Free Republic

My next youngest among five brothers died, like our grandfather and father, from combinations of strokes and cancer. Will be traveling from Texas with wife, son, and grandchildren to place ashes into the New River from the banks of the Virginia family farm. Like we did for our father. I want grandkids to know from whence they came. If given due respect, would like to post narrative of the journey here.

I know it sounds creepy to suggest that Uncle Sam ought to bribe women to have more babies. It has the whiff of something that chest-baring ultra-nationalist Vladimir Putin would do. More future patriots from Russian mothers for Mother Russia! Most Americans would probably say nosy technocrats have no business trying to engineer some socially desirable family size, either bigger or smaller. And they would be right. But what if Washington has already inadvertently instituted its own version of China's awful one-child policy? After all, American families are having fewer children than they want. Surveys show a steady, four-decade preference...

The court also ruled that the boy should live with his two sistersThe UAE’s top court stripped a non-Arab mother off her son’s custody and ordered her to hand over the eight-year-old boy to his Arab father to be with his sisters because she cannot speak Arabic, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The mother, who was divorced a year ago, had first lost the custody for her son at a Court of First Instance before an appeals court ruled for her. The father then appealed the verdict with the Federal Supreme Court (FSC), the highest judicial authority in the UAE....

This week, America’s foreign policy is dominating the headlines, but it’s the White House’s second-term domestic agenda that’s the focus of our Parade cover story. On Monday, June 23, the President and Mrs. Obama will host a Working Families summit in Washington, D.C. to discuss the need for affordable childcare and paid family leave, raising minimum wage, and achieving equal pay for all. In an interview conducted by Parade Editor-in-Chief Maggie Murphy and contributing writer Lynn Sherr on May 20, the Obamas opened up about their personal connection to these issues and what they hope to accomplish during their remaining...

I know that this topic is very controversial. Conservatives have always complained about radical feminism, and such radical feminists are over-represented among women with graduate degrees. Are women without college degrees better than women with graduate degrees, when it comes to fulfilling the job of wife and mother?

John Adams said he learned that the Metropolitan Opera was scrapping plans to transmit his opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” to movie theaters around the world when the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, told him on Sunday by telephone that he had gotten “unimaginable pressure” from some Jewish groups that oppose the work. “I asked Peter if, before summarily canceling this, he would open it up to some kind of a public dialogue,” Mr. Adams recalled on Tuesday, in his first interview since the Met announced that it was dropping the opera, scheduled to appear this fall on its popular...

Parliamentarians in Slovakia enshrined marriage as a “unique bond between a man and a woman” in the country’s Constitution May 4, with 102 National Council members backing the amendment, 18 opposing it, and three abstentions. The amendment was brought to the National Council by the Christian Democrats, and supported by the government, despite the latter being led by the socialist SMER party. A government spokesman told a press conference that the proposal simply upholds the existing situation. “The marriage amendment will not bring about any drastic changes, it only seals in the constitution what is already defined by law,” said...

Abu Dhabi Court has issued a verdict in favour of a person who had asked the court to prevent his ex-wife’s sister from visiting his children after the former was sentenced and in an ‘indecent’ case, reported Emarat Al Youm. The man requested that the woman be banned from visiting his children, who lives with his ex-wife. The court said that the father is the legal guardian of his children and he has the right to care for them. Earlier, he had filed a case in Court of Khorfakkan requesting that the family of his ex-wife be prevented from visiting...

David Brooks makes a good point and then a bad point in his take on the so-called reform conservative agenda. Today, millions of Americans are behaving in ways that make no economic sense: dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock. They do so because the social guardrails that used to guide behavior have dissolved. Giving people in these circumstances tax credits is not going to lead to long-term thinking. Putting more risk into vulnerable peopleÂ’s lives may not make them happier.The nanny state may have drained civil society, but simply removing the nanny state will not restore it....

Today I read an article where the author suggests that we come up with another word for “marriage” because the one we’re using has been redefined by the courts and the liberals away from what is originally meant. While we’re at it, let’s come up with another word for “coffee table” since we don’t use them for coffee, and frequently they become footrests.  Or a new word for “money” because our government seems to talk about it like they have it, but they don’t.  There’s always a whole bunch of new words for “automobile”, like “SUV” and “crossover” and...

