Tag Archives: Drug Abuse

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Many professional women spend their 20s getting drunk and having “fun”

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Dina sends me this depressing article from the UK Daily Mail. This is a must-read.

Excerpt:

The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle  to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it’s a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has ‘only’ drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of Jagermeister (during a drinking game called I Have Never) and still feels ‘a bit sober’. Her friend Hannah Freeman, 19, was punched in a fight and stumbles about swearing and searching for a bathroom.

‘We only do embarrassing things when we’re really drunk,’ Naomi says. ‘I kiss random men in the street and Hannah has had sex behind a chicken coop.’ She screams with laughter as Hannah lurches unsteadily in the stairwell of Charleston Bar and Grill on Caroline Street (known locally as Chip Alley) and unashamedly urinates in front of us.

Amazingly, none of the 80-strong throng of passers-by seems to notice – or perhaps care. Hannah rearranges her minuscule dress, steps over her own urine, shouts ‘f*** off’ and the pair stumble back to Walkabout. It’s only midnight, after all.

[…]But as I found out on the streets of Cardiff after midnight, many of these women are – by day at least – well qualified pillars of the community. Among them I met teachers, nurses, occupational therapists,
personnel professionals and full-time mothers, all determined to shake off responsibility and have fun in the only way they know how. By getting ‘smashed’.

Every week, the ritual is the same: Groups of between four and six girls congregate to dress up and competitively drink bottles of cheap wine or sickly shots. Competition ramps up over who can wear the tiniest mini-dress, the highest heels or the reddest lipstick. Drinking carries on during the bus ride to Cardiff (many young women travel from the surrounding Valleys) and continues in bars between 9pm and 11pm, or until they feel bold enough to dance.

Condom in purse and telephone number for a pre-booked 3am taxi in handbag, they stagger between nightclubs. The ritual continues long into the morning when, dulled by hangovers, they congregate for McDonald’s or fried breakfasts to giggle about the drunken ‘fun’.

New figures show that alcohol misuse costs the nation £7.3 billion in crime and antisocial behaviour and that one woman in five drinks at levels hazardous to health (more than 14 units each week).

I went looking for the answer to the real question: Why? In a series of raw but illuminating interviews, I discovered that beyond the superficial bravado, their nights of booze-fuelled excess make them anything but happy – but they still have no intention of changing. Naomi Jenkins is a classroom assistant from Carmarthen and is adamant that downing sickly Jagermeister shots (which she nicknames medicine) is ‘a laugh’.

I hear the same knee-jerk answer again and again. Human-resources administrator Becky Sherlock
from Chepstow tells me: ‘Tomorrow morning, I’ll lift my head off the pillow and think, “Oh s***.” But it’s worth it.’

‘A hangover is the sign of a good night,’ says her friend Danielle Malson, a secondary-school teacher.

What quickly becomes apparent is the ease with which these young women distinguish their responsible weekday personas from their ‘fun’ selves. Naomi easily switches from diligent teaching assistant to Saturday night party girl when she squeezes into a skintight minidress. She tells me: ‘I wouldn’t do this if it affected my work.’

Occupational therapist Sally Baldwin, 24, added: ‘If I bumped into any of my patients or their relatives, I’d hide. It doesn’t give off the right image… But as long as it doesn’t interfere with my work, I’ll carry on.’ By splitting their characters into two personas (professional and social), these young women appear confident that their professional reputations remain unblemished. In their own minds, at least.

‘I just like knowing I haven’t lost my mojo,’ admits a 27-year-old full-time mother, dressed in a skimpy football kit and slumped in a shop doorway on St Mary Street. ‘The world seems a better place when you’re wearing beer goggles.’

[…]It is a sad testimony that obliteration of reality is the highlight of the week for many of these young women. For Alicia Howley, 20, and Lucy Griffiths, both shop assistants, the ritual of dressing up in tight minidresses and wearing lashings of make-up begins at 4.30pm, straight after their Saturday shifts at Matalan.

Lucy says: ‘After a few drinks, you feel like you can do anything. It’s amazing. The only time I usually talk to new people is speaking to customers at work. Alcohol makes me loads more confident… Like the time I had a foursome.’ They laugh.

