Tag Archives: Children

Podcasts

Are two mommies as good for a child as a biological mother and father?

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Cloning her would solve the marriage problem
She protects men and children

Another podcast featuring Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. This one is a must-hear for men, especially men who feel threatened, unappreciated and fearful about the way that their importance is minimized by the culture.

The MP3 file is here. (11 minutes)

Topics:

  • A new study claims that two women are better for a child than a opposite-sex parents
  • The author of the study thinks that mothers and fathers are interchangeable
  • She doesn’t think that a biological mom and dad are better for children
  • The headlines claimed that two moms are better
  • The research seems to argue that heterosexual fathers are worse for children than mothers
  • The study claims that children benefit when there are no heterosexual men in the home
  • The study claims that gay men are better parents than heterosexual men
  • The study argues that gender roles are a bad thing
  • The goal of these scholars is to abolish distinctions and roles based on sex
  • Th study implies that heterosexual men can be marginalized and excluded from the family
  • This is made worse when courts are able to declare who is a parent and who isn’t

A caller to the show talks about how damaging fatherlessness is for male and female children, too. She refers to what we can see today in the inner city where fathers in the home have been replaced by checks from the government. Dr. Morse mentions that this is also occurring across all races among the lower income classes in the UK. She is concerned about the damage that can result if men lose their traditional role in society, and in the family.

Dr. Morse also wrote an article with more details here (this is mentioned in the podcast).

Excerpt:

Instead allow me a few quotes, from “How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?” to illustrate my point that fatherhood itself is at stake in the same sex parenting debate.

[…]“If contemporary mothering and fathering seem to be converging,… research shows that sizable average differences remain that consistently favor women, inside or outside of marriage.”

See what I mean? Men and women are identical, except women are better.

“Gender nonconformity” used to be considered a negative trait, something, which if found, provided an argument against same sex parenting. But listen to Stacey and Biblarz turn “gender flexibility” into a positive trait.

“12 year old boys in mother only families (whether lesbian or heterosexual) did not differ from sons raised by a mother and a father on masculinity scales but scored over a standard deviation higher on femininity scales. Thus growing up without a father did not impede masculine development but enabled boys to achieve greater gender flexibility.”

“If, as we expect, future research replicates the finding that fatherless parenting fosters greater gender flexibility in boys, this represents a potential benefit. Research implies that adults with androgynous gender traits may enjoy social psychological advantages over more gender traditional peers.”

[…]The bottom line is not really that mothers and fathers are interchangeable, but that masculinity is a bad thing.

Can you imagine if the left gained power and this “research” became the basis for laws? What if these views were pushed on impressionable children in the public schools? What if people who believed things like this were nominated to high positions (let’s call them czars, say)?

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News

Republican governor of Nebraska signs legislation to protect the unborn

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Story from Fox News. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

Two landmark measures putting new restrictions on abortion became law in Nebraska on Tuesday, including one that critics say breaks with court precedent by changing the legal rationale for a ban on later-term abortions.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed both bills, one barring abortions at and after 20 weeks of pregnancy and the other requiring women to be screened before having abortions for mental health and other problems. Both sides of the abortion debate say the laws are firsts of their kind in the U.S.

A national abortion rights group already appeared to be girding for a legal challenge, calling the ban after 20 weeks “flatly unconstitutional” because it is based on the assertion that fetuses feel pain, not on the ability of a fetus to survive outside the womb.

[…]The law could lead to changes in state laws across the country if upheld by the courts, said Mary Spaulding Balch, legislative director for National Right to Life.

“It would broaden the interests of states in protecting the unborn child,” she said. “It says the state has an interest in the unborn child before viability.”

Heineman also signed the other bill, approved by lawmakers on Monday, that requires the screening for mental health problems and other risk factors indicating if women might have problems after having abortions.

Note that the sponsor of the bill, Mike Flood, is a Republican. And the governor signing the bill, Dave Heineman, is a Republican. Republicans are pro-life. Democrats are pro-abortion.

If Christians are serious about restraining evils like slavery and abortion, then we need to raise our children to be legislators, governors and judges. We need to have the vision to marry well and to parent our children well, if we hope to have an impact for good in the world.

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News

Do public school teachers want to give children a quality education?

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The Miami Herald reports on a new bill designed to improve education quality. (H/T Weekly Standard via ECM)

Excerpt:

The proposed law, which passed the House of Representatives 64-55 and the Senate 21-17, would base half a teacher’s evaluation on progress that students make on tests, most of which have not yet been developed. If the students improve, educators could earn more money.

The current system rewards teachers based on years of experience, advanced degrees and extra certification.

Got that? So the bill would make it law for teachers to be paid based on their performance, (at least a little), just the way that you buy things from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart in the private sector. If you don’t like what you’re getting, then why should be forced to pay more for it?

Well, here’s what the unionized public school teachers did:

Miami-Dade schools are open Monday and parents are told their kids should come to class as usual, despite hundreds of teachers planning to call in sick to protest controversial legislation that would overhaul teacher pay and tenure.

At John A. Ferguson Senior High School in West Kendall Monday morning, the teacher parking lots weren’t as full as usual.

“There’s nobody at school,” said 17-year-old Stephanie Barrios. “Everyone’s being relocated to the cafeteria and gym.”

She said a two-page handout listed the number of absent teachers on Monday — about 180 out of 600, Stephanie estimated.

Unionized public school teachers are not actually grown-ups. They are in a state of arrested development, hoping to put off the demands of adulthood by throwing tantrums whenever anyone threatens to take away their over-paid, underperformed jobs. There should not even be a federal department of education, in my view, and teachers should not be allowed to unionize. Why should parents be forced to pay for a low-quality education, which is really nothing more than coercive indoctrination of children by the secular left? Private school teachers are hard workers – they get paid based on the quality of what they produce.

This article is a fine, fine piece by Mary Katherine Ham, and I highly recommend that you click through and read the whole thing. I wish I had written it myself, since school choice is a big concern of mine. It should be a concern for all parents. We need to be pushing for more homeschooling protection and more school voucher programs.

UPDATE: I’ve received an e-mail from a hard-worker public school teacher who wanted me to say that not all teachers are happy with what the unions do, and that some public school teachers do work hard in spite of the anti-child, anti-parent stance of the teacher’s unions. Some teachers work extremely hard on their kids, teaching them well and volunteering for sports and field trips. But the union won’t allow them to be paid more. Some teachers have to work in very difficult environments like Compton, CA, dealing with children who are very challenging. In those cases, the hard-working teacher may part of the solution for a child looking for a better life.

Wouldn’t it be great if those good teachers didn’t have to join unions and could be paid what they are really worth? But the unions says no way.

Must-see videos on education policy

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