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.
Well said!!!
Who in the world is saying that Haggard isn't a hypocrite?
No, you over generalize. In this case what gay parents do is none of my business, they are not hurting anyone, not interfering with the rights of others, plain and simple.
Bringing in beastiality is not germane to the argument, is it? That is a faulty way of arguing and not worthy of discussion (btw, check the records, lots of non gays are guilty of this crime)
Your statement on adopting and abusing makes no sense, unless you meant it as satire, and if you did, it still does not address any point I made.
As for your interest in what I would be willing to tolerate, its really none of your business is it? It speaks volumes of you though, you really seem to want to be in charge of how others think don't you?
You need to mind your own business, you come across as a busybody. I thought that a basic tenet of conservatism was to be an individual and to be left alone.
Your posts on this thread have been outstanding.
It would appear that besides being abjectly lacking in any knowledge and/or understanding of history and politics, many here also don't know any biology.
What is a cliche about it?
I don't see a huge push by anti gay religious leaders to implore that their followers go out and adopt up all the available kids out there so that the evil gays don't get to them.
Do you?
Some may have called the freeing of slaves *trendy* and opposed it right to the end. Others may have called giving women the *vote* trendy. It doesn't matter - change is coming and not just on this issue. And some want to retreat into the past. They are free to make that choice. Probably they will not want to live in New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, Massachusetts etc
My sentiments exactly!
"Please email Martha Stewart. You guys would get along great."
Alrightythen. This probably is just a deadly combination of my poor posting skills and the lateness of the hour, but I am clearly doing an dreadful job of communicating, as well as going down in flames on understanding as well... a good a reason as any to resume lurk mode : /
Again, a weak argument, Fatty Arbuckle was guilty of a crime, how is that relevant to this argument? We aren't talking about criminals or criminal acts are we?
Focus.
(BTW, during that time, there were also several segregation laws in the South, was that OK too?)
No, wrong, it doesn't affect me in the least. And you know, I'm freakin tired of anytime somebody out there makes some kinda choice, be it Carter or the Dixie Chicks or Gengis Khan it all the sudden being thrust on me.
I can't change them one dam bit, and wouldn't if I could, it's called free will.
And they can't change me.
So there!!!
Some of those 'others' post on FR.
I am so sick of this lefty canard. Next time your house is on fire, Central Scrutiniser, you may not call the fire department unless you have a spouse, son or daughter serving as a firefighter. And next time someone breaks into your home, you may not call the police unless you have a spouse, son or daughter on the police force.
How old are you and how many children do YOU have?
I agree.
I am a norge story. :)
"...many here also don't know any biology."
The problem is that many don't know how to read. We all know Mary should have felt her clock ticking. But that is in the past. Now she has a baby and the advice concerned the future.
Of course another topic is whether hearing the clock is a good reason for going out to tackle some sperm without first establishing a better home environment.
I bring up Haggard as a device to point out a locical fallacy.
If posters can condemn all gay parents as some sort of evil monster, then I can, using the same fallacious logic, condemn all evangelicals as closeted hypocrital homosexual anti family abusers like Haggard.
Its not true of course, but its a logical device called Reductio ad adsurbium. Where to prove that an argument is adsurb and invalid, you introduce a similar, audacious argument.
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