The theme of CSW this year was “access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology.” However, rather than reading, math, computer skills, and vocational training, a number of panels and events focused instead on “comprehensive” sex education. For example, the Population Council hosted a side event during CSW with International Planned Parenthood Federation and the International Women’s Health Council to introduce advocates from other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and delegates from around the world to their new It’s All One Curriculum: Guidelines and Activities for a Unified Approach to Sexuality, Gender, HIV, and Human Rights Education. The curriculum’s ultimate goal: “to enable young people to enjoy—and advocate for their rights to—dignity, equality, and healthy, responsible, and satisfying sexual lives.”
The creators of this curriculum claim that its perspective is appropriate for all young people globally, irrespective of their culture. Parents and policymakers alike might be surprised, if not horrified, upon examining some of its content. For example, the first unit is entitled “Sexual Rights are Human Rights,” which ignores anything controversial about that assertion and enumerates a variety of so-called sexual rights alongside the more generally accepted political and social rights. The section on relationships discusses “long-term domestic relationships or partnerships,” listing marriage as one such type of relationship often entered into out of social, religious, or economic pressures. It calls for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Not only does the curriculum advocate for same-sex marriage and the normalization of homosexuality, it also calls for the acceptance and legalization of prostitution (euphemistically referred to as “sex work”) and unencumbered access to legal abortion, which it asserts as a human right. It asserts that parenthood and marriage need not be related and that gender is a social construct that varies across time and culture. It encourages students to explore their sexual desires and says “sexuality may be expressed by oneself or with others.” Absent in the several hundred pages of curriculum and activities is any positive mention of abstinence, other than including it as a possible means of contraception or an effective way to avoid contracting a sexually transmitted infection.
Ever wonder where this stuff comes from? It comes from the political left. And it’s paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The Census data presented so far demonstrate that married couples have dramatically lower poverty rates than single parents. These substantial differences in poverty remain even when married couples are compared to single parents of the same race and level of education. The pattern is almost exactly the same in all 50 states.
However, in the Census comparisons, the married couples and single parents are obviously different (albeit similar) persons. It is therefore possible that much of the difference in poverty between married families and single-parent families might be due to hidden differences between married and single parents as individuals rather than to marriage per se. For example, it is possible that unmarried fathers might have substantially lower earnings than married fathers with the same racial and educational backgrounds. If this were the case, then marriage, for these men, would have a reduced anti-poverty effect.
Fortunately, we have other direct data on poverty and unmarried parents that corroborate the Census analysis. These data are provided by the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Survey conducted jointly by Princeton and Columbia universities.[16] The Fragile Families survey is a representative national sample of parents at the time of a child’s birth, with a heavy emphasis on lower-income unmarried couples. The survey is unusual in collecting information not only on single mothers, but on non-married fathers as well, including (critically) the actual employment and earnings of the father in the year prior to birth.
Because the Fragile Families Survey reports both the mothers’ and fathers’ earnings, it is simple to calculate the poverty rate if the non-married mothers remain single and if each unmarried mother married her child’s father (thereby pooling both parents’ income into a joint family income). The Fragile Families data show that if unmarried mothers remain single, over half (56 percent) of them will be poor. (This high level of poverty will persist for years: Half of all unwed mothers will be poor five years after the child is born.[17]) By contrast, if the single mothers married the actual biological fathers of their children, only 18 percent would remain poor.[18] Thus, marriage would reduce the expected poverty rate of the children by two-thirds.
It is important to note that these results are based on the actual earnings of the biological fathers of the children and not on assumed or hypothetical earnings. Moreover, the non-married fathers in the sample are relatively young. Over time, their earnings will increase and the poverty rate for the married couples will decline farther.
[…]Census data and the Fragile Families survey show that marriage can be extremely effective in reducing child poverty. But the positive effects of married fathers are not limited to income alone. Children raised by married parents have substantially better life outcomes compared to similar children raised in single-parent homes.
