A new study has found that watching more than 4 hours of TV a day has an adverse effect on mental well-being.
The study was conducted by Mark Hamer, PhD, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, and research associates Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, and Gita D. Mishra, PhD. It analyzed the association of leisure-time sedentary behavior in adults, measured by television and screen-based entertainment (TVSE) time, and mental health.
The researchers looked at mental health survey data of 3920 men and women between the ages of 35 and 65 years, from the 2003 Scottish Health Survey. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the mental health component of the 12-Item Short-Form Survey Instrument (MCS-12) were administered to obtain information on current mental health. Self-reported TVSE time, physical activity, and general health were also measured.
Approximately a quarter of the participants in the study engaged in at least four hours a day of watching screen-based entertainment.
After adjustment for age, gender, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, fruit and vegetable intake, the researchers found that participants with the highest TVSE level had the highest instances of mental health problems compared with participants in the group with the lowest TVSE level of less than 2 hours per day.
The report concludes that, while sedentary behavior is known to be an independent risk factor for physical health, mental well-being also deteriorates with more time spent in front of the TV.
I don’t watch TV, but I really need to get more exercise! This study makes me feel really guilty.
Wow, super good post on the prosperity gospel by the “Mysterious M” at Alisha’s blog.
The start:
This is how the Lausanne Theology Working Group, Africa chapter, defined the prosperity gospel at its consultations in Akropong, Ghana:
“We define prosperity gospel as the teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the “sowing of seeds” through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings.” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/decemberweb-only/gc-prosperitystatement.html)
So where does the prosperity gospel come from? And, more importantly, is it true?
For starters, there’s a good bit of wishful thinking behind it. After all, who doesn’t want to be healthy and wealthy? It’s easy to see why this theology is popular. And if you’re poor or in a state of chronic ill health it must appear particularly appealing. But wishful thinking is no basis for truth.
And a great excerpt:
The prosperity gospel undermines the witness of the Church in a world which is already cynical with regard to Christianity. Non-christians see the hypocrisy of teachers who teach it and the gullibility of those who follow them. This further confirms their bias against the true gospel and makes them dismissive of the real thing before they’ve heard it.
Moreover, a fixation on material prosperity as the measure of their faith makes Christians weak when hardship strikes because their unrealistic, unbiblical expectations are not met and they feel let down. Worse still, their appreciation of the core blessings of Christianity (eternity in the presence of God, salvation from sin and judgment, complete renewal, etc.) is dulled by finding their primary joy in peripheral blessing. Most seriously, the teaching of blessing in exchange for sowing a “seed” or some other work undermines the fundamental teaching of grace: the unmerited favour of God towards sinful man.
Is about two pages long printed out, and it’s all muscle, the whole way through! I really like this person’s writing. I actually learned things, but without having to dig through anything that I didn’t like. I love it when women write in a polemical tone – it’s mean like I want to be, but it’s not too mean so that the person she is trying to persuade won’t read the whole thing.
OK, so here’s my take on the piece. Towards the end, she started to talk about how the message of getting prosperity in this life really undermined the point of the gospel, which is about the message of a free gift of forgiveness, reconciliation and relationship to rebels against God, a relationship that goes on after we die. And I started to think about how lately I have been leaving e-mails unopened, and losing my temper, and not helping other Christians with their software projects, and so on – all because I just can’t break away from the need for some selfish time. That’s a sin. It’s failing to do everything I could do.
So I am so glad that when my selfishness stops me from doing everything I could do, that I still have the forgiveness of Jesus to take away those failures to be perfect, and I can start every day brand new, ready to ride into battle to serve the Lord. I want to serve. I’m not always perfect. But because of Jesus, it is OK to fail, and to pick yourself up and try again. I think that earning money is good – and I love saving money, too – but beyond prosperity, I think that every man wants to be a noble knight most of all. And because of Jesus, I can be, even if I fail to be noble all the time, like I should be. No weakness or moral failure in me today takes away God’s willingness to let me ride out in his colors tomorrow. And that has value.
Hmmmn. I wonder if Mysterious M would write anything for us here at the Wintery Knight? But there doesn’t seem to be any way of contacting her. Boo! She’s so… mysterious! But any woman who defends the gospel must be a knight. It’s the law!
I found this post on RuthBlog, which discusses an article from the centrist Manhattan Institute on artificial insemination and single motherhood. It’s by Kay Hymowitz, who I agree with on many things, but not everything. This article was fairly good and it forms a good platform for me to make some comments below on the notion of “a woman’s right to choose”.
What are feminist scholars writing about artificial insemination?
Kay writes:
AI’s potential for deconstructing the family has not been lost on radical feminists. In Baby Steps: How Lesbian Alternative Insemination Is Changing the World, Amy Agigian, a sociology professor at Suffolk University in Boston, observes: “Lesbian appropriation of medical technology (AI) that was intended to shore up nuclear families” has “radically challenge[d] the power structure, assumptions, and presumed ‘naturalness’ of major social institutions.” AI promotes a “postmodern family form that emphasizes affinity over biology and (patri)lineage.” For thinkers like Agigian, one of AI’s greatest benefits is that it dethrones what Canadian feminist Kathryn Pauly Morgan calls PIVMO (penis in vagina with male orgasm). Postmodern anthropologists studying reproduction technology—and there are enough of them to be producing a steady stream of volumes with titles like Conceiving the New World Order—have joined in, arguing that the whole idea of kinship based on sexual procreation is a Western construct, happily on its way out.
