Tag Archives: Family

Polemics

Study: non-family daycare linked to anti-social behavior in children

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From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Academics at Oxford University discovered that exposure to some forms of early education contributed to bad behaviour and could be linked to emotional problems.

The study, based on an analysis of infants from almost 1,000 families, showed that the strongest influence on children came from within the home itself.

Children raised in poor families with high levels of parental stress or mental health problems were most at risk of developing emotional problems by the time they started school, it emerged.

The research also uncovered trends relating to children who were in formal child care — away from their parents.

The disclosure will revive debate over the best way to raise children amid a surge in the number of under-fives enrolled in nurseries and with childminders in the past 20 years. Figures from the Department for Education show that 441,000 children under five are in day nurseries while another 272,000 are being looked after by childminders.

[…]In the Oxford study, researchers recruited 991 families with children aged three months. Mothers had an average age of 30.

Researchers assessed children at the age of four through questionnaires about their behaviour and emotions completed by teachers and parents. They also observed care provided by mothers and observed non-parental care for at least 90 minutes for those children placed in formal childcare settings.

The report, published in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development, said that “children who spent more time in group care, mainly nursery care, were more likely to have behavioural problems, particularly hyperactivity”.

The study, led by Prof Alan Stein, of Oxford’s Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, found that “spending more time in day care centres, over the total period was a predictor of total problem scores”.

“Children who spent more time in day care centres were more likely to be hyperactive,” it said. “Children receiving more care by childminders were more likely to have peer problems.”

The authors added: “The findings in relation to childminding suggest that it might be out of home care rather than group care that raises the risk of behavioural difficulties.”

The researchers also tracked other forms of early years care and found benefits to different approaches.

They found that children who spent more time in pre-school playgroups – normally for a few hours a day, rather than a full-time nursery – had fewer problems.

More time with a nanny in parents’ own home predicted higher levels of “pro-social behaviour”, showing willingness to help others, it emerged.

The study said: “These findings suggest that interventions to enhance children’s emotional and behavioural development might best focus on supporting families and augmenting the quality of care in the home.”

A study like this will be useful when debating people with open minds, but hardcore feminists and socialists, who want women to work in order to fund bigger government, will not be moved. Because for them, it’s not about evidence. It’s about ideology. That’s why we have to be careful about letting people like that get elected.

Commentary

Fighter pilot discusses apologetics and Christian living in new book “One of the Few”

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"One of the Few" by Jason B. Ladd
“One of the Few” by Jason B. Ladd

Here is the blurb for his new book:

Author, Marine, and Iraq War veteran Jason B. Ladd has just launched a pre-order campaign for his new book One of the Few: A Marine Fighter Pilot’s Reconnaissance of the Christian Worldview. He has until March 22 to reach his goal or it’s back to the drawing board. Read about him and the book below, and then check out his pre-order campaign at

http://publishizer.com/one-of-the-few

The link above has the table of contents and chapter summaries.

From the back cover:

“Unsatisfied with his secular worldview, Marine fighter pilot Jason B. Ladd shares the struggles he faced during his search for truth and a reasonable defense of the Christian faith.

His mission began with a realization: though ready to defend his country, he was unprepared for his most important missions as a husband and father. Drawing from his military experience, Ladd warn seekers about spiritual apathy and teaches Christians tactics for withstanding spiritual attacks. Birthed from a legacy of service, One of the Few speaks from the spirit of a man reborn—with the soul of a Marine, the mind of a fighter, the heart of a father, and a commitment to the Son. Join him as he uses fighter pilot fundamentals to embark on the greatest mission of all: the pursuit of truth.”

Jason B. Ladd is a Christian apologist, F/A-18 Weapons and Tactics Instructor, and Iraq War veteran. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Peace, War, and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001. Jason writes articles for FIGHTER FAITH, a website he founded to help others lead with conviction, embrace parenthood with joy, and develop a worldview capable of answering life’s biggest questions. He and his wife, Karalyn, are the parents of six children.

Here’s the aircraft that Jason flies:

F-18 Hornet configured for strike mission
F/A-18 Hornet configured for strike mission

I actually met Jason at a recent SES National Apologetics conference, and it was great fun talking to him. He has a real interest in Christian apologetics and he sees how important it is for Christians to have a defensible worldview.

If you want to see a sample of Jason’s writing, check out this post on his blog.

This is interesting:

Christianity is more than a belief system. It is a away of life. The principles derived from Scripture inform the head and guide the heart. The Christian worldview is one of the few where philosophy corresponds to the human experience with coherence and consistency.

But inevitably, events will occur which threaten to shake the foundations of our world. We lavish God with praise when his blessing fall upon us, but when tragedy strikes, praises turn into questions.

Why does there have to be suffering?

This is one of the most important question you can ask, and it’s the topic of a recent book by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale titled “Why Suffering? Finding Meaning and Comfort When Life Doesn’t Make Sense”.