Do you remember what it was like when you were twelve? If you’re female and were like many girls, your friends were everything to you. You talked on the phone for hours, chatting passionately about who sat next to whom in the lunchroom, whether you liked Joanne’s new haircut, or making detailed plans about who to invite to your birthday party. You likely also spent a bunch of time planning your life – what your wedding would be like, what kind of dress you would wear, what kind of house you wanted, how many kids you were going to have...

Meet the Rowleys, a genetically blessed family where mother, father and all three childen all share model looks. And they're making the most of their attractiveness: the family, from Warwick, have appeared in hundreds of adverts - including campaigns for Mothercare, Next, Argos, Aldi, Umbro and Centre Parks - getting paid up to £1000 a day to pose for pictures. Father Anthony, 33, mother Kimberley, 31, and children Tilly, five, Maisie, three, and Henry, 18 months, are an advertiser's dream - and collectively they make thousands upon thousands of pounds a year from their photogenic looks.

President Barack Obama’s new report on fatherless kids doesn’t include a single mention of the words “marriage” or “married.” The report admits that fatherlessness almost doubles the failure rate among African-American and Latino kids, yet it calls for government to arrange substitute fathers for huge numbers of fatherless boys and girls instead of binding fathers to their kids via marriage. “The President is calling on Americans interested in getting involved in My Brother’s Keeper to sign up as long-term mentors to young people,” according to the White House press statement that accompanies the report, which is titled “Opportunity for All:...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Initial reviews of responses from around the world on questionnaires about church teaching on the family in advance of this fall's extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family show that the teaching is misunderstood, said a cardinal who will run one the synod's sessions. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, Philippines, told Catholic News Service he found the responses "shocking, if I am allowed to use that word." Cardinal Tagle (CNS/Tyler Orsburn) "Shocking because almost in all parts of the world, the questionnaires indicated that the teaching of the church regarding family life is not clearly understood...

On Valentine's Day 2013, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families took into emergency custody then-14-year-old Justina Pelletier because the doctors at Tufts Medical Center and doctors at Boston Children's Hospital collided over the diagnosis of her rare medical condition. But when medical egos and battles lead to a child's being torn from her parents by judges ruling on dubious grounds, isn't it time to confess that something is seriously askew in society and even under the stethoscope? Fox News recently summarized the 15-month custody catastrophe by explaining that Tufts was originally treating Justina for a rare mitochondrial disease affecting...

"The biological family of a little girl taken from her foster parents and returned to her jailbird father have branded her adoptive mom and dad, ‘selfish’ for fighting to get her back and vowed never to give her up again. Sonya, aged nine, had been in the care of Kim and David Hodgin, from Dickson, Tennessee for more than seven years, but she was recently handed over to ex-con John McCaul in Omaha, Nebraska. The Hodgin family have released a heart-breaking phone conversation, revealing Sonya’s desperate pleas, begging to be reunited with them."

A family of eight, “just enjoying their Mother’s Day weekend in Savannah,” were savagely attacked by an unknown number of blacks in the Georgia city, that left several family members injured, including a 6-year-old girl who was “punched in the stomach.” A report from WTOC-TV said the attack on eight members of a family visiting from Atlanta happened in downtown Savannah on Saturday night.

10 Ways That Birth Order Affects Your Life Tyler Durden05/09/2014 15:16 -0400Zero Hedge Where you exist in your family’s birth order can profoundly inform your path in life, whether because of genetics or simply the way that family members tend to treat firstborns vs. middle children vs. youngest children. Psychologists have been debating the “Why?” since the 1800s, but, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, the outcome is certain regardless of the cause – the effects of birth order last for a lifetime... For example, firstborn kids are often rules-following and do better in society, while younger children tend to be...

Well, this is a law every grown-up in the world may be willing to back. The Spanish parliament is considering a law requiring children to do their chores. The measure is part of a larger Child Protection Bill in Spain, and if it gets passed, children under 18 will be legally bound to do housework “in accordance with their age and regardless of their gender.” And it doesn’t stop there. Under the law, children in Spain will also have to “respect their teachers and fellow students,” “participate in family life” and “respect their parents and siblings.” …

The Sass family only needed 18 points for Family Feud triumph last night.But the final result was so shocking, Steve Harvey's mustache nearly fell off.Tim, the family's patriarch, delivered a spectacular Fast Money round performance, scoring 182 out of the 200 points needed to win. So when Anna stepped up to the speed-round plate, it seemed like a victory was in the bag.WATCH: