Posted on 12/08/2006 8:31:16 PM PST by rakovskii
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.
Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a culturally conservative think tank for Concerned Women for America, is a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.
What you and many of the other "ho-hum" FReepers on this thread don't seem to realize is that once the poster-lesbians like the couple you cite above are used as the model for legalizing gay parenting, you will have the bar-crawling, mixed-up, self-loathing gays who are gay-because-they-were-sexually-abused-as-children adopting children, because it will have been legalized by lawyers pointing to the "brilliant" couples.
Maybe you missed the ground-breaking study (by a liberal social scientist, no less) announced last week, that conservatives, specifically religious conservatives, BY FAR are the most generous doners to all forms of charity, religous or secular. I'm sure the same holds true for adoptions.
Actually, I am an Irish dual citizen.
Scots beat up my ancestors!
Donating is one thing, how many kids have you adopted?
What is the current divorce rate among heterosexuals?
Oh, and heteros don't leave kids at home and go to the bar?
Britney Spears
Your comments have betrayed you. You can't put the toothe-paste back in the tube.
You have made glowing remarks about homosexuals who adopt and have cast dispersions on heterosexuals based on some grudge you have with the individual you mentioned.
While I do not think homosexual families should be bothered, I still find that to be a very disgusting lifestyle, especially when it involes innocent children.
You're free to voice support for this all you like, but I'm not going to agree with you and I'm going to say so.
It doesn't matter. Just because one group of people makes errors, it doesn't excuse compounding the problem by opening up child rearing to homosexuals.
OK, what about a complete hypocrite like Ted Haggard?
He held himself out to be a beacon of what every evangelical should be.
But, he is a fraud.
Guess what? Lots of straight parents are lousy drunken child beating piles of garbage. You have bad people in the world, no matter what their sexual persuasion.
One has a right to a mother and a father. Only queers disagree.
I believe turkey basters have certain constitional rights.
Oh gee, and do you think that bar-crawling, mixed-up, self-loathing heterosexuals will be having children for all the wrong reasons and raising mixed-up, dysfunctional children?
Oh please, everyone knows those types of situations don't exist. Homosexuals set high standards... /s
No, I have made glowing remarks about the lesbian couple that I KNOW. Are there bad parents that are gay? Sure, just as there are bad hetero parents.
You can think all you want about disgusting lifestyles, that is your choice. But its none of your damn business to butt into other's affairs, is it?
These two guys are religious, unlike me. The think Christ died for our sins and rose, in a cerebral Episcopalean kind of way. They tried for two yeas to go the surrogate mother route, and the zygote or whateever it is called did not take, so they went the adoption route, and took the class, and got the opportunity and the rest is history. They said they think it was just meant to be, a miracle, that the train of odd events ended up with them being the lukiest guys on the planet, as it were. The one whom I have known for about 20 years, is the happiest I have ever seen him to be. He has a purpose. His life has meaning. As I said, they are wonderful parents. The kids are doing great, and the older one is now pulling down top grades in school.
The foley episode shows clearly that Republicans should stop being so accomodative of gay and lesbian interests and in the process exposing themselves to the political backlash.
The gay perverts played a big role in the election loss, Republicans should simply stop sympathising with gay/lesbian causes and take a strong moral stand against them and their supporters.
You're a liar.
While your statement is true, the statistics are - and will remain - a lower number of screw-ups among the children who grow up with their own married mom and dad than for any other family formation. That is the point here. There are some things it is still too important to allow just anyone to do it, like being a surgeon or a dentist or a married mother and father. They are responsible for raising the next generation of citizens.
Your "arguments" align with the left's -- if people on the right aren't absolutely perfect at marriage/parenting, then absolutely everyone else gets a shot, because "morality is whatever makes you feel good about yourself", regardless of the consequences to others -- in this case, to innocent children who will always, always be in an extreme minority and be "different" in ways no amount of legislation can dislodge.
What is YOUR statistical evidence if you want to go there. I have never seen any negative statistical evidence. Have you?
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