Tag Archives: Parenting

Commentary

Ex-member of Parliament calls for shared-parenting legislation in Canada

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Good news for men who want to marry in Ontario.

Excerpt:

One man I spoke to, for instance, says his ex-wife falsely accused him of slamming a van door on her leg. And even though that assault charge was later withdrawn by the Crown attorney, the man says the allegations damaged his reputation during proceedings with a family court judge who restricted his access to his kids.

It’s those kinds of situations that the fledgling London Equal Parenting Committee will explore during “an evening of awareness in relation to domestic violence” Thursday at Crouch Library.

The evening’s main speaker is Roger Gallaway, the former Sarnia-Lambton MP who co-chaired a 1998 federal report called For The Sake Of The Children, which examined issues surrounding child custody.

“What I find distressing is the lack of objectivity around this whole subject,” says Gallaway, who represented his riding for the Liberal party from 1993 to 2006. “There has to be some type of balance put into the discussion. And it’s sadly lacking.”

Gallaway regrets that none of the 1998 report’s recommendations — including a call for stricter rules regarding the reporting of abuse — were ever adopted.

“An allegation of violence is a weapon,” he says. “And in Ontario we have a zero-tolerance policy, which generally speaking says that when allegations are made, it’s the male who’s removed (from the residence). And that then casts the die for what will occur in terms of child custody or access.”

Gallaway adds that more and more people are starting to realize that more and more deserving fathers are being shortchanged when it comes to contentious custody battles.

“There’s a growing constituency . . . that sees what’s occurring and knows these men aren’t bad people,” he says. “So the doubt about what is being said about (so-called) violent men is growing.”

What I’ve heard is that Ontario has the most unfair family court system in Canada, so this is welcome news. The more that courts discriminate against men and paint a portrait of men as unreliable and abusive, the less men will marry and stick around to be fathers. Men rise to the occasion in order to gain respect. No man wants to get involved with marriage and parenting when he is not going to be respected and valued by his wife and by society as a whole.

Men’s Rights activist Glenn Sacks comments on the article’s counterpoint against shared-parenting:

As a counterpoint, the article quotes DV advocate Peter Jaffe as saying that false accusations of DV are “rare.”  Actually, in the U.S. studies have shown that as much as 71% of DV restraining orders were either unnecessary or received under false pretenses.  Other studies show that over half involve not even the allegation of physical violence.  In Canada, reports of child maltreatment are deemed to be unsubstantiated or without evidence in 55% of cases according to the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect.  So what Jaffe said looks to be far from the truth.

Shared-parenting is one of the measures that Dr. J said would encourage people to get married and stay married, which benefits the children. Biological fathers are not really a threat to children – it’s the stepfathers and live-in boyfriends who pose a threat to children.

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Mentoring

The Wintery Knight’s greatest fears about the future

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I was asked recently to explain some of the big fears I have about the future, and I wrote a horrible paranoid screed that probably has scared her away from me for good. So, I thought I would re-write it in a more organized and sensible way.

So, I basically don’t have too many fears about the future as a single guy. I have economic fears about the future, but since I’m a good saver and having been saving all these years, I’m not worried about taking care of me because I’ve got the money to do that. And I don’t think things will get too bad before I die. Basically my fears for myself alone are because young people are being neglected by their working parents, and indoctrinated in the public schools.

Things that public schools teach:

  • taught Darwinism
  • taught sex education
  • taught that capitalism is evil
  • taught global warming alarmism
  • taught anti-Christian views
  • taught religious pluralism
  • taught moral relativism
  • taught postmodernism/skepticism
  • taught that Western civilization is evil
  • taught that America is evil
  • taught that war is never justified
  • taught that traditional marriage is wrong

…not to mention all things they don’t learn that put Christianity, America, capitalism, business, marriage and Western civilization in a positive light. I worry about how they will act and vote and demand entitlements from government to “equalize” their life outcomes after they make self-destructive decisions based on what they learned in school. And many of them are growing up without fathers which brings a whole host of other problems. But I am not too worried about this because I can always pick up and move somewhere else if things get really bad here.

But these fears pale in comparison to my fears about what might happen if I took on marriage and parenting. That’s when things could really go downhill fast, and all the chastity and money in the world won’t save me.

Below I’ll summarize some of the biggest problems:

  • The biggest fear I have about marriage is that my wife will be pressured to abandon the idea that marriage and parenting is about self-sacrificial love of her husband and children in order to please God. That could mean ignoring or not meeting my needs as a man for things like sex and approval. It could also mean just giving up on the children and refusing to protect their worldviews from the outside world, e.g. – the public schools, Hollywood, etc. Maybe she will just become totally disinterested in the threats posed to the children by these enemies? Or undermine my efforts to teach the children theology, apologetics and morality?
  • I am also concerned about increasing encroachment by the state into the education of children. I hear stories about homeschooling being outlawed, about parents not being able to opt children out of anti-Christian educational programs, about children as young as five being put on hate registries for being politically incorrect, and homeschooled children being placed in government-run schools for believing that Christianity is true. My fear is that this trend could get worse to the point where children are seized by the government because they are being taught Biblical Christianity in the home.
  • What if government spends so much money that they end up increasing inflation and raising taxes such that my wife has to go to work, or that I lose my job due to economic decline? Without money, it is almost impossible for us to protect the children from all of the anti-Christian influences we would face. If we took government money or relied on government services (e.g. – health care) then we might even have to comply with government regulations and conditions that would be antithetical to our plans.
  • I am also afraid that I will be charged by something like the Canadian Human Rights Commissions for expressing traditional Christian views in public. In Canada, there is no such thing as free speech. If you cause someone to feel badly with your speech, you will be placed on trial for several years, pay about $100,000 in legal fees, and then you will be convicted, forced to apologize, force to deny your Christian faith in public, and prohibited from speaking freely in any public forum including on web sites or e-mail.
  • I am concerned that government programs that push feminism, no-fault divorce and generally paint men as irresponsible and aggressive could turn my wife against me and cause her to divorce me for the money. I read a lot about divorce courts, fake charges of domestic violence, etc. And I think there is a concerted effort to paint men as being unreliable, aggressive and harmful to children. What if my wife began to believe all of these myths and felt that she could do a better job parenting the children without me? The children would be harmed, I would be penniless and I might never see my children again.
  • Finally, I am worried that she will become less tolerant about my desires to be romantic and chivalrous and just sort of check out of the marriage emotionally. That she will not give me things to do, or dragons to slay, trophies to collect, etc. That she won’t speak to me for long periods of time, or write to me, spend time alone with me. I worry that she will instead become interested in her own interests and causes and forget that I need a romantic relationship with her! I’ll die if I can’t express myself romantically.

So I hope this explains to all a little bit about why I am skeptical about marriage, even if I met a perfect person to marry. I would like to see a lot more work being done by the church to focus on things like fiscal conservatism, small government and politics. As it stands, I am not hearing very much that is re-assuring me that potential Christian wives are as aware about these issues as I am, or that they are prepared to fight them.

When I talk to Christian women, they are usually not aware of any of these concerns, and in fact are quite secular and leftist in their voting. This is very disconcerting to me because it seems like they are not applying their state Christian beliefs to their future plans for marriage and parenting. Instead, they are happily voting for bigger and bigger government and they are oblivious to how this undermines Christian marriage and family.

When I ask them what they have read about these issues, they are usually reading Christian self-help books, devotional literature, theology-lite (Phillip Yancey), emergent church, social justice stuff from the religious left, sensational Dan Brown fiction that undermines the Bible’s authority and makes women appear to be the victims or men, or end-times fiction. Many read things like “Blue Like Jazz” or other mystical craziness. Are there any women out there who read Thomas Sowell and Wayne Grudem and William Lane Craig and Stephen C. Meyer and Craig Evans and Stephen Baskerville and Jennifer Roback Morse? Or even Lee Strobel and C.S. Lewis, for starters?

I think some of these problems might go away if I married someone with the foreign policy views of Marsha Blackburn, the fiscal conservatism of Michele Bachmann, and the social conservatism of Jennifer Roback Morse. But one woman cannot remake the whole world. One woman can’t get taxes lowered, secure school choice, protect religious liberty, and get the government out of the marriage and away from the children.

And it’s not just that there are problems today – it’s tomorrow, too. I am quite surprised at how passionately young people advocate for ideas that undermine their own liberty, prosperity and security. The very things needed to make Christian marriage and Christian parenting work. Can one woman fix the irrationality of the young people who are voting today? I don’t think that one woman can fix everything.

Well, Michele Bachmann can fix everything if we would just vote her in as President, like I want. If we put Michele in charge of the world, then I’ll get married.

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Commentary

Should parents try to protect their children from all risky behavior?

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Story from the National Post. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

A few suggestions for anxious parents who typically hover on the edge of the playground with a first aid kit: Let your child lick a 9-volt battery, just to see what happens. Encourage them to try to drive a nail. And by all means, let them play with fire.

These are among the activities extolled in a new book entitled 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), the latest in a growing backlash against hyper-parents who try to insulate their children against every scrape, perceived threat and potential disappointment. Underlying this less-is-more parenting philosophy is a belief that today’s bubble-wrapped children are missing out on the way childhood used to be. The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls became sensations by teaching the video-game generation such potentially perilous skills as building a snow fort or using a bow and arrow.

[…]The book’s title is “deliberately provocative,” he says, and it is meant as both a guidebook for fretful parents who want to loosen up and a “call to action for over-protected children,” with instructions on safe ways to experiment with dangerous things.

“We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children,” he said. “There couldn’t be a better time to be running around outside playing.”

If I ever got married, I wonder what my wife would think of me encouraging all our children to do dangerous things? I’ve heard that wives also don’t like it when fathers try to get their children to adhere to moral rules, either (because of moral judgments and sanctions, you know). But I think danger and moral rules are good for children, in the long run. I don’t want a cowardly moral relativist for a child.

Anybody here have the Dangerous Book for Boys? Or the Daring Book for Girls?