Abiding by a spiritual code means following a perpetual pattern of study and application. Once a search for truth yields the fruit of discovery, a growing hunger for more knowledge can threaten this balance.

The study of Christian apologetics is about the desire to give answers for anyone with questions. It’s about deepening your understanding of why you believe what you believe.

Just as a scientist must leave the lab and work in the field, the apologist must recognize when to stop studying and start applying what he or she has learned.

This happened to me recently. Life threw a curveball, and the questions started coming. It was the moment for which all previous studying, thinking, praying, and contemplating was intended: to help someone cope through a time of suffering.

Zacharias writes:

“At least as important as the question of why there is suffering is the question of how we will face the pain”1

The question is not just how we will face the pain, but whether we can help others through their own pain.

 

I’ve always understood my Christian faith augmented by my study of military history and military biography. Before I started meeting lots of Christian apologists on the Internet, I thought I was the only person who viewed living out a Christian life in strategic ways, where you make decisions about what you invest in and study with a view of knowing enough about what is true to render yourself impervious to the slings and arrows that life can throw your way. It’s interesting to see how people who are trained for actual war-fighting like Jason talks about his faith and how he built it up with apologetics. So you learn apologetics first to take care of yourself, and you make other moves to protect yourself from the things that take away people’s faith.

In my case, I play defense by saving money in case something happens to my health or my job. I try not attempt things that I can’t complete, and I have a pool of resources and a network of friends to support me. Once you have this foundation, you can then turn outward and build up other Christians – protecting them from challenges to their faith and unexpected losses and suffering. Supporting them, encouraging them and connecting them to other Christians to make them more resilient.

It’s really fascinating to be a Christian and take this tactical view of your life. You find yourself constantly reading and studying and earning and saving so that you are able to withstand threats and protect others from threats. It’s a very practical view of the Christian life, it’s not passive. I find that most often it’s those with a career in law enforcement (e.g. – J. Warner Wallace) and the military (e.g. – Jason Ladd) who take this tactical approach to their faith.

News

Obama proposes new tax on stay-at-home moms in SOTU speech

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Brad Wilcox writes in the Wall Street Journal about the new tax on stay-at-home mothers that Obama proposed in his State of the Union speech.

He writes:

Guess which kind of family was left out in the cold by President Obama as he unveiled his plan to help middle-class families in his State of the Union address? The traditional two-parent family with a single breadwinner.

The president pitched his plan as part of an agenda in which “everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules” in part by “lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.” But by design or omission, his plan does virtually nothing for married families with a parent at home, usually the mother.

The president’s plan would triple the existing child-care tax credit to $3,000 for two-earner families with children under 5 and a combined income of less than $120,000, and it would establish a new $500 credit for families in which both spouses work. The plan would provide tax relief—which would no doubt help with the cost of child care, commuting, etc.—to middle-class families with both parents in the workforce. But families who choose to have a parent at home would see none of this tax relief.

Terry Jeffries explains in CNS News why Obama would want to penalize stay-at-home moms.

He writes:

The perversely logical corollary to Obama’s desire to structure the tax code to the disadvantage of stay-at-home mothers is his desire to use tax dollars to replace working fathers with the government itself.

As this column has noted before, in each of the last six years on record — 2008 through 2013 — at least 40 percent of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried mothers. By contrast, in 1940, only 3.8 percent of the babies were born to unmarried mothers.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ annual report on “Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors” it is a fact that “historically a high proportion of welfare recipients first became parents outside of marriage.”

In 2013, according to the Census Bureau, there were 105,862,000 full-time year-round workers in the United States — including 16,685,000 full-time government workers. These full-time workers were outnumbered by the 109,631,000 whom the Census Bureau says were getting benefits from means-tested federal programs — n.b. welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012.

Every American family that pays its own way — and takes care of its own children whether with one or two incomes — must subsidize the 109,631,000 on welfare.

Perhaps if we started rolling back the welfare state — and reduced the burden of government on all families that rely on themselves and not the government — more mothers would choose to stay home even if that meant Obama and his ideological heirs would discriminate against them in the tax code.

So if you make it impossible for a woman to stay home, then she goes to work. If she goes to work, she pays taxes to the government. The government turns around and distributes that money to people who will vote for them in exchange for the money – like single mothers on welfare. The more money they make, the more money they have to buy votes with. And they get the votes of all the child care workers, too – because if mothers stayed home, they wouldn’t have jobs. Only the parents and the children suffer, as the children get torn away from their parents to be raised by strangers. Often, child care workers are unionized, and work based on government specifications. Parents lose the ability to care for their own children and watch over them, teaching them their beliefs and values. Instead, the values of these strangers are given to them. Instead of a mother’s love, they get fed and handled by strangers.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the party that aborts unborn children treats born children like this. It amazes me that people who claim to be pro-marriage and pro-family keep voting for politicians who want to raise taxes, forces women to leave their children in the hands of strangers in order to make ends meet.