Free Republic

Last Hope in a Weak Economy? Mom and Dad By EMILY FREDRIX,AP Business Writer AP - Sunday, March 23 MILWAUKEE - After being laid off from her job as an events planner at an upscale resort, Jo Ann Bauer struggled financially. She worked at several lower-paying jobs, relocated to a new city and even declared bankruptcy. Then in December, she finally accepted her parents' invitation to move into their home _ at age 52. "I'm back living in the bedroom that I grew up in," she said. Taking shelter with parents isn't uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially...

ACLU and Planned Parenthood Shhh, kids, don't tell mommy and daddy we're taking you out to kill their grandchild! Doesn't anyone find it strange how these 2 organizations are teaming up together to fight to end the parental notification law when a minor student is pregnant? How dare these people - what gives them the right to come between family? If parents have a girl who is a minor who is in the public school system, they have a right to know if she gets pregnant. Their right to know overpowers the girl's right to privacy. The ACLU and Planned...

Gender San Francisco Style by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008 A San Francisco area middle school recently cancelled a “gender-switch” day in response to complaints from parents. A Catholic news agency report noted that “Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of ‘Spirit Week.’” According to the Pacific Justice Institute, parents were given little notice of the event, “and only found out after flyers were posted at the school.” When parents notified the school that they would keep their children home if the event...

Shoplifting is all in the family for one California clan, police say. A grandmother, her daughter and some of her grandchildren tried to steal $900 worth of merchandise from a Target store in Lodi, 35 miles south of Sacramento, police Officer Misty Smith said. The family's alleged shoplifting spree earlier this week was captured by surveillance video, which police say showed them cutting open boxes and hiding MP3 players, digital cameras, DVDs, jewelry and sports equipment in purses, bags and a backpack. An 8-year-old and a 5-year-old were among the family members detained. "The 5-year-old actually had a pack of...

HOUSTON -- A northwest Harris County teen in trouble with the law is in even bigger trouble with his mom after running away to avoid learning a lesson, FOX 26 News reported Tuesday. Denise Utley said her 15-year-old son, Bradley, stole prescription drugs from her and got caught selling them at Klein High School. To teach her son a lesson, Utley wanted her son to stand in front of the school wearing a sign apologizing for what he did. That's when her son ran away. Shortly after Utley put up "wanted" signs in her search for her son, someone saw...

A German family has completed its flight to Great Britain after the mayor of their hometown filed a court action to give custody of the children to the state because the parents have been homeschooling, according to officials at Netzwerk-Bildungsfreiheit, an advocacy organization addressing such issues. Officials there said Klaus and Kathrin Landahl and their five children, including four of school age, "are in safety in England. They reached Dover on Saturday midnight." Netszerk-Bildungsfreiheit said the situation with the Landahl family is just one of many such attacks on German homeschoolers, which appear to be coming more frequently, and with...

'Eleanor Rigby' sacrificed marriage for parents By Gary Cleland, Sophie Borland and Richard Savill Last Updated: 3:25pm GMT 04/01/2008 The real life Eleanor Rigby who died with no known surviving family was believed to have sacrificed marriage and children to look after her parents. Olive Archer, who died aged 83, turned down a marriage proposal from an RAF officer out of a sense of duty, according to an acquaintance. Olive Archer's funeral will now be well attended The former beauty was the subject of an appeal by a local minister Rev Akasha Lonsdale who feared Miss Archer would have no...

The colonisation by the middle classes of the best state schools has led to a dramatic widening of the gap in educational performance between rich and poor children in the past year, new figures indicate. [Snip] The figures underscore the massive influence of parental background on school success.

The love of my life is seeing other women. It started innocently enough, a bite to eat, a stroll through the park -- the stuff I never have time for. Then came the private jokes, the pet names, the stolen kisses, the bubble baths. At first I was crushed. What did these women have that I didn't? Sure, they're gorgeous, but I happen to look very nice in navy; and, yes, they're bright, but I scored unbelievably high on the SATs ... if you don't count the half with all that math. I told myself it was just a fling,...

But a strong majority of a very small minority is an even smaller minority. After more than two months of outreach through schools, churches and community groups, less than 10% of parents voted in the advisory ballot. Let's face it, voter turnout in the last school board election was just about as bad. But the school board is remote, its reach amorphous and the likelihood for imminent change small. In this case, parents had the chance to speak out on transforming their children's schools, bringing in new management, new financial resources and even new teachers. Instead, they stayed home in...

How much to you know about the lives of the presidential contenders before the election campaign? Take the quiz to gauge your expertise.

"They aren't old enough to vote, but that isn't stopping children from donning the latest in political apparel." Need Adobe Flash to view.

Should Parents Be Allowed To Spank Their Children? (POLL)

Dorchester doesn’t have a gun problem. It has a mom problem. When I read that the reason for the Boston Police Department’s new no-warrant search and seizure plan is because Dorchester moms are too scared to search their kids’ rooms, I was astonished. “This is a tool to empower the parent who is afraid of the violence invading their family, their home,” said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, he of the Ten Point Coalition. “I don’t know any mother who says ‘I want my child to have guns in the house.’ ” Rev. Brown, I don’t know a mother who would...

Children are once again pinned to the cultural dart board as Lucifer targets their souls. Hollywood remains the satanic toady of choice with the latest weapon being “The Golden Compass,” a polished and clever bit of celluloid starring the fetching Nicole Kidman. It is due out just in time to insult both Hanukkah and Christmas. Concerns arise at the stealth nature of the movie, a dumbed-down version of book-one in “His Dark Materials,” the award-winning British trilogy for children by atheist Phillip Pullman who said in 2003, “My books are about killing God.” He purposes that youngsters “decide against God...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2007 – President Bush today posthumously presented the Medal of Honor earned by Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who sacrificed his life in an attempt to save fellow SEALs during a fierce battle with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The Medal of Honor, accepted by Murphy’s parents, Maureen and Dan Murphy, during a White House ceremony, is the highest military decoration. Murphy’s is the first Medal of Honor awarded for service in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. “Today we add Lieutenant Michael Murphy’s name to the list of recipients who have made the ultimate sacrifice,” Bush said....

Should your doctor ask your child if you own a gun? Guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatric say "yes." They warn that "Children are curious even if they’ve had some sort of firearm training. That’s why parents taking responsibility for safe gun storage is so essential.” Doctors across the United States are being advised to interrogate children about mom and dad’s "bad" behavior.

CEDARBURG - A high school teacher is fired for looking at porn at school. He wants his job back. Now, one couple is saying "not so fast.” A Cedarburg couple is trying to keep Robert Zellner out of the classroom, but it's going to take a lot of money to do it. Parents were concerned to hear teacher Robert Zellner was looking at porn at Cedarburg High School a couple years back. They're even more concerned to hear he's trying to get his job back. Now, one woman is doing something about it. Meet parent Heidi Morgan. Her son goes...

1) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." A. Lenin B. Mussolini C. Idi Amin D. None of the Above 2) "(We)...can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." A. Nikita Khrushev B. Josef Goebbels C. Boris Yeltsin D. None of the above 3) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own...in order...

Parents 'choosing segregated schools' By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent Last Updated: 10:40am BST 07/10/2007 Primary schools are becoming increasingly segregated because parents want their children to be educated with their own ethnic groups, new research has shown. The study shows that the over-concentration of some ethnic groups in state schools cannot be explained by the social make-up of catchment areas alone. Instead, parents are actively choosing to segregate their children from other groups of pupils, sending them to predominately "black" or "Asian" schools. Researchers from Bristol University who analysed more than 300 primaries in Birmingham found that from the age...

...I argue frequently with my students about whether a child can succeed in school without parental support or involvement. Students believe in the power of the strong individual but often the playing field is too slanted, the teams too uneven. As early as preschool and Head Start, certain three-to-five-year-olds are already at a great advantage because of parental educational support while other children are beginning a lifelong struggle to keep pace. ...Children who are not learning basic skills in the home during the most important years of brain development (0-5 years) will enter kindergarten already at an educational disadvantage. Since...

Lesbian Couple Sue IVF Doctor for Cost of Raising Twin Couple wanted only one child and find they are "overwhelmed" raising two children By Meg Jalsevac AUSTRALIA, September 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A lesbian couple in Australia have taken the first 'wrongful birth' lawsuit in Australian legislative history to court. The two women, who have three year old twin daughters, are suing Canberra obstetrician, Robert Armellin, for 'wrongful birth' after he supervised the implantation of two embryos instead of one into the birth mother during the in-vitro fertilization procedure. The women, who cannot be named because of a court order,...

President George Bush Proclaims September 24 Family Day 2007 WASHINGTON, DC, September 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The following text is a proclamation by President Bush: Families are the cornerstone of our Nation. On Family Day, we underscore our dedication to strengthening America's families and recognize the importance that the bonds between parents and children hold for the future of our country. Parents and family members are the first and most important influence in a child's life. Families offer a stable and nurturing environment by providing love, guidance, support, and comfort. They help young people gain the skills they need to...

Some parents are not ROFL -- Rolling On the Floor Laughing -- about a Grand Prairie math teacher's assignment asking his sixth-grade class to decode popular, and sometimes lewd, text-messaging abbreviations. The teacher at Jackson Middle School was disciplined this week after a mother called to complain about a Web site the teacher told her daughter and other students to use for the assignment, district spokesman Sam Buchmeyer said. The site, www.netlingo.com, includes the abbreviations POS (Parents Over Shoulder), TDTM (Talk Dirty To Me) and GYPO (Get Your Pants Off). "It was just an activity that he thought would be...

http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1772386

Tory plan to let parents set up charity schools By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent Last Updated: 1:16am BST 27/08/2007 Parents in areas of low quality state education will be able to club together to set up their own schools with the benefit of charitable status, under Conservative plans to be announced within a fortnight. The proposals, which will strip underperforming local authorities of their right to veto such plans, are likely to form a centrepiece of the next Tory election manifesto. The idea for new "pioneer" schools, designed to appeal to parents fed up with local provision but unable...

A new book is causing a storm of controversy by labelling children as annoying and pointless - a charge made all the more inflammatory by the fact that its author is a mother. Entitled No Kid: 40 Reasons Not To Have Children, Corinne Maier's book has sparked fury in France, where it was published. Here, Corinne argues her "no kid" case while another mum, Ursula Hirschkorn, stands firm for parenthood. Corinne Maier, 43, a writer, who lives with her boyfriend Yves, 45, a psychiatrist, daughter Laure, 13, and son Cyrille, 10, in Brussels, argues her case. Children are just too...

A Texas family is suing Gov. Rick Perry and a school district over a state-mandated moment of silence in schools, according to The Dallas Morning News. David Wallace Croft and his wife, Shannon, of Carrollton, Texas, have three children at Rosemeade Elementary and argue that the moment of silence is unconstitutional and amounts to state-sanctioned school prayer.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3, 2007 – A troop-support group in California is working to connect military parents and their children one dog tag at a time. Servicemembers have sent more than 250,000 tags like these to their children as a reminder that Mommy or Daddy is thinking about them while deployed. Dog Tags for Kids, a California-based troop-support group, provides servicemembers deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait with the tags free of charge. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. In May 2004, “Dog Tags for Kids” embarked on its mission to provide deployed military parents a tangible way...

Parents may be prosecuted for insults By Barbie Dutter in Sydney, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:00am BST 22/07/2007 Squabbles over the remote control or whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher are the bedrock of daily family life. But mothers and fathers who insult each other in front of their children may now find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Australian courts have begun ordering parents to refrain from making offensive remarks, claiming that constant carping between couples can damage young minds. The orders relate not only to expletive-laden abuse, but to any remark that might be...

Single parents will be made to seek jobs By Graeme Wilson, Political Correspondent Last Updated: 2:59am BST 19/07/2007 Single parents will be forced to start looking for a job once their youngest child turns seven, with those who cannot find work being placed on United States-style workfare schemes. Peter Hain claimed Labour had made progress in getting lone parents back to work Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, announced yesterday that the age at which lone parents will be expected to start seeking work will be cut from 16 to 12 next year. In 2010, it will be reduced...

NORWALK, Ohio -- A couple facing a two-year prison sentence for forcing some of their 11 adopted special-needs children to sleep in cages hope to get the children back. Michael and Sharen Gravelle were sentenced in February on four felony child endangering charges and seven misdemeanors. The couple are free on bond pending appeal. "We still have an inside shot at getting our children back, which was our goal and we still stand by that," Michael Gravelle said Wednesday in the couple's first public comments since they were sentenced. The Gravelles' children, who ranged in age from 1 to 14,...

