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.
God bless you, Norge! As a straight, conservative female, I thank you for your post! You are an inspiration!
Weak argument Doughty.
Personal attack.
You are better than that, at least you used to be.
Care to argue the topic and not the poster?
You already know the answer to that.
Yes, and some still hate women :-) - Blacks got the vote before women did. Some people *hate* anyone that is different than them.
It is very difficult for those frightened by impending change and trying against all odds to retreat into the past - to deal with things that they cannot understand and cannot control.
I guess I should have given more detail. My 33 year old son-in-law died last month of a heart attack.
"Pep talk" and prayer are about all I have to offer my daughter and grand children in the way of emotional support, we live about 300 miles apart.
I have been to visit with them twice since the funeral and am going again tomorrow for a couple of days.
The comparision is rather lame, and rather proves the opposite of your point, which is Haggard and Foley are both homos who betrayed their respective organisations which rather enforces the views that these organisations should weed out gays/lesbians from their ranks.
I have not made any nonsensical attacks on Gay couples, but rather just pointing that Republicans should stop being so inclusive of homosexual issues and take a more traditional stand on it which is reinforced by the big margins in which gay marriage has been banned in most parts of America by voters in referendums.
I thought it was funny. Of course, in court, it would be struck as irrelevant. But irrelevancies have relevance on public chat forums, just because they do. Sometimes they lead to something, sometimes they don't, sometimes they make us laugh, and sometimes they annoy, and sometimes they kill thread. And sometimes they are akin to a sound in the forest that no one hears. And so it goes.
Individual freedom stops when an individual overpowers another individual who is dependant upon that individual for care, protection and appropriate values. You are championing the whims of a gay person to use technology to produce a child that will justify his or her lifestyle. That is exploitation, not rights nor freedom.
I have observed over time that the cuteness of comments generally increases as the inability to refute them nears absolute.
You mention the far left and far right ends of the spectrum. Where do you think the support for homosexuality comes falls on that spectrum? And where do you think approval of adoping young children into such homes rests on that spectrum?
Do you really think that falls into the middle ground? Frankly it's about as leftist an idea as there could be. And so it's rather interesting that you would make the comment you did.
Haggard is one man in one church in the fastest growing (by far) segment of Christianity today. His episode was also just as much a political ploy (the perverted hooker said as much) brought up just before elections, as it was a big story.
The MSM made a big deal that he was some major evangelical figure (and he did pastor a mega-church, and led a large evangelical association). However, as an evangelical whose aware of the (real) big names, I had never heard of him before, and neither had various other pastors and seminarians whom I am in contact with.
Another obvious thing that contradicts todays "conventional" pop-wisdom: If Haggard was such a permanent never-can-change homosexual (the only kind there is, we are told) how was he ever up for having kids??? (sorry, bad pun)
Classic Christianity teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin (and everyone has an "orientation" inborn to sin, in different ways) but that even that sin can be turned-away from, and indeed cleansed by the Holy Spirit. A sinful orientation can change--as testified by millions of Christians around the globe, throughout the centuries. Jesus saves, AND changes people for the good.
Ministers secretly backsliding sexually is very old (and sad) news--as Christians all still struggle (and often fail) with sin. Sinning homosexually seems all the more shocking though, of course, especially given the current struggle over "gay rights." For every Haggard though, there are likely dozens of heterosexual affairs by ministers....(and laity alike): Christians are still sinners too after all.
Honestly though, I think the Haggard affair got so much press because it helped sabbotage Republicans, and on paper, he was a national leader, so the MSM had a field day...(but really not much more than paper...there are many many evangelical leaders more noteworthy than Haggard ever was).
And one imagines that some of your best friends are blacks and Jews, too. Aren't you special?
I'm a history buff; have been all of my life. There is a fantastic set of books about the history of everyday life, through the beginning of recorded time, through almost the present, that I highly recommend and will give you the titles and authors, if you wish.
A lot of what I know about recent history, is through family stories and my curiosity about what life was like for my maternal great great grandmother, great grandmother, grandmother, and mother. As a child, I used to ask my great grandmother, grandmother, and mother to tell me all about their lives before I knew them. I was enthralled by their stories and have since read my eyes out about the times that they all lived through.
Weak arguement? You've mentioned that guy over and over again. Do you or do you not know other heterosexuals? I think that's a valid question. So far you've seemed to try to state that this guy is the model heterosexual. Is that truly what you think? If not, why are you mentioning him over and over as if he's what heterosexual are all about?
It really is fascinating. So many things that used to be condemned are now accepted and in some cases, celebrated. Out of wedlock birth, divorce, living together outside of marriage, unmarried sex, homosexuals and their lifestyle...
I wonder what's next? NAMBLA? Polygamy?
But what do I know? I've been married to the same man for 36 years. I'm a Christian. A Catholic. Which I think makes me a total misfit by todays standards. Oh well....
So women never leave right? Wow!
Gee, sorry that I have friends that walk the talk.
But you didn't exactly offer an argument to me, just a lame personal attack.
"...It is very difficult for those frightened by impending change and trying against all odds to retreat into the past - to deal with things that they cannot understand and cannot control."
That is the same argument we had to face when we conservatives were trying to stem the rising tide of communism. Thank God some people (Ronald Reagan, Larry McDonald, William F. Buckley, Alexander Solzhenitsyn et al) have more principles than found in "MegaTrends".
I should have phrased it differently....
75% of the time, it's the guy who cuts out.
No, Haggard was the LEADER, not just one man. He dictated what evangelicals should do and how they should lead their life.
And he lived a lie, a hypocrital lie.
Same goes for Paul Crouch.
And he ruined the life of his wife and kids by trying to pretend he was something he was not, real damage to good people, how sad.
LOL......you know me, I love to post factual history; even though I know that some people will ignore it. :-)
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