Tag Archives: Socialism

How socialism undermines the traditional family in Sweden

Take a look at this guest post by LN at Gates of Vienna. He describes how socialism in Sweden has undermined traditional marriage and traditional parenting and caused health problems for children. For example, he discusses the effects of day care and schooling of children from the ages of 1-12 years.

Excerpt:

In large parts of the world it is natural — or at least it was — that young mothers work less than men or not at all. Career women and mothers with small children gave notice and abandoned their top skilled jobs to become “stay at home” mothers. In countries where motherliness and motherhood is a large and accepted part of life, women could leave work to become full-time mothers without losing prestige or merit.

But not in Sweden. Taxes are now so high that today it is generally required that both parents work and pay taxes to the yawning chasm that the state has become.

And this has profound effects on the children.

Excerpt:

Professor Jay Belsky is an internationally recognized expert in the field of child development and family studies. His areas of special expertise include the effects of day care, parent-child relations during the infancy and early childhood years, the transition to parenthood, the etiology of child maltreatment, and the evolutionary basis of parent and child functioning.

[…]Many hours in pre-school, regardless of quality, results in increased behavioral problems. Nor can pre-school compensate for the weak mothering of young children. A one-or two-year-old child with a less responsive mother develops better in the mother’s care than in many hours (10 hours/week) at pre-school. Children with a less responsive parent (mother) seem to need more time with the mother, said Belsky. Nor is there any evidence that preschool would improve the child’s social development.

And here’s another excerpt:

Dr. Gordon Neufeld is a clinical psychologist from Canada with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues, and the author of the internationally recognized book Hold On to Your Kids — why parents need to matter more than peers. Dr. Neufeld’s message was that the younger generation’s lack of adult contacts in the Western world is one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time — peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation [jämnårigorientering], which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour.

But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for conformism, aggression, schoolyard bullying, and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity.

Gates of Vienna also had a recent post about the epidemic of gang rape that is currently going on in Britain. (Click here to watch a British documentary which features interviews of women and men talking about this gang rape problem). This is especially sad because young unmarried women who are the victims of the breakdown of the family actually voted 77 percent for Obama, who favors the same socialist policies that cause mothers to leave the home and put the children into the hands of strangers.

How feminism is opposed to chivalry, marriage and fathers

Feminism makes women unable to relate to men in healthy ways

Here are two non-negotiable beliefs of third-wave feminists.

  1. Feminists want women to believe and act exactly like men because they think there are no sex differences
  2. Feminists believe that romantic love, chivalry and motherhood are all bad because they involve sex differences

Consider this post on how men perceive feminism as being opposed chivalry, (which is a prerequisite for romantic love).

Last summer I polled college guys from across the country and abroad at the National Young America’s Foundation Conference in Washington, D.C. Ninety-three percent of them said that chivalry has decreased in current times, and 84 percent of that group attribute this decline primarily or at least partly to the rise of radical feminism in society.

One man stated that feminism “devalued chivalry and made it seem sexist.” Another man proposed that the “‘I-don’t-need-a-man culture has crippled chivalry in the public sphere.” Yet another said that it was “difficult” to be chivalrous because some women portray chivalry as “subordinating, disrespecting, and devaluing.”

It seems that men are lodged between a rock and a hard place. If they try to be chivalrous, feminists call them sexist. Yet if they treat us the way the feminists say we want to be treated—the same as a man—we complain of not getting enough respect.

How do guys define chivalry? Three out of four responded that it had to do with respect, honor, and courtesy towards women. One man spoke openly: “Chivalry is the notion that a man has the duty to respect and serve women.”

Another man affirmed: “It is a set of manners and respect a man should show to a woman as a demonstration of respect towards her.” Another guy said women “need to understand that chivalry isn’t being put down like feminism would like you to believe, but rather is a way a woman can command respect from a man.”

Too often, however, these same men lamented that their efforts to be chivalrous were met with scorn.

If you’re wondering where all the “good men” went, and why men are so “unromantic”, blame feminism. Women in the secular feminist West have been taught to rush into physical activity, (like men), instead of being taught how to judge a good man, and how to recognize and relate to good men. This leads to fewer good men because men respond to women’s expectations of them. Today, women don’t know how to evaluate a man to see if he is capable of marriage and parenting. Feminism’s strategy of “act like a man” is an epic fail – it just produces a lot of guilt and hurt for young women.

In Theodore Dalrymple’s book “Life at the Bottom”, he explains how nurses in his hospital pursue violent men because they are physically attracted to them, only to be beaten, impregnated and abandoned by them, again and again. When he asks the women why they cannot recognize bad men, they explain that its wrong to make moral judgments about men. One nurse believed that men were all the same, and that she could not know in advance if the relationship would “work out”.