When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school.[19] Many of these negative outcomes are associated with the higher poverty rates of single mothers. In many cases, however, the improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income. This indicates that the father brings more to his home than just a paycheck.
The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, when compared to intact married families, children from single-parent homes are:
More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime;[20]
Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems;[21]
Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school;[22] and
A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[23]
The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families. [24] Compared to girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[25]
Finally, the decline of marriage generates poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience poverty as adults when compared to children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.[26]
You should definitely click through the article and view all the colorful charts and diagrams. This article should be printed out and used to explain the connection between fiscal conservatism and social conservatism.
I also want to point out that two notable groups on the left act to destroy marriage. First of all, there are the feminists, who oppose the unequal gender roles in marriage. They lobby for feminist policies that destroy marriage, like no-fault divorce. Second, there are the socialists, who favor redistribution of wealth from productive to non-productive people. They lobby for increased welfare for single mothers, causing more single-mother households. Either way, marriage is under attack by the left. I have not even mentioned things like sex education and state-run day care.
What should the government do?
I think that government does have a role in providing financial incentives in the form of tax breaks to married couples who have children and stay married. The government should give bigger and bigger tax breaks as marriages last longer and longer, and have more children. And the biggest tax breaks of all should be given to families where one parent stays at home while the children are not yet in school, during the crucial early years. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But if research agrees that marriage is good for children, good for married couples, and good for society, then why aren’t we doing more to inform people about the benefits of marriage, and providing them with financial incentives to marry for the long-term?
Call it the Nanny State run amok. By hosting an all-day White House conference on adolescent bullying last week, President Obama elevated a schoolyard issue to the level of public enemy No. 1, perhaps on a par with the first lady’s labors on behalf of childhood obesity.Typical of all federal “preventions” that mobilize the Departments of Education or Health and Human Services on behalf of some perceived crisis, none of the players of the conference had the guts to yank at the underlying root of the bullying culture: family breakdown.
[…]In a national study of nearly 2,500 Norwegian boys and girls ages 12 to 15 published in the November issue of European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers found a substantial statistical correlation between both victims and aggressors of bullying and parental divorce.
Given that both victims and aggressors of bullying, relative to their noninvolved peers, were also found to experience more psychological problems, the parental-divorce link should not be surprising.
The distress of parental breakup, the Norwegian researchers claim, leaves adolescents emotionally vulnerable and therefore easy targets for bullies among their peers.
At the same time, parental divorce incubates bullying by leaving adolescents, according to study, with “less monitoring, often fewer adults to confide in, and sometimes increased aggression because of feelings of loss.”
[…]Yet this common-sense understanding of bullying wasn’t entertained at the White House. If this were the first time Team Obama ignored the data, it might not be troubling.
Instead, a disturbing pattern is emerging: The first lady’s high-profile campaign against childhood obesity suffers the same blind spot. Paralleling the Norway study on bullying, recent research on obesity finds that children of divorced or single parents suffer another disadvantage to their well-being: higher risks of being overweight.
For example, scholars at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work in Miami, writing in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health last July, found that children in single-parent households, relative to their peers from two-parent households, were more likely to be “overweight” and nearly three-quarters as likely to be “obese,” or seriously overweight (odds ratio: 1.72). Kids from broken homes were also more likely to have higher cholesterol levels and lower HDL levels, indicators of type 2 diabetes.
By not keeping up with the research, the White House ends up, as it did last week with the bullying conference, calling for greater public “interventions” by education and health authorities to address the problem.
Democrats are ignorant. They attack traditional marriage because marriage supports “unequal gender roles”, which is incompatible with feminism. They think that stay-at-home moms can be replaced by strangers and that children will not be adversely affected. And then when massive social problems result from the destruction of marriage, they resort to legislating higher taxes and more social programs – draining money out of the families that are left to subsidize more broken homes. Single mother families are the leading cause of child poverty. It’s a death spiral, and it’s going to continue until people stop acting irresponsibly and expecting their neighbors to bail them out.
WINTERY KNIGHT 