Tag Archives: No-Fault Divorce

News

New study shows that children of divorce twice as likely to have a stroke

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Science Daily reports on a recent peer-reviewed Canadian study that links an increased risk of stroke to divorce. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

“We were very surprised that the association between parental divorce and stroke remained so strong even after we had adjusted for smoking, obesity, exercise and alcohol consumption,” said [study leader Esme] Fuller-Thomson.

[…]Of the 13,134 total study respondents, 10.4 percent had experienced parental divorce during their childhood, and 1.9 percent reported that they had been diagnosed with a stroke at some point in their lives. When adjusting for age, race and gender, the odds of stroke were approximately 2.2 times higher for those who had experienced parental divorce.

When other risk factors — including socioeconomic status, health behaviors, mental health, and other adverse childhood experiences — were controlled in a logistic regression analysis, the odds ratio of stroke for those who had experienced parental divorce remained significantly elevated.

I also noticed that Stephen Baskerville has a new article on no-fault divorce up in the (ugh! blech!) American Conservative.

Excerpt:

First: Marriage exists primarily to cement the father to the family. This fact is politically incorrect but undeniable. The breakdown of marriage produces widespread fatherlessness, not motherlessness. As Margaret Mead pointed out long ago—yes, leftist Margaret Mead was correct about this—motherhood is a biological certainty whereas fatherhood is socially constructed. The father is the weakest link in the family bond, and without the institution of marriage he is easily discarded.

[…]The notion that marriage exists for love or “to express and safeguard an emotional union of adults,” as one proponent puts it, is cant. Many loving and emotional human relationships do not involve marriage. Even the conservative argument that marriage exists to rear children is too imprecise: marriage creates fatherhood. No marriage, no fathers.

[…]Here is the second unpleasant truth: homosexuals did not destroy marriage, heterosexuals did. The demand for same-sex marriage is a symptom, not a cause, of the deterioration of marriage. By far the most direct threat to the family is heterosexual divorce. “Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage,” writes family scholar Bryce Christensen. “It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it.”

[..]Thus the third inconvenient fact: divorce is a political problem. It is not a private matter, and it does not come from impersonal forces of moral and cultural decay. It is driven by complex and lucrative government machinery operating in our names and funded by our taxes. It is imposed upon unwilling people, whose children, homes, and property may be confiscated. It generates the social ills that rationalize almost all domestic government spending. And it is promoted ideologically by the same sexual radicals who now champion same-sex marriage. Homosexuals may be correct that heterosexuals destroyed marriage, but the heterosexuals were their fellow sexual ideologues.

Conservatives have completely misunderstood the significance of the divorce revolution. While they lament mass divorce, they refuse to confront its politics. Maggie Gallagher attributes this silence to “political cowardice”: “Opposing gay marriage or gays in the military is for Republicans an easy, juicy, risk-free issue,” she wrote in 1996. “The message [is] that at all costs we should keep divorce off the political agenda.”

No American politician of national stature has seriously challenged unilateral divorce. “Democrats did not want to anger their large constituency among women who saw easy divorce as a hard-won freedom and prerogative,” writes Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “Republicans did not want to alienate their upscale constituents or their libertarian wing, both of whom tended to favor easy divorce, nor did they want to call attention to the divorces among their own leadership.”

If we social conservatives care about children, then we need to be opposed to no-fault divorce. We need to be more careful about who we choose to marry, and not choose mates because of “chemistry” or “hotness” or because our friends approve of them based on arbitrary cultural standards gleaned from Lady Gaga and Dancing With The Stars. There are defined roles for the participants to a marriage, and there is a design for marriage, and there are specific tasks that need to get done. Marriage is a job, and it requires skills to execute difficult tasks that are morally obligatory. It’s not about immature selfish adults pursuing happiness at the expense of their children. It’s not about feelings. It’s not about sentimentality. It’s not about fun.

Divorce causes damage to the health and well-being of children, resulting in behaviors that will give us less liberty (greater intervention of government) and higher taxes (for social welfare programs) later on. There are consequences to selfishness and irresponsibility in relationships. Other people do not exist to entertain you. Relationships are not a form of recreational activity. At least they should not be for Christians. For Christians, the goal of relationships is to get the other person to have a closer relationship with God and to be equipped to serve God better. If children are the result, then the same obligation applies to them. That is the purpose of relationships in Christianity.

News

British Columbia Supreme Court considers striking down ban on polygamy

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Political Map of Canada

from the Province.

Excerpt:

As expected, the federal government Tuesday joined the B.C. government in support of Canada’s controversial polygamy law.

[…]If Canada were to allow polygamy, it would be contrary to international obligations that recognize the harms of multiple marriages, said Strachan.

