Posted on 12/08/2006 8:31:16 PM PST by rakovskii
Mary Cheneys 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 dont 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 childs 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 dont have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. Theyve 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 Cheneys 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 fathers influence.
Marys pregnancy is an in-your-face action countering the Bush Administrations 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 womens concerns.
She wasn't offended by my opinion. In fact, she had solicited it. And yes, we're still friends.
I think the situation with Mary Cheney is different in this respect: she is apparently a willing cause celebre.
Bull F'in Shi!
well, the flip side is this - I know a couple of single women who also never married (for various reasons) - they had abortions. they are now past the child bearing years, and all alone. they would have been better off either having those babies, or when they realized their body clock was timing out - having a baby out of wedlock.
not everyone can achieve the perfect life with a spouse and 2.2 children and a house in the suburbs. for many women, having a child in this manner isn't a bad thing.
So God bless all the baby-having women.
But I'm trying to make a different point. My point, which I must have expressed badly, is that there are new trends developing which are both intentional and unwholesome. Designing a family so that a father is deliberately cut out of the picture forever is not designing a family with the child's needs paramount.
By way of analogy: kids are born every day missing an arm or a leg from natural causes, and God bless those kids: we'll do what we can to help, to heal, to cobble-together, to compensate, because a legless life is damn-sure better than no life at all. But to intentionally set things up so a baby won't have legs: that's wrong
And to intentionally design things, to set things up so a baby won't have a father? Same category. But I guess what powerful adults want is going to trump what children need. They don't get a vote.
You sound like someone trying to be just, upright, and thoughtful. And you rightly point to God's perfection (and our imperfection) in how we approach these things.
So let's pray for the well-being of Mary Cheney and her baby. Keep trying to tell the truth as you see it. That's all I tcan think to say right now. Good night.
More Driveby media hits.
The point is I don't like giving the government the power to take away the rights of an entire class of people because I don't like what individual members do.
If we declaring entire groups of people unfit to adopt, the next things they go after will be things like "gun in the home," whatever they deem "racist" and "homophobia."
You do realize we have things like speech codes, sensitivity re-education and hate crimes laws because liberals took the conservative mantra of "legislating morality" and ran with it?
"You better hope you're right in your thinking that God is on your side."
The good thing about the revealed Word(aka Bible) is that you don't have to 'hope' that you are right. You just read the Bible and walk accordingly. If you base your life on feelings or opinions of man, then you are on shaky ground indeed.
Congrats to which couple? The mother and mother did not create a child.
Forget the arguments regarding the parents. The child and society pay the price for this selfish act.
The article's premis is correct.
So what do psychiatrists have to do with that?
Indeed - without benefit of husband. No husband for her, no father for the child. In other words, not God's way.
I'm just not getting how you are connecting the two.
Hopefully, now you do. If not, maybe it would help clarify my position if you read the book of Genesis.
My point is that if you declare all homosexuals unfit to be parents because homosexuality is a mental disorder, any judge or lawmaker can go find a psychiatrist who will declare you to be suffering from "homophobia" and take away your rights.
And I can GUARANTEE you if you issue a blanket declaration that an entire class of people unfit to adopt because you feel their lifestyle will harm a kid, they will take that and go right after "a gun in the home," people who homeschool and devout Christians.
The problem with evangelicals is after all their (correct) complaining that government is immoral, politicans are immoral and society doesn't share their views, they immediately promote the idea of giving government and politicans, who bend to society, the power and authority to enforce moral views.
How do you think we end up with things like hate crimes laws, speech codes and "sensitivity training?" That's just liberals taking the power and initiative conservatives give them and legislating their own morality.
Yes, you can find a psychiatrist that will proclaim anything to be a disorder.
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