Read the whole thing, as this is going on with women from late high school right through college, until they are age 35, when they suddenly want to have a baby. And that doesn’t mean they want to get married first. They are happy to conclude from their careful search for Mr. Right during drunken “foursomes” that there are no good men. After all, they are already perfectly suitable for marriage as they are, so if Mr. Right doesn’t come along, then it’s not the woman’s fault. And it’s nothing that a little IVF, day care and public school won’t solve – all taxpayer-funded, of course.

This story makes me think about why men like me (chaste, and marriage minded) are in the situation that we are in today. I have been taking some flak from friends of both sexes about my reticence to try to get married. I think that people who are criticizing need to realize what is out there right now to choose from. This is what is normal for most women who go through college today. And even if I could find a girl who managed to stay chaste while getting herself mature and independent, the laws are being made by the majority of women, who are more like the ones in the article.

Even when people mouth the words “I’m a Christian” you have to understand that most people who claim to be Christians go through 15 years of church and learn nothing at all that is useful about Christianity. I understand that once women become aware of what men like me want, that they are able to do it and to see the reasons for doing it. But it’s very difficult to convince women to be serious about things like economics and apologetics these days – many of them aren’t being serious about preparing for marriage in the time that they should be doing that.

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News

Bradford Wilcox: Is cohabitation a bigger problem for society than divorce?

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Bradford Wilcox answers questions about cohabitation and divorce in the Washington Post.

The intro:

A new report says cohabitation has replaced divorce as the biggest source of instability for American families. Brad Wilcox, the report’s author, chatted about why this is.

Here are some of the questions:

Can you talk a little about the reasons behind the shift toward cohabitation, rather than marriage?

What is the definition of “cohabitation”? Is there a difference in the study between a child living with biological parents who are unmarried or when one adult in the house is a non-biological parent (boyfriend or girlfriend). I can see the disadvantage for kids living in a household where mom or dad is living with a girlfriend or boyfriend. From my personal experience the whole situation rests on the mother. I know women who have not made the best choices in life and invite boyfriends to live with them and this causes instability in home for the kids. I guess I’m wondering if it is really the type of cohabitation or the reasons behind the couple living together unmarried that causes bad outcomes for the children involved?

How does the problem of cohabitation and its detrimental effects on children correlate with social class? It is my impression that cohabitation is less common in middle-class households with college-educated parents. Isn’t there something of a vicious cycle with parents not marrying because of low incomes, so their children aren’t exposed to marriage and the resulting improved incomes and other benefits? It seems that this may be contributing to the income inequality that is widely reported in the US.

Were you able to sift families based on the length of cohabitation? It seems unlikely to me that a family with parents cohabiting for 10 years with children would be less stable than a family with parents married for 10 years. I would buy that a family with a serial monogamist parent who lives with each partner for a short amount of time (under 5 years) would be quite unstable.

Mr. Wilcox, what does your research (or what is your opinion) regarding those families in which the married couple functions day-to-day essentially as a divorced couple whilst living under one roof? Does research favor parents remaining married and physically under one roof with irreconcilable differences for the sake of children, or is it healthier for the parents to divorce and live physically separately?

Dr. Wilcox, I’m curious what your research indicates about the stability of children in families with two moms or two dads who are not able to get married in their state. Do you find that this type of co-habitation is any stronger/weaker than not? Do civil unions (where applicable) make an adequate substitute for marriage in this instance? Regards

Is “worse” meant to suggest that cohabitation is simply more prevalent than divorce, or does it really mean there is evidence that cohabitation leads to worse outcomes (of some kind) for children than divorce does?

And here’s a sample:

Correlation vs. causation on cohabitation

Q. It seems to me that those negative consequences of cohabitation are derived not from the cohabitation itself but from social trends in communities that tend to cohabit. Is encouraging people to marry really the answer, or does the answer lie in fighting drug abuse, child abuse, and neglect within the communities that most experience it?

