Tag Archives: Family

News

New Scientist article shows why fathers are necessary for children’s well-being

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Here’s a story from the New Scientist. (H/T Jennifer Roback Morse)

First let’s re-cap the old stuff:

Previous studies have hinted at the importance of fathers in child-rearing. Some have shown that girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father was absent when they were young. Others have suggested that the sons of absent fathers display lower intimacy and self-esteem.

Now let’s get the new stuff:

Cells in pups deprived of fathers had a blunted response to oxytocin – the “cuddle chemical”, which is normally released during social interactions and pair bonding. They also had an increased response to NMDA, which is involved in memory.

The fatherless mice were also less interested in engaging with other mice. “Usually if you put two animals in the same cage they investigate and touch each other, but when we put two animals deprived of a father together they ignored each other,” says Gobbi. Her colleague Francis Bambico presented the work at the World Congress of Biological Psychiatry in Paris, France, in early July.

But according to this Telegraph article, it doesn’t seem as though research impacts public policy. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Women who undergo fertility treatment and their same-sex partners are now both allowed to register as parents on their baby’s birth certificates.

The move has been criticised for damaging the traditional notion of a family, which many people say is necessary for a healthy upbringing.

But ministers insist it is a step forward for equal rights.

Lord Brett, the Home Office Minister, said: “This positive change means that for the first time female couples who have a child using fertility treatment have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts to be shown as parents in the birth registration.

“It is vital that we afford equality wherever we can in society, especially as family circumstances continue to change. This is an important step forward in that process.”

There are powerful special interest groups on the left whose whole purpose is to demonize fathers and destroy marriage. They want children to be raised by the state, (i.e. – by those who run the secular government). They think that government programs taught by strangers and designed by experts well-versed in all the isms of the left, are better for children than their biological parents.

Commentary

Are “de-facto” parents good for children?

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ECM sent me this interesting National Review article about how courts are undermining the rights of children by breaking down traditional parental roles.

Excerpt:

This year, the District of Columbia Council passed a law allowing biological parents’ registered domestic partners to be presumed parents, and to be listed as such on the children’s birth certificates. The law also allows a person to be legally designated a parent if he consents in writing to the artificial insemination of his partner, or if he “hold[s] out” the child as his own—that is, presents the child as his to others. (D.C. already had a law allowing people to sue for child custody if they could show they had acted as “de facto” parents (D.C. Code 16-831.01).)

Then, last month, the Delaware legislature went even farther when it enacted legislation giving state courts the ability to designate a non-parent as a “de facto” parent (with all the legal ramifications of parenthood) as long as the biological parent of a child “fosters” a “parent-like relationship” between the non-parent and the child, and as long as the “de facto” parent has acted like a parent and bonded with the child in a way that is “parental in nature.”

The Delaware law completely untethers legal parentage from biology, marriage, adoption, and even the relationship between the adults who are the child’s legal “parents.” It also abandons the binary nature of legal parenthood by allowing three or more adults to be designated “parents” of a child at the same time.

The article goes on to explain why the court’s designation of de facto parents is a bad idea for children, who are increasingly having their rights to a happy childhood denied by courts. This is what Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was concerned about in her recent podcast on family and marriage.

I think the bottom line here is that children do best when bonding to two opposite-sex parents who are biologically linked to them. That is the most stable, loving environment in which to have children. The left is sacrificing the welfare of children in order to cater to the needs of adults who don’t care about what is best for children.

Polemics

Christians destroy their own religious freedom by supporting single-payer health care

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Muddling Towards Maturity linked to a Chuck Colson column which makes an essential point about how allowing a secular government to control health care is bad for Christians who want to live authentic Christian lives in the public square. Muddling writes, “Chuck Colson tells the story of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college that won’t allow abortion, sterilization, and contraception to be covered by its employees’ health care plan.”

Excerpt:

[The Catholic Church] teaches that abortion, sterilization, and contraception are immoral. So it makes sense that a conservative Catholic college would make sure that its health plan doesn’t cover such practices.

Well, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a different word for Belmont Abbey College: “sexist.”

Using reasoning that could only be concocted by a consummate bureaucrat, the director of the agency’s Charlotte office has said that denying contraception is sexist “because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women.”

The EEOC stepped in because eight college employees complained about the lack of coverage. The EEOC has now ordered the college to find a resolution. Even though North Carolina law protects religious institutions from having to cover contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization, the case could end up in the federal courts.

Colson also talks about how Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close as a result of state control of medical care provision. Catholic organizations do a ton of good in the world, so I find it appalling that so many Catholics voted for Obama. If you marginalize the worldview that produces the good works, you don’t get to keep the good works. The good works were rationally grounded by the good worldview.

This is a MUST-READ for those of you who believe that big government programs, like single-payer health care, are compatible with Christianity. If you want to put the needs of the poor above the gospel, that’s fine. But, in my view, Jesus put the gospel above the needs of the poor.

Have a look:

1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2″But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

6″Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

(Mark 14:1-9, NIV)

And you can see this problem in many other areas as well, such as welfare, hate crime bills and the removal of conscience protections. Few Christians, and certainly not those who support single-payer health care, would even recognize the imposition of the government’s vision of morality and purpose on individuals as fascism. Even homeschooling Christians sometimes support big government secular socialism which can lead to banning homeschooling.

Many Christians voted for the most pro-abortion President ever, and for the most anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-child President ever. I think this is a consequence of the church’s complete unwillingness to connect what goes on in the church with anything objectively real outside the church. We tell people stories that make them feel certain emotions, and they use that emotionalized conception of Christianity to decide who to vote for.

2008 voting broken by religious groups

2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for larger image)

I think what is really happening here is that Christians who prefer single-payer health care on “moral grounds” are either 1) trying to justify stealing money from their neighbors to pay for their own risky, irresponsible decisions, or 2) trying to embrace trendy, popular policies that put them in a favorable light with the secular neighbors. Either way, it’s a loss for God. Doing good is the job of free individuals, not the job of a secular, socialist government.