Promiscuity, divorce, separation gripping Britons

Promiscuity, divorce, separation gripping Britons -New York Daily News

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, writing in a Bible Society pamphlet about the origins of the word jubilee, said Britain was now an "enormously different" society compared to 1952, the year of the Queen's accession to the throne.

Stating that the country is in "so many ways" a better place to live, he also said inequality had grown and material progress had been at the expense of communal life with relationships within families, communities and society "more strained, more fragile" and more broken than people cared to recognise.

"Literally millions of children grow up without knowing a stable, loving, secure family life - and that is not to count the hundreds of thousands more who don't even make it out of the womb each year," he said.

Nothing says "Marry Me" like jazz hands

The Frisky - Hitched: Your Elaborately Planned Public Marriage Proposal Is Awkward For Everyone

No wonder why we lost sense and meaning to marriage, glad to see it being pointed out.

Agreement by Disagreeing With Your Disagreement

We have been making the rational case for preserving marriage on this blog for the better part of a decade now.  We have not needed to change our argument in that time.  On the other hand, we have also in that time dealt with numerous and constantly shifting arguments for why marriage should be neutered.  Each time an argument is refuted another argument is invented to take its place.

Too often we'll encounter a particularly peculiar sort of argument where a commenter will first link to someone else's argument claiming it is the end-all-be-all rational case for neutering marriage (First it was Rauch, then Goodridge, and most recently Olson), and then proceed to make a completely different case than the one they are linking to.  Rationally, if they really believed the argument to which they are linking that is the argument they would be making.  Since they are making a different argument we know they are either not rational, or they simply don't believe the case themselves.

There are only two reasons for one to point to someone else's argument but not make that argument oneself.  Both are irrational.

The "Anti-Gay" Slur

I've written about the "anti-gay" label before.  We've all encountered it.  Talk about the importance of marriage to society and you're labeled some kind of "homophobe."  It's a manipulation.  I covered all of that last time.  This time I'm going to address the reasoning, or in this case the lack of it, behind this approach.

The theory behind this kind of intimidation is itself irrational.  The thinking is that you won't want to be called names, so you'll stop talking about whatever it is the manipulator wants you to stop talking about.  This thinking is based on the premise that what someone else says about you actually reflects on you and not on the person actually saying it.  But how can it?  Anybody can say "anti-gay" to anybody, regardless of what that person actually thinks or does.  There's nothing stopping someone from calling someone else "anti-gay" just for using the term "anti-gay" to begin with.  I've even seen "gay" people called "anti-gay" in the marriage debate.

The fact of the matter is you, and not the person you are talking about, are in control of what you are saying.  Therefore, what you say can only really tell us something about you.  Are you reasoned?  Can you defend accusations or are you just name calling?

When someone starts throwing around terms like "anti-gay," what they are telling me is that they are at the very least idiots and at worst, dishonest and manipulative.

Not based on the Bible, but science.

Female choice key to evolutionary shift to modern family

The courts can claim it is unconsitutional to recognize the legal status of such a relationship, but as a species it holds importance and deserves some respect.

Dan Qualye was right.

I can't believe I said that.

It isn't that I'm judging single parents, it is the fact I know being a parent can wear you down. It isn't that we don't love our children, but patience is a virtue we are not born with patience as infants. And if children want to learn the virtue of patience, it has to be taught by example that we are patient with them.

Whenever I'm overwhelmed, I know their father with support will back me up. He isn't off with his own life, he is apart of our lives fully as my husband. Any single parent understands this, there is no back-up support. This is we are sympathetic to single parents, when the other parent has 'checked out'. It the parent who has checked out sees no benefit in being there full time, because of lost government subsidies. They become just a visitor, no longer a parent.

20 years later, it turns out Dan Quayle was right about Murphy Brown and unmarried moms -Isabel Sawhill

In later research, Ron Haskins and I learned that if individuals do just three things — finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children — their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent. Mitt Romney has cited this research on the campaign trail, but these issues transcend presidential politics. Stronger public support for single-parent families — such as subsidies or tax credits for child care, and the earned-income tax credit — is needed, but no government program is likely to reduce child poverty as much as bringing back marriage as the preferable way of raising children.

I hate being the bearer of what has to be said, I wish there can be a more attractive way of saying it. One way or the other, speaking on what is a necessity is strongly repelled and despised in my social circle. Exactly what is there to disagree with with? We all have a mother and a father. Why is such an understanding a mother and a father should raise their children together with love and cooperation? What is wrong with teaching and supporting what is right and just? I think it is worth the social stigmatization.

NPR "Fathers 'Need To Step Up' For Black Daughters"

Fathers 'Need To Step Up' For Black Daughters may 29, 2012

MARTIN: Janks, you talked about a lot of relationships, girls who never knew their fathers. There are young women whose fathers were in and out of their lives. Did you notice a difference in the stories that the girls told of what those different scenarios and what they meant?

MORTON: What I saw, it doesn't matter. The deserter, deceased, the disenfranchised, the whatever the circumstance, it doesn't matter. The trauma that these girls - these 1.8 million, 18 to 24-year-old black girls, 1.8 million - are carrying on their heart, it's not been given a voice. And what I found is that this arc, it goes through a woman's life. It just manifests itself in all these different ways that I think, that if we can get this generation, you know, an opportunity to purge themselves of this trauma, I think there are some greatness that can begin to happen in the relationship dynamic in blacks.

