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.
75% of the time, it's the guy who cuts out.
Actually, 80% of divorces are initiated by women.
That's like saying we have a list of horrible ways for you to grow up, but hey, at least some aren't as bad as others!
If I asked people here a year ago about Haggard, I really doubt that anyone would condemn him.
I doubt anyone here would have heard of him.
Sometimes it's really really difficult being a conservative.
I am not willing to dismiss the arrangement outright if there are cases where the situation produces children than a traditional situation. And, what are these standards that you speak of? If the gay people are capable of doing a better job than the straight that's the only standard that matters. Perhaps we should also look at black people and their aggregate stats on parenting. Maybe we should outlaw them from procreating due to their rates of illegitimacy and all the problems that go with that? Maybe we can find some other groups to ban from having kids because they don't meet someone else's standard?
Where does it begin or end?
You missed the point.
The boy just never adjusted to his mother's lifestyle, and she was a family counselor!
What does it take to become an expert these days? This woman is divorced, a gay activist and a family counselor? You'd be better off consulting a magic 8 ball for advice.
If you want to imply that gay couples are commie marxists, its gonna take more than some quotes and bolding.
Of course they're not all commies.
DUH!!!!!!!! No when he attacked 'Murphy Brown' for having a baby without a husband.
Whatever way it goes, the women end up raising the kids.
For such an odious burden, they sure fight hard to make it happen.
This reminds me of an incident that I actually eyewitnessed once at my nephew's birthday party, held at the beach. There was a lesbian couple with a boy, and the more masculine of the two was obviously the birth mother (they looked alike) however she treated him abominably, and her partner looked just wretched and embarassed.
We asked them if he could join our party and have some cake, and the "dad/mom" said no. It was obvious that she hated her son or maybe the fact he was male, I don't know. She just took it out on him every chance she got. I just remember thinking, what an abuser. I felt so horrible for the kid and for the woman's partner who was apparently helpless to do anything about it.
I posted this article on 12-07-06 here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1749871/posts
Who knows why Mods do some things some times, but they quickly dumped this to the Smoky Backroom. It still got over 450 replies.
The one thing that shocked me was the pro-gay FReepers that came out of nowhere supporting Mary Cheney.
I wondered several times on several posts if I was posting on Free Republic or Democratic Underground. I was most disappointed on just how many pro-gay comments there were such as "Mary's lifestyle does not affect me".
Anyway I'm glad to see this dplicate thread posted. And I must say how surprized I am to see over 600 replies - most done in the middle of the night.
To all you morons who say this (lesbian relationship producing a fatherless child) does not affect you; look at the 1,100 plus replies in both threads, Whether you think Mary is wrong or right, you are affected. And we must admit America is a poorer country because of Mary Cheney and others like her.
I agree.
lj, I wanted to thank you so much for the sane comments you were making on the thread I posted here on this same topic: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1749871/posts
I was getting pretty disgusted at all the pro-gay FReepers stating they had no problem with Mary Cheney's actions and that her having a lesbian love child was none of their concern.
Absolutely. As a society we endorse child abuse in order to make ourselves **feel** better. Children NEED a woman and a man in the house raising them. Without the opposite sex (male or female) they are denied a VERY important role model. Even if the other woman tries to grunt like a man she can't be a man.
Really? The Framers envisioned morality being legislated at the national level? Marriage laws? Church choices? At the national level? I suggest you go back and reread your copy of the Federalist Papers as well as the Constitution.
The states, as was their right, had established churches, with compulsory attendance in many cases.
Indeed and in many cases those state churches did exist after the Constitution was signed. No problem there
Moral laws were passed and recognized because the population was 99% Christian.
But they weren't passed at the national level because they were the business of the states under the 10th Amendment. My precise point. I am quite versed in the history of this nation of states so again I will state that the idea of legislating morality at the national level would be an affront to the Framers' vision
Very reveling thread.
The Word, not the sword, is the tool the evangelist or witness must use. If I am not mistaken, historic Catholic teaching has condemned sex outside of matrimony. If you claim the name of Catholic, how can you then reject the authoritative teaching of your church, supported by Scripture and the writings of the church fathers and doctors? If you can find where the Magisterium of Catholicism has commended lesbianism and immoral relationships, please inform the Catholic ping list on FR.
My guess is, he wouldn't come down on the libertarian side of this argument because he didn't feel "freedom" was a license to do whatever you felt like doing just because you felt like doing it. Utilitarianism was not his strong suit. Moral behavior and honorable conduct was.
"Freedom" can often mean the ability to do certain behaviors which in the long run are destructive to a functioning and moral society. I suppose that is the price we pay for living in a free society.
But that doesn't mean the long term consequences of unbridled libertarianism aren't pernicious - either individually or as a society. Nor does it mean any behavior one can manage to do and get away with is "right" or even good. Just because it is "right" in one's own eyes for whatever personally justified reason doesn't win it a Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval. if there are no standards other than "if it feels good, do it", we are in long term trouble. That's the old Hippie standard, and it isn't a good one either for this country nor in the long run for those who hold it.
In 1789 this country marched to a different drummer, and that drummer wasn't the exhaultation of "self" over everything else. Have we "improved" with our new outlook, or are we as a society headed in the "wrong" direction?
At no time did I say or imply that the Framers passed laws on the national level controlling marriage or church attendance. Take your outrage elsewhere. The only reason such a law has been proposed today is because the Federal oligarchy is ever-ready to roll over any state-passed laws such as DOMA.
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