A. Good question.

It certainly is the case that cohabiting couples who have children tend to be less educated, poorer, and less committed to their relationship than couples who have children in marriage.

So one reason that children are less likely to thrive in cohabiting families than in intact, married families is that their parents, or the adults in their lives, have fewer of the resources that they need to be good parents.

But the best research on cohabitation and child well-being controls for factors like income, education, and race/ethnicity. And even after you control for these factors, you still find that children in cohabiting families are significantly more likely to suffer from depression, delinquency, drug use, and the like.

For instance, one study from the University of Texas at Austin found that teens living in a cohabiting stepfamily were more than twice as likely to use drugs, compared to teens living in an intact married family–even after controlling for differences in income, education, race, and family instability.

In fact, children in cohabiting stepfamilies did worse on this outcome than children in stable single-parent families.

Research like this suggests to me that cohabitation has an independent negative impact on children, above and beyond the factors that make some Americans more likely to cohabit with children in the first place.

So the answer, I think, is for the nation to improve our children’s home environments in a variety of ways–from improving our nation’s educational system to improving job opportunities to discouraging parents from cohabiting.

Cohabitation vs. single mothers

Q. How does cohabitation compare with children brought up by single mothers?

A. The Why Marriage Matters report focused in its first two editions on divorce and single parenthood.

But as I was reviewing the literature on families for this third edition with my colleagues, I was struck by this fact:

On many outcomes, children in bio- and step-cohabiting families look a lot like children in single-parent families, even after controlling for socioeconomic differences.

So even though kids in cohabiting families have access to two adults they don’t generally do better than kids in single-parent families except on economic outcomes.

I think this is probably because cohabiting relationships tend to be characterized by less commitment, less sexual fidelity, more domestic violence, more instability, and more insecurity, compared to married relationships. Needless to say, these kinds of relationship factors don’t foster an ideal home environment for children.

And it’s also very clear from the research that kids living in a stable, single-parent home are less likely to be abused than kids living in a cohabiting household with an unrelated adult male.

I think this is a great area for Christians to be doing quality research in, because it helps us to be able to speak with authority on marriage and family issues when we have evidence. I think people take the decision to have sex, move in together, and marry lightly because they aren’t aware of the consequences of having things not work. If they knew the consequences up front, then they might put more effort into reading about how to do things right. A friend of mine on the East coast has been chatting with me about how little effort people there put into preparing themselves for marriage, selecting a mate and studying marriage and parenting. It’s scary. Even in my office a lot of people are doing this thinking there is nothing wrong with it… how did we get so far away from chastity and courting?

News

New study finds that fathers and marriage reduce drug use in children

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From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

Teen substance abuse is once again on the rise, according to a national study of adolescent drug and alcohol use released this week. The annual release of the Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) showed an alarming increase in adolescent substance abuse since 2008.

According to the study (PDF), teen illicit drug use and prescription drug abuse have significantly increased in the past three years. Marijuana use among adolescents increased 22 percent from 2008 to 2010, with nearly 40 percent of teens using the drug within the past year. Ecstasy use is also on the rise, increasing from 6 percent in 2008 to 10 percent in 2010. Likewise, 25 percent of teens admit they’ve taken medication not prescribed by their doctor, and one in five has used a behind-the-counter pain reliever without the direction of a doctor. This new data is especially worrisome, as it suggests that teen drug use is climbing again after a relative decline over the past decade.

Unfortunately, adolescent substance abuse is not reserved to the halls of high schools or prom after-parties. The nationally projectable study found an increase in alcohol use among young teens and even pre-adolescents. Almost two in three teens who admit to drinking alcohol said they had consumed their first full drink at age 15. Shockingly, 25 percent of the same group said they had first imbibed at 12 years old or younger.

[…]Whether teens have regular contact with their parents, especially with their fathers, can have significant impact on illicit drug and alcohol use. For instance, a child growing up in a divorced family is four times more likely to try illicit drugs by the time he or she is 14 than the same child raised in an intact, married family. Children who live with both parents and have close relationships with their fathers are less likely to smoke, drink alcohol, or use marijuana regardless of many other socioeconomic factors.

