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.
Have you no knowledge of female reproduction biology?
Bill! Once again, we agree.
Mark it down.
LOL
Hey, Merry Christmas to you as well. Thanks.
date = data.
I don't agree with you, and I am having a very good life. But I DO thank you for your kind words.
You're right. 37 is a time when a woman's body begins to decline severely n terms of fertility.
And I thought the prigs only came out in the day! Boy was I wrong............LOL.
I'm glad I had a few glasses of wine tonight, or this thread would be UNBEARABLE.
Merry Christmas.
Condescension is not "hope."
Please email Martha Stewart. You guys would get along great.
Well there was some point - counterpoint on this thread. It was fun, at least for me.
I'll just bet.........LOL.
Poor Mary. The whacks on both sides just will not leave her alone.
Some things never change!
So, its your business to legislate how other people handle their personal relationships?
Pray tell, how will you go about doing so?
Is it a tenet of conservativism to pry into people's personal lives?
So what if other gays adopt? Each case is handled by trained professionals. Are you as worried that poor hetero parents may also adopt?
Regarding open orgies, etc, so what? Non gay people have swingers clubs where they swap mates, and they don't hurt anyone, its their lives, and you know nothing about it.
You gotta stop feeling that you have to be the home owner association over other people's lives, it really is none of your business.
"..Have you no knowledge of female reproduction biology?"
I was saying young as in the ability to LEARN. The child is already a done deal. The child's upbringing is off in the future which may see Mary become less predictable and less parochial.
Not all that long ago, 37 was thought to be just about middle aged and at 21, people were supposed to be adults and act like adults. Sadly, age has now become a figure that can be pushed and pulled and mauled, with 30 year old believing that they should be allowed to act and think and be thought of as 15 year olds, but with adult privileges and NO responsibility. That is the height of madness!
By 37 a woman is reaching a point of declining viable egg production; especially if she has never had a child.
Yes, people live longer than they used to, but no matter how "good" a shape one is in, a mother who is pushing 40, is no spring chicken.
Well, sometimes it's the SOS for some of us, but it seems like more and more people are speaking up for sanity.
And, if they refuse, what then? I am Catholic, I have no desire to listen to evangelicals tell me how to worship, that is my right, isn't it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.