-heterosexuals.

Part of the reason child-welfare and health associations support gay adoption is because advocates say research indicates that children raised in gay homes do as well as, or even better than, children raised by heterosexual couples.

However, a new in-depth review of 59 studies on gay parenting has concluded that such “strong assertions” about gay parenting are “not empirically warranted.”

Most of the 59 gay-parenting studies involve children of high-income white lesbian mothers or tended to use very small samples; studied children but not teens; and either had no comparison families or compared lesbian-led homes with single-mother-led homes, wrote Louisiana State University family science professor Loren Marks.

These and other weaknesses cannot support broad statements that there are “no significant differences” between being raised in same-sex versus mother-father homes, wrote Mr. Marks, whose analysis was included in the Oct. 15 briefs filed by the House of Representatives in its defense of DOMA in Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management.

The basic intuition behind this initiative is that children either do not need a mother or they do not need a father. Is that really true? I know for sure that children have a host of behavioral problems if they grow up without fathers, for example. I would expect that problems would also occur for children raised without mothers.

News

Gay Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky charged with sexually assaulting boys

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Warning: this post contains very graphic subject matter. Reader discretion is advised. Do not read this if you are under the age of 18.

Associated Press reports on the homosexual Penn State coach who sexually abused boys.

Excerpt:

An explosive sex abuse scandal and allegations of a cover-up rocked Happy Valley after former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, once considered Joe Paterno’s heir apparent, was charged with sexually assaulting eight boys over 15 years. Among the allegations was that a graduate assistant saw Sandusky assault a boy in the shower at the team’s practice center in 2002.

[…]Sandusky, 67, was arrested Saturday and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts. Curley, 57, and Schultz, 62, were expected to turn themselves in on Monday in Harrisburg.

The allegations against Sandusky, who started The Second Mile in 1977, range from sexual advances to touching to oral and anal sex. The young men testified before a state grand jury that they were in their early teens when some of the abuse occurred; there is evidence even younger children may have been victimized. Sandusky’s attorney Joe Amendola said his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and has maintained his innocence.

[…]A preliminary hearing scheduled for Wednesday would likely be delayed, Amendola said. Sandusky is charged with multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of a child, indecent assault and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as single counts of aggravated indecent assault and attempted indecent assault.

[…]The grand jury said eight boys were targets of sexual advances or assaults by Sandusky. None was named, and in at least one case, the jury said the child’s identity remains unknown to authorities.

One accuser, now 27, testified that Sandusky initiated contact with a ”soap battle” in the shower that led to multiple instances of involuntary sexual intercourse and indecent assault at Sandusky’s hands, the grand jury report said.

He said he traveled to charity functions and Penn State games with Sandusky, even being listed as a member of the Sandusky family party for the 1998 Outback Bowl and 1999 Alamo Bowl. But when the boy resisted his advances, Sandusky threatened to send him home from the Alamo Bowl, the report said.

Sandusky also gave him clothes, shoes, a snowboard, golf clubs, hockey gear and football jerseys, and even guaranteed that he could walk on to the football team, the grand jury said, and the boy also appeared with Sandusky in a photo in Sports Illustrated. He testified that Sandusky once gave him $50 to buy marijuana, drove him to purchase it and then drove him home as the boy smoked the drug.

The first case to come to light was a boy who met Sandusky when he was 11 or 12, the grand jury said. The boy received expensive gifts and trips to sports events from Sandusky, and physical contact began during his overnight stays at Sandusky’s home, jurors said. Eventually, the boy’s mother reported the allegations of sexual assault to his high school, and Sandusky was banned from the child’s school district in Clinton County in 2009. That triggered the state investigation that culminated in charges Saturday.

But the report also alleges much earlier instances of abuse and details failed efforts to stop it by some who became aware of what was happening.

Another child, known only as a boy about 11 to 13, was seen by a janitor pinned against a wall while Sandusky performed oral sex on him in fall 2000, the grand jury said.

And in 2002, Kelly said, a graduate assistant saw Sandusky sexually assault a naked boy, estimated to be about 10 years old, in a team locker room shower. The grad student and his father reported what he saw to Paterno, who immediately told Curley, prosecutors said.

This reminds me of the case where a gay Duke University official adopted a black 5-year old child and then offered him to other gay men for sex on the internet, in exchange for money.

Excerpt:

Frank Lombard is an associate director at Duke University’s Global Health Institute and a homosexual who was charged last week with the molestation of his adopted 5-year-old black son and actively trying to sell him for sex on the internet.

The 40 words above are 40 more than the Main Stream Media has said on this horrible story.

In nearly a week since Lombard was arrested, not one national broadcast or cable television news show has picked up the story. Compare this to the weeks on end of sensational coverage of the white male lacrosse players of the same university charged with rape several years ago.

At the time of this post not one television show has reported the story and only 17 newspapers in the United States featured it – a majority of which are only small local newspapers.

And most of these articles cited the American Press’ report on the events, which was as follows:

AP) WASHINGTON – A Duke University official has been arrested and charged with offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex.

Frank Lombard, the school’s associate director of the Center for Health Policy, was arrested after an Internet sting, according to the FBI’s Washington field office and the city’s police department.

According to an affidavit by District of Columbia Police Det. Timothy Palchak, an unnamed informant facing charges in his own child sex case led authorities to Lombard.

Authorities said that Lombard tried to persuade a person -who he did not know was a police officer -to travel to North Carolina to have sex with Lombard’s child.

The detective’s affidavit charges Lombard identified himself online as “perv dad for fun,” and says that in an online chat with the detective, Lombard said he had sexually molested his son, whom he adopted as an infant.

The court papers say Lombard also invited the undercover detective to North Carolina to have sex with the young boy, and even suggested which hotel he should use.”

In response to the AP report, which most of the newspapers used almost verbatim, Mike Adams of Townhall made the observation that “The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.”

With this shocking lack of coverage of an even more shocking story, many are asking why this did not make the front pages and top headlines like the Duke lacrosse team scandal did. Thomas Lifson of American Thinker posited that “identity politics … apparently trumps all sense of outrage.”

And here’s another similar story, this time from Scotland where the head of a gay youth organization was running a child sex ring.

Excerpt:

Eight men in a Scottish paedophile ring have been found guilty of a series of “horrific” sex offences against children and babies.

[…]Two of the men – convicted sex offender Neil Strachan and gay rights campaigner James Rennie – were convicted of sex attacks on children.

Strachan, 41, and Rennie, 38, both from Edinburgh, were also found guilty of conspiring to abuse youngsters, as were three other members of the gang.

[…]The jury found Rennie, the former chief of LGBT Youth Scotland, an organisation dedicated to helping young gay people, guilty of molesting a young boy over more than four years.

The child was just three months old when the abuse began.

Those are the facts. I have no comments on them, and I will be strict about filtering comments to this post because of Obama’s law governing speech on controversial issues.