Tag Archives: Father

Rasmussen poll finds that men are more pro-life than women

Life News reports on a new poll that confirms the results from the previous Gallup poll, which showed that men are more likely to be pro-life than women.

Take a look:

A new Rasmussen poll out today shows the support for the pro-abortion side is at its lowest level in three years, while support for the pro-life position is at its highest.

Rasmussen asked: “Generally speaking, on the issue of abortion, do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life?”

The Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters now consider themselves pro-choice, the lowest finding in three years of regular surveying. Forty-three percent (43%) say they are pro-life, matching the highest finding to date. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

And now the part that is very interesting:

Fifty percent (50%) of women consider themselves pro-choice, compared to 42% of men. Forty-six percent (46%) of men and 41% of women are pro-life.

Men are also more likely than women to say it is too easy to get an abortion in the United States and that there should be a waiting period. Women are more likely to think it’s too hard to get an abortion. Men are also more likely to feel abortion is morally wrong most of the time.

So, men are pro-life by a margin of 46-42. This is similar to the Gallup poll released in May 2013, that showed that men were pro-life by a margin of 50-42. I think that the first instinct of a man is to protect and provide for the unborn child. Men tend to want to take responsibility for their own decisions. And they are OK with giving up happiness and pleasure in order to sacrifice for the child. Men are more moved to protect things that are weak and vulnerable, even if it means that they will be less free to pursue their own pleasures. That’s how men really are, although that’s often not what women believe about men, and it’s not what is portrayed in the media about men.

In contrast, women are more likely to be pro-abortion, by a huge margin of 50-41. This is similar to the results from the Gallup poll of May 2013, which showed that women were more likely to be pro-abortion by a margin of 47-46.  The split is even large when you notice that women are overwhelmingly more likely to vote for the unrestricted abortion policies of the Democrat party. Exit polls from the last two federal elections have shown that unmarried women in particular vote for Democrats 67% of the time. That number is even higher when you look at young, unmarried women.

Not just unborn children, but born children

Previously, I also documented how polls show that men are far more pro-marriage than women.

Excerpt:

A new national poll points towards a gender gap over same-sex marriage.

According to new numbers released Monday morning from Gallup, 50% of Americans say same-sex marriages should be legal. But break it down by gender, and 56% of women say same-sex couples should be legally allowed to marry, but only 42% of men feel the same way.

So what do we learn from this? We learn that despite massive systemic challenges in the education system and the workplace, that men have nevertheless not given up on the needs of unborn and born children.

I notice that there is a trend among Christian women to try to blame men for abortion and gay marriage, and to try to say that the reason that women have abortions is because of men. But this is false, of course. The reason why women have abortions is because they deliberately prefer men who are bad boys. They are attracted to these men, and these men want premarital sex. They give them the sex in order to be liked by these bad men. They choose the bad men. The good men who are chaste and marriage minded are passed over. You can read about it in the article I blogged about earlier in the week about the hook-up culture, and see a study on the hook-up culture from the Institute of American Values too. And remember that the hook-up culture is praised by feminist leaders. They are the ones who wanted it.

Most women are attracted to bad men. Many cannot resist the attraction and choose the bad men. They are attracted to men who do not try to lead them or judge them on moral or spiritual issues. They go too far with them physically and bond to them and then cannot see their flaws. They eventually have sex with them to try to make them commit. Bad men don’t commit when they are given sex, though. Then the women vote for abortion to get out of it – because they feel that they are victims. Then they blame all men for their own bad choices and claim that the consequences of their actions could not be predicted. They make themselves out to be victims. But the real victims are the children and the good men who are passed over.

None of this would be happening if women thought through what they really wanted – lifelong married love – and then 1) prepared themselves to be wives and mothers and 2) chose chaste men who were prepared to be fathers and husbands. They choose the wrong men. They pass over good men because we are “too strict”. They deprive children of life or fathers. They blame men. It’s that simple. The problem is that we are too scared to tell women that they are wrong about how they choose men.

A recent survey sent to me by Nancy P. even found that men are more interested in marriage and commitment than women. When will we realize where the problem really lies? Blaming men isn’t the answer. We need to teach women to disregard the tingles and the peer pressure and pick the right man for the jobs of husband and father, based on the requirements of the male roles. And that means that we need to roll back feminism, and defeat the idea that man have no roles. Marriage-capable men only turn away from male roles when they see that women are not interested in marriage-minded men.

Stephen Baskerville: five myths about no-fault divorce

From the Catholic News Agency.

Introduction:

Almost four decades after the “no-fault” divorce revolution began in California, misconceptions abound. Even the many books about divorce, including myriad self-help manuals, are full of inaccurate and misleading information. No public debate preceded the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, and no debate has taken place since.

Yet divorce-on-demand is exacting a devastating toll on our children, our social order, our economy, and even our constitutional rights. A recent study estimates the financial cost of divorce to taxpayers at $112 billion annually. Recent demands to legitimize same-sex marriage almost certainly follow from the divorce revolution, since gay activists readily acknowledge that they only desire to marry under the loosened terms that have resulted from the new divorce laws. Divorce also contributes to a dangerous increase in the power of the state over private life.