>

Did you read it? Trauma. Please keep using your voice, we're listening. When your father is married to your mother in a healthy relationship, this trauma doesn't exist.

Cape Cod lost infrastructure... children

Do I dare again to wonder why?

Prior to the Memorial Day weekend, a big tourist weekend for Cape Cod, someone googled 'dogging in Cape Cod' and found Opine from this 2008 post. Urban dictionary defines 'dogging'.

There are a lot of economic and topographical factors for the decrease of families on the Cape, but the decrease is staggering. A downward spiral of sorts... the only thing left will be the seasonal gay community and exploited immigrant workers with J-1 visas. Beach towns always have a seasonal population, but always these towns were more then beach towns.

From the Cape Cod Times May 19, 2012

Looking out to the future, based on projections from birth rates and preschool-age children, public school enrollment is expected to drop another 25 percent by the time today’s babies are in high school, Mr. Hilton said.
The declining school enrollment is connected to larger demographic trends on the Cape, where population growth has leveled off or declined over the past decade, more senior citizens have moved in, and young families have moved out, he said. The median age for much of the outer Cape, for example, is older than 52, compared to 39 for the entire state.

“If we don’t start changing the Cape’s demographic trends, we will not be able to encourage additional investment in educational resources/institutions/assets at K-12 or higher education, in order to make the Cape an Educational Destination. We believe that the local business community, local government entities, and local educational institutions need to come together to begin to collaboratively recruit working age families (with children) to come live on Cape Cod,” according to the draft concept paper.

My judgement isn't so much of the gay community, but rather my progressive suburban friends and families members throwing stones from their cul-de-sacs, who filled their newsfeeds of internet memes in support of gay marriage, and the constant reminders I'm on the wrong side of history. Would any of them move to the outer Cape Cod towns to raise a family or your grandchildren with cruising being a mainstay? Individuals go there for a reason, for the open sexual environment. If you can't cruise in P-town, where can you do it.

I don't think gay people are icky and I don't want to see anyone arrested. It is a free country, but get a room. Sex with strangers and with multiple partners is a high risk behavior, even with safe practices. Out of charity and love, I can not condone it.

Confused? So am I.

From Psych Central (2008)Fathering in America: What’s a Dad Supposed to Do?

Americans seem more confused than ever about the role of fathers in children’s lives. On the one hand, more and more fathers are absent for all or significant periods of time. According to the 2006 Census, 23 percent of children under 18 do not live with their biological father and the number is climbing.

I’ll leave it to the sociologists to explain the many and complicated variables of race, class, gender issues, social policy, employment issues, and governmental interventions that are at the root of the diverging trends and the pejorative TV scripts. It’s enough to note that there is a major rethinking of fathers’ roles and responsibilities going on within the context of lots of rethinking in America.

We may be reconsidering how family should be defined. We may be confused about gender roles. We may be struggling with knowing how to parent well in a complicated time. But in the midst of all this confusion, there is a growing consensus that what kids need, at least, is clear. Kids need their fathers as well as their mothers.

Be a role model of adult manhood. Both boys and girls need you as a role model for what it means to be adult and male. Make no mistake: The kids are observing you every minute. They are taking in how you treat others, how you manage stress and frustrations, how you fulfill your obligations, and whether you carry yourself with dignity. Consciously or not, the boys will become like you. The girls will look for a man very much like you. Give them an idea of manhood (and relationships) you can be proud of.

Healthy Marriage Interventions: A Boom or a Bust?

From Science Daily

The results indicated that the interventions had no effect in six of the cities, small beneficial effects in one city, and small detrimental effects in another city. The results of the other outcome study focused on 5,395 low-income married couples and found that those who received the intervention experienced very small improvements in relationship satisfaction, communication, and psychological health but no significant changes in relationship dissolution or cooperative parenting. And to add to it, the interventions didn't come cheap, costing on average around $9,100 per couple.

Maybe you should of just gave the the nine grand.

"There is evidence that suggests poor women want to be married and understand the benefits of healthy marriages," said Johnson. "But earning enough for basic household expenses, keeping their children safe and working with their children's overburdened schools are much more urgent concerns, making the idea of focusing on marriage seem self-indulgent if not irrelevant to many poor parents. When faced with a myriad of social issues, building intimate relationships is just not high on their priority lists."

Great points. Economic stresses in urban areas definitely had a play in this issue, also how our tax/social service system works. Seriously, I don't say it was a complaint, just a fact it is less stressful just to stay on welfare. When you create social services to help families, one doesn't want to have an affect that the social service replaces the family.

The strange effects of no-fault divorce

Freakonomics » Why Do American Women Work More Than Europeans?

Marriage doesn't give us the social insurance of stability, it could have gave. We're not going to scale back a career or risk having a baby, if we know a man can bail with no ramifications.

Empathy vs the Crusade

This is an excellent article noting that the shift from empathy to civil rights crusading in the case of marriage is actually hampering humanitarian dialog.

When a new civil right is discovered, like a new continent or island, exploration of it isn't easy. Human rights are a concept that we see only dimly with our minds. Much of our exploration of them is done by feeling out their boundaries. So recognizing it can be hard enough, but then one also needs to recognize where that civil right might infringe on other's civil rights first.

Its not the dialog of human rights I worry about, its the contradictory focus of only a subset of humans without general concern to all humanity.

In presenting the need for marriage to represent civil rights unique to the bonds children are due by virtue of birth from their parents, its been my sad experience that a vast majority of reaction to that news has been...