January 2002
Posted January 25, 2002
Cathy Young - Does divorce really create the problem child? January 23, 2002 -
Fathers' rights advocates look at the egregious treatment of men in family court and conclude the worst about divorce. But is the problem with divorce, or the family court system? According to a new book by E. Mavis Hetherington, many problem children of divorce already had problems:
"If divorce doubles the risk that a child will become a seriously troubled adult, that is no trifling matter. But cause and effect aren't easy to sort out. What would the results be if we compared children of divorced parents with children whose parents stay in a bad marriage? There is evidence that often, the problems experienced by these children actually predate divorce."
Moreover, Ohio State University philosophy professor Don Hubin points out the harm divorce does to some children may be the result of how our courts treat divorced fathers rather than the divorce itself:
"Like most divorced men, Hubin believes that we would go a long way toward mitigating the negative effects of divorce if the culture and the courts were more supportive of divorced fathers' efforts to stay involved in their children's lives. One of the Hetherington's more disturbing findings is that after divorce, men and boys fare markedly worse than women and girls."
Not surprisingly, the predominant view is that this is the fault of divorced fathers.
"But all too often, it's outdated social policies that make it impossible for them to be effective fathers by treating the mother as the only real parent. Changing these policies is a far more realistic goal than eliminating divorce."
- Boston Globe.
Posted January 16, 2002
Jennifer Roback Morse - Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work: December 2001 -
In 1982 I joined the Libertarian Party. Their principles made sense. In many ways, they still do. But the ethics of individual responsibility for self fail to provide optimum survival solutions to problems facing nations, communities and, in the context of sex, families:
"The free society needs the family because the family does an important job that no other institution can do. The family transforms helpless little babies from self-centered bundles of impulses, desires, and emotions into adult people capable of social behavior. The family teaches the child to trust, to cooperate, and to restrain himself."
There is little room for rational discourse between parent and child, let alone with a baby. Reason and the reasonable may be what's needed in politics and the law, but with children love must rule. Unfortunately, much of the modern view is predicated on the assumption these stand in opposition:
"Too much of our public discourse has proceeded as if these two great realities of the human condition, reason and love, were in conflict with one another."
Consequently, what our society increasingly lacks is love in its various guises (respect, affection, adoration), a lack which we attempt to mitigate in materialistic ways, by over eating, or watching television, or obsessively seeking sexual intimacy, or through drugs, drink, hypnotic music, and so on.
"The consequences of going off the deep end into either the direction of love or reason and ignoring the other can be grim indeed."
In society, as in the family, balance is paramount:
"What form of society is best for us to seek? A society in which people can work, be productive, and enjoy material prosperity, and at the same time a society in which people can relax into the comfort of people who love them, the comforts of home."
- Independent Women's Forum.
Posted January 5, 2002
Cathy Young - Is the west worth saving? January 2002 -
The new rage women hate western culture in general, and American culture in particular:
According to Prof. Sunera Thobani of the University of British Columbia,"There will be no emancipation for women anywhere...until the Western domination of this planet is ended."
Despite this, they find themselves in the awkward position of supporting the American war against terror:
"(Sharon Lerner) also sneers that with all this talk of the Muslim world's oppressed women, "many Americans are feeling somewhat smug about our heroic, enlightened men," yet "the power structure [in the U.S.] remains overwhelmingly male."
What anti-male ideologues such as Lerner don't get is that women's liberation is not a reaction against western culture, but a product of it:
"However much we would like to regard women's liberation as a natural right, it is the product and achievement of a complex, advanced civilization. Recent events remind us that this civilization is fragile, and that its enemies are hostile to freedom for anyone -- but especially women. Feminists, perhaps more than anyone else, should realize that the West is worth defending."
- Reason.
|