Highly credentialed mainstream experts are also taking a take-’em-or-leave-’em approach to dads. There was Louise Silverstein and Carl Auerbach’s infamous “Deconstructing the Essential Father,” a 1999 American Psychologist article arguing that “neoconservative social scientists” who cautioned against the fatherless family simply wanted to uphold “male power and privilege.” More recently, Peggy Drexler, an assistant professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a board member of New York University’s Child Study Center, has made a similar case in Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men. Drexler announces that she herself is raising two children with her husband of 30-plus years, but one has to wonder whether her book isn’t a silent cry for help. Her index under “fathers” includes: “absent, after divorce,” “destructive qualities of,” “spending limited time with children.” “In our society, often we idealize and elevate the role of father in a boy’s life without giving credence to the fact that actual fathers can be destructive and a boy may be better off without his father,” she informs us. In Drexler’s view (spoiler alert for Mr. Drexler), dadless boys are actually better, more sensitive and more “exceptional.”
Keep in mind that research like this is taxpayer-funded – aspiring fathers who are busy working and saving for families they will struggle to support are paying the salaries and scholarships of these feminist scholars. And the research of these feminist scholars becomes the basis of policies like the one being pushed by Sue Leather in the UK, to provide taxpayer-funded artificial insemination to any woman who wants to have a child.
But what do ordinary women think of artificial insemination?
Kay explains:
More ordinary “choice mothers,” as many single women using AI now call themselves, are usually not openly hostile to fathers, but they boast a language of female empowerment that implicitly trivializes men’s roles in children’s lives. The term “choice mothers” frames AI as a matter of women’s reproductive rights. Only the woman’s decision making—or intention—carries moral weight. Similarly, advocates often cite the benefits of single motherhood’s freedom from “donor interference.” “Single moms avoid the need to discuss and negotiate around key parenting issues,” one Toronto social worker told iParenting Media. “She can shape a child in her own unique vision.”
And in the same choice-trumps-everything spirit, choice mothers emphasize that they choose their kids. All the planning and deliberation that they’ve got to go through to have children, they suggest, might make them better parents than those who just “breed.” Their kids are “wanted children,” observes sociologist Judith Stacey. The implication that sexual intercourse brings forth hordes of unwanted, unloved children, while AI produces a chosen elite, sometimes hangs in the air.
As you know we have tons of statistics showing that children raised without a father suffer enormously. But now some people seem to be saying that a woman has a right to choose to have a baby who will grow up without a father.
Well, what is a woman’s right to choose, really? It seems to be used in a lot of scenarios. It’s a woman’s right to choose to kill an unborn child, which has happened over 40 million times in the United States so far. It’s also a woman’s right to choose to destroy her child’s future by depriving that child of a father. It’s a woman’s right to choose to have drunken hook-up pre-marital sex with scores of promiscuous alpha males who have no ability or willingness to be husbands or fathers. It’s a woman’s right to choose to unilaterally divorce a man she freely committed to love for life, so she can steal his house and much of his future income. It’s a woman’s right to choose to work full-time and to abandon her children to day care and schools that discriminate against boys. It’s a woman’s right to choose to have sex with a man (or several men), then to accuse him (or them) of rape because she doesn’t want her reputation ruined. It’s a woman’s right to put on weight after marriage, and then to have her husband arrested for “verbal abuse” when he asks her to slim down. And so on.
That article caused me to think a lot about that phrase “a woman’s right to choose”. And it seems to me that there is a common core to the examples of a woman’s right to choose that I listed above. What the phrase really means is that a woman has a right to choose to selfishly pursue her own happiness regardless of the effects on the people who love her and depend on her. It also means that a woman should never be judged or held accountable for the destruction she causes. And it also means she can offload the financial costs of her own choices onto taxpayers who have no choice but to pay for the damage she causes. And it also means she can blame men for all of the obvious and predictable consequences of her own selfish and irrational behavior.
And how do men respond to this? Well, men know that marriage requires both partners to love each other and the children unselfishly. Men know that marriage is about two people growing to be less selfish and less irresponsible. And so women who believe in “a woman’s right to choose” are not qualified to marry or raise children. And this is why men do not commit to marriage any more. We would like to marry, and raise children. But we can’t find anyone suitable for marriage. And even if we found a decent unmarried woman from the 23% who did not vote for Obama, there is the feminist state – courts, schools, etc. – to contend with, which is firmly committed to “a woman’s right to choose”. The government has enormous power to regulate men, marriage and parenting – so there is really no hope at all. Men will have to wait until women come to their senses and stop voting to replace men with the government.
UPDATE: The public-funding of invitro fertilization is happening faster than I thought, at least in the UK. Check out this article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via Head Noises)
WINTERY KNIGHT 