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.
Like a mental institution.
The birthright of every person on earth is having a mother and father. Anything less is a crime.
Yes, they should. I know a single woman who adopted a child and with the help of a loving, extended family did a beautiful job of raising her. I know gays who were married and had children and "learned" late in life they were gay and left.
As long as people are loving and caring parents it's no one's business.
It's more important for the kids to be raised by adults who love them; who give a damn about them.....the sexual orientation of those raising the kids is secondary IMHO.
In far too many instances hetero couples have destroyed the lives of these kids, not to mentioned destroyed themselves. Gay couple who truly care about the future of their kids are worth their weight in gold in comparison with the kids whose fathers are dead from gunshot wounds, uncles who are drunk on a gallon of malt liquor and urinating on their lawns in front of their nephews ad nieces or a grandfather forced into fatherhood who falls asleep in his own puke in front of his 8th granddaughter who was fathered by the 8th different guy who slept with the daughter.
Yes folks...hetero households are that screwed up in too many cases...I've seen it.
Can two loving parents of the same sex be worse? No.
I'll be interested to see what happens to Mary's life after childbirth. Parenting seems to wake you up to reality quicker than anything.
You are bringing a baby into a home parented by two people both of whom are suffering from a mental disorder. You call that secure?
Yeah, but you know, I have a friend, she and her partner adopted two girls who were orphans in El Salvador. She was a very very powerful person in DC, and worked very closely with some of the most conservative leaders in our nation. They had no problem with it.
She and her partner are brilliant, and delightful people who are raising their daughters in a very loving and traditional environment. The kids go to the best schools and have as good a life as possible in this country.
How are they a threat to you? And if it is, you have some serious character issues that you need to address.
Judging by your fear and paranoia, I'd say that you raised kids in a home with a parent with a mental disorder. Live and let live, it ain't your business.
You folks are in a losing battle...
A lot of us work with gay couples with children. You know what? They are good moms and dads.
Is the ideal situation - a female mom and a male dad the best? - of course.
Is a mom - mom or dad - dad hideous? No.
Calm down, all of you!
We just had a guy arrested for planning to blow up a shopping mall on Dec. 22.
THAT's the kind of thing we should be worried about.
Just my 2-cents.
The flaw in your argument is that there is no such thing. Gay relationships are based on a severe behavioral disorder. As such it is unfair to bring a child into a household with that kind of instability and confusion.
Such a poor child to be born to such a selfish woman. A society without fathers will never prosper.
It looks like it is very hard for some people to understand that they are NOT going to get to control other people's choices. The far left wants to control us - and so does the far right.
Good song.
Actually written by Steve "City of New Orleans" Goodman.
es, they should. I know a single woman who adopted a child and with the help of a loving, extended family did a beautiful job of raising her. I know gays who were married and had children and "learned" late in life they were gay and left.
As long as people are loving and caring parents it's no one's business.
I know someone who was so drunk he couldn't walk but he sucessfully drove himself home.
Who said gay was a behavioral disorder?
In an aside, he specifically cited the fictional title character in the television program Murphy Brown as an example of how popular culture contributes to this "poverty of values", saying: "it doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman—mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'"
Ms Cheney is not a teenager without a future.
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