Women learn how to relate to men by watching how their father treats their mother. Are men encouraged to marry and to become involved fathers by the secular feminist state?

Feminism has resulted in children being raised without fathers

Feminists favor socialism because the higher taxes force women to leave their children and home to work, and because a massive government reduces the need for women to marry a good man. Big government is there with social programs to cover up the choice of a bad man, so that choosing a good man becomes unnecessary. Women no longer value men for their ability to protect and provide, so men stop exhibiting those behaviors and instead become lazy and aggressive. Children are born out-of-wedlock and are raised without fathers, which has terrible effects on children.

Consider this research paper from the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

For decades, radical feminists depicted marriage as an oppressive institution that was injurious to women and children. In reality, facts show exactly the opposite: In general, marriage has profoundly beneficial effects on women, children, and men.

Foremost is the positive impact of marriage in alleviating poverty among mothers and children. On average, a mother who gives birth and raises a child outside of marriage is seven times more likely to live in poverty than is a mother who raises her children within a stable married family.70 Over 80 percent of long-term child poverty in the United States (where a child is poor for more than half of his or her life) occurs in never-married or broken households.71 Moreover, the economic benefits of marriage are not limited to the middle class; some 70 percent of never-married mothers would be able to escape poverty if they were married to the father of their children.72

The erosion of marriage is also a principal factor behind the growth of the current welfare state. A child born and raised outside marriage is six times more likely to receive welfare aid than is a child raised in an intact, married family. Each year, federal and state governments spend over $200 billion on means-tested aid for low-income families with children through programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, public housing, the earned income tax credit, and Medicaid. Of this total, some 75 percent ($150 billion) goes to single-parent families.73

Marriage has profound positive effects on the well-being of children. Children raised by single mothers are 14 times more likely to suffer serious physical abuse than children raised in intact, married families. Children raised in single-parent homes are much more likely to be depressed and to have developmental, behavioral, and emotional problems; such children are more likely to fail in school, use drugs, and engage in early sexual activity. They are also more likely to become involved in crime and to end up in jail as adults.74

While radical feminists condemn marriage as an institution that foments domestic violence against women, in fact, the opposite is true. Domestic violence is most common in the transitory, free-form, cohabitational relationships that feminists have long celebrated as replacements for traditional marriage. Specifically, never-married mothers are more than twice as likely to suffer from domestic violence than mothers who are or have been married.

Early sexual activity and criminal behavior are serious problems.

Environmentalists support restrictions on number of children per family

Here’s the first story from CNS News. (H/T American Spectator via ECM)

Here’s New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin.

Excerpt:

At the event, Revkin said: “Well, some of the people have recently proposed: Well, should there be carbon credits for a family planning program in Africa let’s say? Should that be monetized as a part of something that, you know, if you, if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward an accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn’t there be a carbon value to that?

“And I have even proposed recently, I can’t remember if it’s in the blog, but just think about this: Should–probably the single-most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, it’s having fewer kids, having fewer children,” said Revkin.

“So should there be, eventually you get, should you get credit–If we’re going to become carbon-centric–for having a one-child family when you could have had two or three,” said Revkin. “And obviously it’s just a thought experiment, but it raises some interesting questions about all this.”

And here’s the second story from the UK Guardian. (H/T National Review via ECM)

And here’s the UK Guardian’s reporter Alex Renton.

Excerpt:

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess…

In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today’s standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis… As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: “Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso.” So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy..?

But how do you reduce population in countries where women’s rights are already achieved and birth-control methods are freely available? Could children perhaps become part of an adult’s personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?

After all, based on current emissions and life expectancy, one less British child would permit some 30 women in sub-Saharan Africa to have a baby and still leave the planet a cleaner place.

A lot of people ask why I am so concerned about getting married in a nation in which 77% of young, unmarried women voted for Obama and his radically leftist science czar and radically leftist former green jobs czar. (The science czar favored mass sterilizations and forced abortions). And now we can see part of the answer: the left wants to interfere with my reproductive freedom using state coercion.

And it’s not just environmental reporters who are against people having children. It’s Obama’s own nominees. These fears of overpopulation are like “Left Behind” novels for the secular left. The failed doomsday predictions of Paul Ehrlich are identical to the failed doomsday predictions of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is something very strange about these people – and women should not have voted for them.

Recall that Social Security and other government programs are fueled by income taxes on younger workers. Except that the overpopulation nutters aborted the next generation of American workers. Ooops. So where are we supposed to get the money for these ballooning social programs from if the left keeps putting restrictions on pregnancy? Here’s my previous post about Britain’s looming demographics crisis.