People can get attention either from their accomplishments or from their deliberate attempts to get attention. Today, almost everywhere you look, people seem to be putting their efforts into getting attention. Wild hairdos, huge tattoos, pierced body parts, outlandish clothing, weird statements -- all these have become substitutes for achievements. Some parents give their children off-the-wall names, as if that is the way to give them some kind of individuality. On the contrary, it means joining a stampede toward showiness.

Human Rights in the European Union are brutally raped by German law and widely ignored by their political elites and NGOs. Video fully exposing hypocrisy of “European solidarity” to which German goverment so often refer to. http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=8039592869205719612

If anyone should be on strike today in Quincy, it should be the parents, not the teachers. It is the taxpaying parents, after all, who are missing work, losing money and shelling out for emergency childcare while the Quincy Education Association walks their illegal picket lines outside empty classrooms. These same taxpayers are already on the hook for their local school system’s $96 million budget - $96 million, to serve fewer than 9,000 Quincy students. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to notice that’s about $11,000 per student, right around the Massachusetts average for per-pupil spending....

Competitive Parenting 1-A http://fetchingjen.blogspot.com/2007/05/competitive-parenting-1.html http://tinyurl.com/2q3zwh By KATY GRIMES, Sacramento Union Columnist Thursday, May 24, 2007 (online) Friday, May 18, 2007 (paper edition) (Sacramento Union) When did parenting become America's most competitive adult sport? Outrageous stories from parents all around Sacramento abound, from parents behaving badly at kids competitive sports events to academic competitiveness. Competitive parenting is out-of-control. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a world where children could play at being children. …playing fields for games of soccer, baseball and capture-the-flag; and tight-knit neighborhoods where kids played hide-and-go-seek and red-rover until it was dark…...

Pediatricians are encountering parents who refuse vaccinations for their children, prompting the doctors to show them the door. The problems seem to have heated up since a survey of 302 pediatricians published a year-and-a-half ago in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, in which 28% "said that they would ask the family to seek care elsewhere" for "refusing specific vaccines," and 39% said they would do so for families refusing all vaccines. Increasingly it seems, the pediatricians are following through on their threats, despite the potential for serious revenue loss. Iron Mountain, MI, pediatrician Alexis Wolfe says she has booted...

Mother's Day is, to be honest, somewhat of an annoyance. It's manifestly one of those tedious Hallmark holidays wherein everyone is supposed to run out and support the revenue stream of cardboard manufacturers in the name of expressing gratitude to mothers, fathers, grandparents and anyone else to whom we might be related. I imagine it won't be long until Sept. 18 is declared Anonymous Sperm Donor's Day, which will probably be celebrated by giving matching card sets to one's two mommies and lighting a candle for dear old anonymous sperm donor, whoever he might be. Mothers are not only important,...

HOUSTON -- A 4-year-old child found his parents dead in an apparent murder-suicide a north Houston home, officials told KPRC Local 2. Houston police said the child found Kendra Brooks, 20, and Anthony Mack, 21, dead in a bedroom of a home in the 1200 block of Homer Street at about 12:15 p.m. Saturday. Investigators said Brooks and Mack were living with Mack's parents and had recently been arguing.

WIESBADEN, Germany , May 2, 2007 – Servicemembers deployed to war zones will be able to view their high school seniors crossing the stage and moving their tassels from right to left via live webcasts on graduation day. The Department of Defense Dependents Schools Europe; U.S. Army, Europe; 5th Signal Command; U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Combined Joint Task Force 82 in Afghanistan; Multinational Corps Iraq; and World Television Services have combined assets, talents and technologies to enable the live broadcasts via the Internet. The effort will allow nearly 100 deployed parents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and other locations...

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2007 – The Defense Department’s America Supports You program welcomed more than 500 children to the Pentagon’s center courtyard today for arts and crafts as part of the 15th annual “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” Air Force Col. Micah Killion (left) helps his son, Danny, 5, cut out shapes at the Fiskars’ tent during "National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day" at the Pentagon, April 26, 2007. Mark Torok (right), a civilian employee, helps his daughter, Fiona, 5. Activities were set up in the Pentagon's inner courtyard for the hundreds of...