Here are the five myths about no-fault divorce:

  • No-fault divorce permitted divorce by mutual consent, thus making divorce less acrimonious
  • We cannot force people to remain married and should not try
  • No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children
  • When couples cannot agree or cooperate about matters like how the children should be raised, a judge must decide according to “the best interest of the child”
  • Divorce must be made easy because of domestic violence

And the details about number three:

Myth 3: No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children.

Fact: This does happen (wives more often than children), but it is greatly exaggerated. The vast majority of no-fault divorces — especially those involving children — are filed by wives. In fact, as Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows, has shown, the no-fault revolution was engineered largely by feminist lawyers, with the cooperation of the bar associations, as part of the sexual revolution. Overwhelmingly, it has served to separate large numbers of children from their fathers. Sometimes the genders are reversed, so that fathers take children from mothers. But either way, the main effect of no-fault is to make children weapons and pawns to gain power through the courts, not the “abandonment” of them by either parent.

Al Mohler wrote about the history of no-fault divorce a while back, and I think it’s worth reviewing why we have this lousy law.

The story behind America’s love affair with no-fault divorce is a sad and instructive tale. As Baskerville documents, no-fault divorce laws emerged in the United States during the 1970s and quickly spread across the nation. Even though only nine states had no-fault divorce laws in 1977, by 1995, every state had legalized no-fault divorce.

Behind all this is an ideological revolution driven by feminism and facilitated by this society’s embrace of autonomous individualism. Baskerville argues that divorce “became the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of feminism, because it creates millions of gender battles on the most personal level.” As far back as 1947, the National Association of Women Lawyers [NAWL] was pushing for what we now know as no-fault divorce. More recently, NAWL claims credit for the divorce revolution, describing it as “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.”

The feminists and NAWL were not working alone, of course. Baskerville explains that the American Bar Association “persuaded the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws [NCCUSL] to produce the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.” Eventually, this led to a revolution in law and convulsions in society at large. This legal revolution effectively drove a stake into the heart of marriage itself, with inevitable consequences. In effect, no-fault divorce has become the catalyst for one of the most destructive cultural shifts in human history. Now, no-fault divorce is championed by many governments in the name of human rights, and America’s divorce revolution is spreading around the world under the banner of “liberation.”

And note that Democrats oppose any effort to reform laws that make it easy to break up marriages:

A basic dishonesty on the question of divorce pervades our political culture. Baskerville cites Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm as referring to divorce as a couple’s “private decision.” Granholm’s comments came as she vetoed a bill intended to reform divorce law in her state. The danger and dishonesty of referring to divorce as a couple’s “private decision” is evident in the fact that this supposedly private decision imposes a reality, not only on the couple, but also on children and the larger society. Indeed, the “private decision” is really not made by a couple at all–but only by any spouse demanding a divorce.

So, no-fault was pushed by two groups: feminists and trial lawyers. Christians rolled over for it because we thought we fell for the myths that no-fault divorce was “compassionate”. That was a mistake, and one we need to roll back. (By the way, that’s not a bad post by Al Mohler. I pick on him for having his head stuck in the Bible, but it looks like he has a comprehensive view of marriage)

The reason I am writing about this is because of a post by Dr. Jerry Walls (H/T First Things) where he said that people who are opposed to gay marriage tend to say nothing at all against premarital sex and no-fault divorce. Well, I am against gay marriage and I am also personally a virgin and I would repeal premarital sex promotion in the schools and no-fault divorce in the courts if I could. And in fact regular readers know that I am always blogging about the damage caused by divorce and the damage caused by premarital sex, usually with study after study to support my views. I don’t just say “the Bible says” and expect that to transform a culture that is largely indifferent or even hostile to what the Bible says.

I think that Christians need to become experts on everything from the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant to no-fault divorce to the Laffer curve to undesigned coincidences in the New Testament sources to WMD development and proliferation in rogue nations like North Korea and Iran. The more people regard Christians as intelligent, informed and circumspect, the more people will be curious about the gospel. We have to know everything about everything and we have to be concerned about every conflict between Christian convictions and what’s happening in the world. Studying the way the world works is one way of serving God and defending his honor with people who want to dismiss him, and dismiss their obligations to him.

W. Bradford Wilcox: the importance and impact of a good father

A pro-father article by W. Bradford Wilcox, from the left-leaning Atlantic.

He lists four ways that fathers make a distinctive contribution to child development.

  • Distinctive play style
  • Encouraging risk
  • Protection from threats
  • Disciplining style

Here’s the detail on the last one:

Dad’s discipline: Although mothers typically discipline their children more often than do fathers, dads’ disciplinary style is distinctive. In surveying the research on gender and parenthood for our book, Palkovitz observes that fathers tend to be firmer with their children, compared to mothers. Based on their extensive clinical experience, and a longitudinal study of 17 stay-at-home fathers, Kyle Pruett and psychologist Marsha Kline Pruett agree. In Partnership Parenting they write, “Fathers tend to be more willing than mothers to confront their children and enforce discipline, leaving their children with the impression that they in fact have more authority.” By contrast, mothers are more likely to reason with their children, to be flexible in disciplinary situations, and to rely on their emotional ties to a child to encourage her to behave. In their view, mothers and fathers working together as co-parents offer a diverse yet balanced approach to discipline.

Then he lists out some reasons why good dads matter:

  • Lower delinquency
  • Lower teen pregnancy
  • Lower depression

A very good article with lots of citations.