Several interest groups also told the judge that they support the polygamy law, which was enacted in 1890 but has seldom been prosecuted in Canada.

Jonathan Baker, a lawyer for Real Women of Canada, said that when freedom of religion is raised by fundamentalist Mormons as a rationale for polgyamy, the court should examine whether the practice being engaged is in fact based upon religious belief:

“Was the marriage entered into in the honest belief that it was required to achieve eternal celestial bliss, or was it simply a matter of social pressure from the narrow, isolated community?”

Baker added that it was “no exaggeration to say that polygamy is an anti-democratic abomination” and that a finding that the law is unconstitutional would be inconsistent with the values and opinions of most Canadians.

[…]The court is expected to hear more opening statements Wednesday, including statements from groups that oppose the law and would like it struck down.

The issue of whether the law is constitutional was referred to the Supreme Court after polygamy charges laid in 2009 against two members of the small Interior community of Bountiful were quashed by the court.

The trial is expected to run until the end of January.

Canada has one of the most liberal policies in the world on same-sex marriage, and they are also notorious for their no-fault divorce laws and punitive family courts.

News

Feminism’s opposition to motherhood makes children less moral

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Are you appalled by the way that children are behaving these days? Blame feminism. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

Many of today’s kids seem to be flunking the daily moral tests of life.

James, a teacher-friend of mine, lamented recently how “morally challenged” his high school students seem to be. “They don’t think twice about lying or slamming someone’s reputation. Cheating on tests is no big deal. They only worry if they’ll get caught.”

Recent headlines and the latest studies paint a dismal picture of cheating, bullying, sexual experimentation, on-line exhibitionism and “cyber-stalking.” College students show declining levels of empathy—a quality viewed as the foundation of ethical behavior. And the problems start early. A quick snapshot of the playground culture captures younger children who bully their way to the top of the slide or push past a crying child to reach the swings first, classic examples of self-absorption and lack of compassion.

What—or who—is to blame?

Here’s the author’s answer, which I agree with:

But new research from Notre Dame Professor Darcia Narvaez suggests that current parenting practices are the more likely culprit. The “moral sense” of children—now and in times past–hinges on whether they learn empathy and concern for others, particularly in the early years of life. ““Our work shows that the roots of moral functioning form early in life, in infancy, and depend on the affective quality of family and community support.” And the problem, according to her research, is that today’s child-rearing practices make that increasingly difficult. The result: “The quality of our cultural moral fiber is diminishing.”

The specific problems with childrearing today might be summed up by what’s missing: time together, physical closeness, and adult responsiveness. In particular, Narvaez contrasts the “emotionally suboptimal day care facilities with little individualized, responsive care” to the optimal situation that keeps children close to mom, encourages parental responsiveness to infant needs, and offers parents and children strong support from extended family and the community.

She cites a specific set of “ancestral” practices that cultivate strong family bonds—and consequently support moral development, particularly compassion and concern for others. These include:

  • Plenty of positive touch (cuddling, carrying, etc.)
  • Parental responsiveness to the child’s needs.
  • Extended breastfeeding (2-5 years)
  • Natural child-birth (which provides a hormonal boost aiding newborn care)
  • Lots of unstructured playtime, with children of varied ages.
  • The presence of additional adults (typically dads and grandmothers) to love, care for, and guide the child. Mom is not alone.

A child’s capacity for morality is grounded on the ability to feel empathy for others. And capacity is built up in the first two years of the child’s life as it bonds to its mother. But what if the mother isn’t there because she is out working? (Either because taxes are too high for just the man to work, or because there is no man in the home at all)

Basically, feminists want women to act like men, and that means that they must work. The way that feminists go about making women work when they would rather stay home is by passing policies that undermine traditional marriage. Things like increased sexual education, no-fault divorce, legalizing prostitution, anti-male divorce courts, replacing men with social programs, increased social programs to replace fathers, higher taxes to force women to work, taxpayer-funded contraceptives, taxpayer-funded abortion, taxpayer-funded IVF,  same-sex marriage, domestic violence fears, rape fears, abuse fears, etc. Anything to get women to think that men are unreliable, that marriage is impossible and that women have to have jobs in order to be full members of society.

The result is children who don’t develop a conscience. Nowhere is this more apparent than in single mother homes, where the generous welfare benefits that left-wing parties provide allow women to have sex with anyone they want without caring about what kind of father and husband the man they have sex with would be. If women don’t have to care about finding a man who can provide, and if the government provides day care, health care and everything else that a man provides, then all the incentives are there for the woman to let the state raise her child. It’s not the man’s job to support her while she raises the children – it’s the states job to raise children. Her job is to work like a man, and pay the state to raise her children for her. Blech!