Tag Archives: Single-Motherhood

News

Scientists discover how fathers improve brain development of children

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.

“It just shows that parents are leaving footprints on the brain of their kids,” says Dr. Braun, 54 years old.

The neuronal differences were observed in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is related to emotional responses and fear, and the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, the brain’s decision-making center.

[…]The balance between these two brain parts is critical to normal emotional and cognitive functioning, according to Dr. Braun. If the OFC isn’t active, the amygdala “goes crazy, like a horse without a rider,” she says. In the case of the fatherless pups, there were fewer dendritic spines in the OFC, while the dendrite trees in the amygdala grew more and longer branches.

A preliminary analysis of the degus’ behavior showed that fatherless animals seemed to have a lack of impulse control, Dr. Braun says. And, when they played with siblings, they engaged in more play-fighting or aggressive behavior.

In a separate study in Dr. Braun’s lab conducted by post-doctoral researcher Joerg Bock, degu pups were removed from their caregivers for one hour a day. Just this small amount of stress leads the pups to exhibit more hyperactive behaviors and less focused attention, compared to those who aren’t separated, Dr. Braun says. They also exhibit changes in their brain.

The basic wiring between the brain regions in the degus is the same as in humans, and the nerve cells are identical in their function. “So on that level we can assume that what happens in the animal’s brain when it’s raised in an impoverished environment … should be very similar to what happens in our children’s brain,” Dr. Braun says.

Read the whole thing.

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Less than half of 7 to 21 year old women think marriage precedes child-bearing

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The UK Telegraph reports on a survey of 1,109 British females. (H/T Andrew)

As I reported earlier, women today really do prefer big government to husbands!

Excerpt:

A ground-breaking series of studies, published next month, show liberal attitudes towards the make-up of the family, religion and cultural integration among the modern generation of girls and young women.

The survey, which questioned a representative sample of 1,109 seven to 21 year-olds across the UK, found that a third of girls in the younger age group thought they would be “grown up” by the age of 15, while 90 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds regarded themselves as “grown up”.

Girls were generally positive about marriage but less than half thought it should come before parenthood. One in four thought it was “OK to get married several times”, rising to a third in the 16 to 21 age range.

One finding suggested that some teenagers actively plan to become single mothers. Of the girls questioned who had left schools and were unemployed, almost half (45 per cent) expected to have a baby before they were 21.

Try to keep in mind that what is best for children is a stable union of two opposite-sex, biologically-related parents that lasts from conception until they are grown up. What young women in the UK are saying is that the needs of their future children, or of society as a whole, don’t matter. Society as a whole will have to pay the social costs of out-of-wedlock children through higher taxes. I would guess that most of these women are fatherless themselves. What a tragedy!

Meanwhile, the results of the feminist plan of for anti-abstinence sex education are in: 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD. This is another reason why I think my decisions to remain chaste and not to marry are warranted. It’s a different world tpday. My values are not the values of today’s young unmarried women. My goals are not the goals of today’s young unmarried women. And feminists are running the show now with huge amounts of taxpayer money, including a bunch from me that I needed to fund my marriage. Even if the right girl came along, how could we escape the high taxes needed to support the welfare state? Someone has to pay for all these broken homes.

Commentary

What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?

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alvare_h

Here is an article on single mothermood. It is the first in a series by law professor Helen Alvaré.

First, she writes about the number of out-of-wedlock births, and the effects of single motherhood on children:

The recent news of the nearly 40% out of wedlock birth rate in the United States should pretty much rock our world as citizens and as Catholics. According to the Centers for Disease Control report, this means 1.7 million children were born to unmarried mothers in 2007, a figure 250% greater than the number reported in 1980. The implications for our society loom large. According to empirical data published over the last several decades in leading sociological journals, these children, on average, will suffer significant educational and emotional disadvantages compared to children reared by their married parents. They will be less able to shoulder the burdens that “next generations” traditionally assume for the benefit of their families, communities and their country. They are likely to repeat their parents’ behaviors. The boys are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and the girls to have nonmarital children.

And then she explains what causes women to do engage in this behavior:

First, the researchers concluded that the majority of children born to lone mothers could not correctly be deemed “unplanned.” Rather, many were planned or actively sought. And the majority were somewhere in the middle between planned and unplanned. In other words, many of these very young couples (it was not uncommon for the mothers to be 14 or 15 years old) explicitly or implicitly wanted a baby in their lives. Their reasons by and large would be familiar to anyone who has ever hoped for a child. They wanted someone who was an extension of their beloved, a piece of him or her.  They wanted to love another person deeply.

[…]What is different about very poor mothers’ desires for children seems to be related to their relationally, financially and educationally impoverished circumstances.  Relationally, the authors described these young mothers as existing in an environment without close, trusted ties.  In particular, the men in their lives were considered to be highly untrustworthy and worse.  Infidelity seemed almost a universal problem among the fathers. Drug and alcohol problems, criminal behavior, and domestic violence were extremely common.  Motherhood provided a chance for these women to “establish the primordial bonds of love and connection.”

So, these women are looking to children as a way to establish lasting relationships. They want to have children, and they don’t believe that they are hurting the child by having the child without a father.

You can read the rest here.

I think this is interesting because what it means is that young women are viewing children as means to their own happiness, regardless of the effects that single-motherhood, with all that it implies, has on the child. It strikes me as incredibly selfish. Just like when children demand pets and promise they will take care of them, but then the adults end up taking care of the pets because the children aren’t mature enough.

Maybe those antiquated moralistic prohibitions on pre-marital sex were there for a reason? Maybe morality should not have been shoved aside by the secular left so hastily?