Children 'learn most from peers not parents' By Graeme Paton, Education Correspondent Last Updated: 2:27am BST 26/04/2007 Parents who heap attention on their children and spend hours teaching them the difference between right and wrong have only a small effect on their long-term development, according to a leading psychologist. Mrs Harris believes that popular culture, friends or street gangs have a greater influence on children than family life The need to survive at school and mix with friends has a more significant impact on a child's behaviour than lessons learned in the home, it is claimed. Judith Rich Harris, an...

Raising G-Rated Kids In A X-Rated World http://www.cbn.com/family/parenting/Burns_G-RatedKids.aspx By Jim Burns HomeWord Fri, Apr 13, 2007 CBN.com – Raising kids in today’s culture is not easy. There’s no question that the way we parent is influenced by the world we live in. And what a world it is! We need to help our children deal with drugs, sexuality, movies, television, video games, the Internet, terrorism, and war. It’s our goal as parents to raise our kids in this X-rated culture to become G-rated people. It can feel overwhelming trying to give our teenagers the tools they need to make godly...

A new study finds that children who received better quality child care before kindergarten had better vocabulary scores later on than those who received lower quality child care. The study also finds that children who remained in child care longer were more likely to have behavior problems in the sixth grade. Researchers say the effect of child care quality is consistent with other evidence showing that early experiences matter to a child's language development. But, they say, parenting is a much more important predictor of a child's development. The report appears in the current issue of Child Development. It tracked...

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2007 – Parents of even young children often wonder how they’ll pay for college tuition, but military service organizations are taking some uncertainty out of the equation. The Military Officers Association of America and the United Services Automobile Association both offer college savings plans to help servicemembers defray the cost of college educations long before the bill arrives in the mail. MOAA and USAA also are members of America Supports You, a Defense Department program highlighting the ways Americans and the corporate sector are supporting the nation’s servicemembers. Both organizations offer state-sponsored 529 College Savings Plans,...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23, 2007 – When Army Sgt. Brian Horn deployed to Iraq in 2003, his unit was spearheading the war effort. He and his men were ahead of supply lines, and after seven months in country, they were still sleeping on the ground. When mail and care packages started coming from loved ones at home, it had a huge impact on morale. But not all troops received the small tokens that did so much to boost the spirits of others. Brian, looking out for the welfare of his comrades, asked his parents to send packages that he could...

San Francisco.– Teenagers often suffer emotional consequences from having sex, even when it's "only" oral sex, a study published Monday suggests. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco found that up to one-half of the sexually active teenagers in their study said they'd ever felt "used," guilty or regretful after having sex. Though such feelings were less common among teens who'd only had oral sex, about one-third reported some type of negative consequence. Dr. Sonya S. Brady and Bonnie L. Halpern-Felsher report the findings in the journal Pediatrics. The study, according to the researchers, suggests that parents should be...

It's an old argument -- to spank or not to spank children. Now California could theoretically be the first state to outlaw parental spanking. The proposal includes penalties of up to a year in jail and fines of as much as $1000 dollars. The Mountain View legislator who proposed it is instant national news.........

WASHINGTON (Jan. 18, 2007) -- The Medal of Honor awarded Jan. 11 at a recent White House ceremony belongs to all service members, according to the parents of the man who earned the honor. Cpl. Jason L. Dunham of Scio, N.Y., posthumously received America's highest military decoration two years and nine months after succumbing to a mortal brain injury while fighting in Iraq. He served with K Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, based in Twentynine Palms, Calif. "We're accepting this honor for Jason, but we're also accepting this in all the servicemen and women's names," said mother Debra Dunham. "Jason...

Answering her doorbell just after 10 p.m. Friday, Mary Jo Cooney looked through her peephole in San Francisco's Mission Terrace neighborhood and saw nothing. She didn't realize her late-night visitor was too short to see. It was 5-year-old Oscar Limon, spattered with his parents' blood and clutching a Nintendo video game, trying to find someone to help him and his younger sister. After Oscar rang a second doorbell on Badger Street, neighbors made a terrible discovery. In an extended-cab pickup truck parked around the corner on Still Street, the boy's father and mother had been shot dead.