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 are saying is, because some heterosexuals fail, there should be no standards at all, and no one should be allowed to tell the politically incorrect truth that gays as a statistical group do not produce as high a percentage of well-adjusted children. You are ignoring the natural rights and needs of the defenseless child in favor of indulging the desires of the gay adults.
Because it serves an illustrative point.
The head of the Evangelicals in this country lived a lie, and taught his followers all kinds of stuff that he personally did not live, regarding homosexuality.
Now, if posters here can hurl all kinds of nonsense and generalizations about gay couples, then, I can hurl all kinds of nonsense and generalizations about evangelicals. Of course I am using this as an example of reductio ad absurdium to point out the flaws in the arguments of those that think that all gay parents are some kind of monsters.
Sorry you didn't catch it.
Yes, they do. And men take off....
What about all of those boys who were raised by men, in BOYS' TOWN, or in other orphanages, raised by only women?
My guess is that Mary Cheney and her partner will make much better parents than Britney Spears and her soon to be ex husband. It's not just about having a man and a woman around to call mom and dad, but it's also about the quality of the parent the kids get. And I speak as someone who, for many years, was raised by her grandmother.
Don't go trying to bring logic into a topic like this. Some folks hate gays, its their right. A generation ago some folks hated minorities.
Like I said, change comes slowly, sadly, one funeral at a time.
And you're singling out men because...?
Marie, bless your heart, it is true that a child without a father is a tragedy. I know. My father was killed in an industrial accident when I was just shy of 5.
Here's how it affected me.
I own my own business and have employed more than 125 people over the last 20 years.
I have three children, a daughter who is a specialist in oncology nursing, and a leader in BSF (Bible Study Fellowship); a son who is a highschool teacher and fishing guide; and another son who is an electrical engineer. Both sons lead worship in their respective churches.
I have 8 grandchildren: a grandson who is a graduate in communications and martial arts boxer, writer and teacher, with a wife working on her PhD, with two daughters of their own; a granddaugher who is a sophomore at a renowned Christian school, who is aiming for a careeer in motion pictures; a grandson who is studying Engineering at one of the top schools in the country (valedictorian in his class, last year); a granddaughter who will graduate valedictorian in her class this spring and a starter on her state championship basketball team; her sister, another granddaughter, also a starter on that same championship team, who will probably get a basketball scholarship when she graduates, a junior in High School; and four other grandkids who have yet to establish where they will land.
The point is their grandfather had no father, their great grand mother came from a broken home and their parents had no real father in their life.
Mary Cheney, although a lesbian with a lesbian partner has more going for her child than my children and grandchildren...a fabulous grandfather and grandmother.
I think the child will be OK
America was a far better place when the perverts were in the closet, or at least lived in isolated areas like New York's Greenwich Village away from most decent people. Vice and immorality have always existed, but only because of the effects of the sexual revolution and the New Left is what has been condemned by convention and social norms lauded as an "alternative lifestyle".
You have no idea how hard it is. Ask someone who has done it -- especially if the father decides to behave capriciously with support, visitation or custody. It can be hell on earth. Buckle your seat belt. There's a lot more to it than pep talks.
It is preferable that children have a mother and a father - and beyond that it is hoped that children have loving and decent mothers and fathers. Unfortunately , reality does not mirror the ideal. I believe that the divorce rate among heterosexuals is close to 50%. That is a real problem for those who believe that children *need* a mother and father. And then there are the fathers who are so bad that the children would be better off without them.
But beyond that - we are a free country and people who, imo, probably shouldn't have children - do. And they are free to do it - including Mary Cheney. My guess is that Mary Cheney's kid will turn out just fine...as is my sister's kid who is being raised by a single mom.
*Just remember they can vote in an illness like "conservative personality disorder" just as easily..*
That is a stretch
What's your source on this?
America will be a far better place when intolerant close minded folks that hide behind the bible to spew hate are gone.
Its really none of your business.
Or, maybe you, being such a great conservative would like to have the government legislate their personal lives and how they raise kids?
LOL
By God, there may be hope yet.
"The "some of my best friends are gay" defense for radically changing the lives of children is vacuous at best and evil in its lazy narcissism. Children need a mother and a father."
Bravo, best economy-of-words post yet on the traditional family side.
When is comes to Mary C's case. If she asked me for my opinion on her pregnancy, I would say ....
It is great you are having a baby and there is nothing better than babies (I'm not quite such a jerk that I would condemn an already pregnant woman). But Mary C. you are young yet and don't become too parochial in your viewpoints. There is so much to learn in this world. Learn and grow all you can and seek to find out the importance of God in everyone's life and the importance of even us weak mortal men in the life of a child.
Decent people like Ted Haggard, and Paul Crouch?
That's always such a cute argument - "the sky is falling if I don't get my way". Of course you are free to believe whatever you want - but our country and society are still quite healthy and will survive. I suspect that scares the far right and the far left more than just about anything :-)
You are totally, completely ignorant of our nation's history. Wishing will not make it the way you believe it was. The states, as was their right, had established churches, with compulsory attendance in many cases. Moral laws were passed and recognized because the population was 99% Christian.
LOL, do you have a crush on Ted or something, or is he the only heterosexual you know?
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