Religious practice also seems to have a positive effect on teens’ engagement in risky behavior. Adolescents who express personal religious beliefs and whose families regularly practice their faith are at lower risk for substance abuse. Fewer than one in 10 teens from an intact, religious family report ever using hard drugs, while more than one in five adolescents from non-intact, non-religious homes have abused illicit substances.

(I removed the links from the excerpt, but every assertion they make is linked to research)

I found this very interesting, especially since I was recently responding to a post that William Lane Craig posted on Facebook. Bill wanted to know why so many people seem to be incapable of considering both sides of a debate and judging who won the debate based on the arguments and evidence presented. This is relevant because in his two most recent debates, the atheists either presented no arguments or they did not attempt to refute his arguments or rebuttals. Bill’s question made me think of all the other factors that cause people to be unable to consider the case for Christianity on the merits, in a debate situation.

I replied to Bill that there were social forces that were breaking down children’s ability to consider both sides of questions so they could make their own decisions, instead of doing what their teachers and peers tell them to do, and this was especially bad as families break down and fathers are ejected from the home by women who chose to have sex with or marry men who are not qualified to be fathers, because they are not capable of being moral/spiritual leaders.

I wrote:

To answer Bill’s original question in the post, I think you have to point out what the public school system is doing to students. The public schools are not encouraging students to learn both sides of current issues so that they can debate them. They have a definite point of view that they are pushing, from the authority of the red pen.

For example, do you think that most public school teachers give equal time to proponents of vouchers or other school choice alternatives? Heck no. They have to be in favor of bigger government and higher taxes – that’s how they get paid. And you can see the same thing in debates about sexual ethics, moral relativism, moral equivalence, evolution, global warming, anti-capitalism, and so on.

They have an agenda. And when you have an agenda, you don’t present issues as having two sides that have to be judged on the merits. Instead, the public schools typically present one side with emotional stories or slogans, and the other side is derided with insults or made out to be a bogey-man. That’s the reason why the atheistic students cannot assess who won the debate. They have been trained in the schools to think one side is correct without ever have to assess the other side.

My favorite economist (Thomas Sowell) puts it well in this column:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226865/de-programming-students/thomas-sowell

I think it’s high time for Christian apologists to realize that it takes more than the kalam argument to defeat an atheist. You have to think of the dimension of family, and the schools, and even the laws and policies that incentivize certain behaviors that, one adopted into a lifestyle, make Christianity unpalatable because of its ethical demands.

Consider the impact on having a FATHER in the home on religious belief:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-026-f

And further consider that fatherlessness is correlated with atheism:
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/vanhove_vitzreview_jan08.asp

Now – the question to ask is – what policies promote having a father in the home. Well, no-fault divorce and welfare programs certainly do not promote having a father in the home, for example. So the reason why so many people cannot judge a debate may not be as simple as saying “Bill Craig is a bad debater”. Bill Craig is an excellent debater. But if there are other circumstances at work due to bad policies that make children incapable of even considering the other side, then what can Bill Craig do? Well, Bill Craig could write about policy, I suppose, although we have other scholars for that. But we should all be thinking about it.

I’ve written before about how liberal women choose big government policies that will provide them with financial security regardless of who they choose to have sex with or marry. Liberal women like big government because it relieves of the responsibility to be prudent when choosing men. Tomorrow I am actually going to be explaining, with research, how liberal women actually resent the idea that they would have to conform to choice of sex partner/husband to any traditional male roles or to any courting rules. So long as liberal women continue to vote for big government and choose men based on superficialities like physical appearance, clothes, air of confidence and tone of voice, we are screwed as a society.

Men conform themselves to women’s expectations. If the ability to be a protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader are not the criteria that women use to choose men, then men will change into what women want. Women are the deciders. Men adapt to women’s expectations. That is why it is so important for women to put down the women’s magazines and pick up the research showing the importance of fathers, and specifically, the importance of fathers who have rationally-grounded, well-evidenced KNOWLEDGE about moral and spiritual matters. So long as women view men who have knowledge as “too strict” and “no fun”, children will be damaged.

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