Posted on 12/07/2006 7:16:54 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.
Mary Cheney is among that burgeoning group of adult women over age 20 that are driving the trend of women who don’t want a man in the picture, but want to have a baby. These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).
Well-educated, professional Mary Cheney is flying in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the top experts who agree that the very best family structure for a child’s well-being is a married mom and dad family. Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers.
One Georgia high school principal reported, “We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don’t have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They’ve seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves.”
When fatherless children get to be teens, the girls tend to start looking for love in all the wrong places and the boys tend to find as their role model the bad-boy celebrities of MTV, NFL and NBA.
As they grow older, fatherless children tend to have trouble dealing with male authority figures. Too often children in single-mother households end up angry at their absent fathers and resentful of the mother who has had to be a father figure, too. Typically, the boys who have a love-hate relationship with their mother end up hating all women. Numerous of them look for vulnerable women where they can act out their anger and be in control.
Mary Cheney’s action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational –– children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life. Experts from both the left and the right cite a disastrous litany of negative outcomes that are predictable when a child grows up in a fatherless family. Such children tend to get involved in drugs, alcohol abuse, and delinquency; they tend to drop out of school and have teen pregnancies. An assistant principal in a Junior High School said that many of the behavioral problems that teachers face in the classroom stem from households without a father’s influence.
Mary’s pregnancy is an “in-your-face” action countering the Bush Administration’s pro-family, pro-marriage and pro-life policies. She continues to repudiate the work to which her father has devoted his life. Mary has repeatedly said that “studies” show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.
All those people who talk about doing what is best “for our children” need to get back to the basics: children need a married mom and dad. Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.
How about the Daily Kos? That work for you?
i think that it is largely the libertarians and not the social conservatives that are ok with this.
You don't have to be "ok" with something to consider it none of your business.
Can someone please, PLEASE for the love of God please come up with something a little more original.
Heal thyself.
Actually 9/11 was the fault of Al Queda.
Hyperbole aside. Do you doubt they are laughing at us over this?
In addition, there are many parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and what is happening in the United States today.
something doesn't have to be your business in order for you to comment on the advisability or desirability of it. this is a news item, obviously they announced it. it is fit for discussion as is anything else in the news. lamenting the further degradation of our culture is something that social conservatives do, whereas libertarians consider it none of our business what others do.
Perhaps the Cheneys did this a long time ago. Perhaps millions of parents have also unsuccessfully tried this "solution" with adult children who marched and continue to march to their own (often misguided and detrimental) drummer.
The question is, what's next for the parents if the adult children they love continue on the path they've chosen in life? Cut them out of the will? Exile them to Elba? Make them stand in a corner?
There's no easy answer, in my opinion.
The parents are relegated to handling the situation with as much external grace as they can muster, especially if they're in the public eye virtually every minute of their lives.
The Cheneys are doing just that, in my opinion. It's the media tabloidists who are exploiting this situation......and they are the ones that are trash.
Leni
It is none of your business what people do in their own homes. They aren't teaching about Mary Cheney having a baby in the public schools. If the homosexuals kept their actions to themselves, we'd all be a lot better off.
As a matter of fact, a lesbian couple that I know had a baby through artificial insemination and then when the child was ready to enter school, the mother realized that she didn't want to be a lesbian anymore because it would make life too difficult for the child. She's now married to a man.
"I bet you're the kind who peeks into your neighbors' windows at night."
And how else, praytell, are we supposed to know whether or not they're lesbians? I mean, they may just be roommates who are saving on the rent and helping each other raise the kids. With the many gay people who don't go around marching in parades, etc., we might never even know they were gay unless we (yuck!) got to know them well enough to have a conversation in which they made reference to their relationship, or (much more sensibly, of course) peeked in their windows at night to verify our suspicions. Geez! How else are we supposed to know who to protect our children from?
does that include child molestation? spousal abuse?
You cleverly make this statement, trying to pigeonhole any person who objects to it as 'saying we deserved it'.
I'll give you an "A" for effort, but a failing grade for substance. Saying that we allowed our enemies to perceive us as weak is quite different than saying we deserved it.....and you know it.
Post 92 was intended for your consumption.
AMEN TO THAT!!!
Now that is simply an excellent post! It is all able the child and what the child will face in life - it's getting more and more difficult to just get through the life experience without having your mother deciding that you will be born without a Dad. That fact will generally force you to make decisions that may not be the best course - it creates a generational environment for bad choices.
I ended up in a orphanage and even to this day I feel impacted in a negative way by that experience.
does that include child molestation? spousal abuse?
Making bombs? Running a meth lab? Plotting the overthrow of the gov't? Using the descriptions of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball?
I don't know anyone who would argue your point, when you slice it that thin. I certainly wouldn't argue against your comment above.
Didn't really answer my question but I'll give you points for cleverness.
Does that include mass murder, group suicides, beastiality, building dirty bombs, watching seaon 7 of Seinfeld on DVD?
Don't be ridiculous, having a baby out of wedlock is hardly illegal. It happens all the time. It may not be the best situation, but it is not any of your business.
Somehow, I don't think that you are really serious about this issue, anyway.
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