Older fathers

Regular readers of this blog are already aware that research is beginning to show elevated risks of genetic defects for children of older fathers. Here is another report on this subject.

A mass study found that deaths of children fathered by over-45s occurred at almost twice the rate of those fathered by men aged between 25 and 30.

Scientists believe that children of older fathers are more likely to suffer particular congenital defects as well as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy. The study was the first of its kind of such magnitude in the West, and researchers believe the findings are linked to the declining quality of sperm as men age.

A total of 100,000 children born between 1980 and 1996 were examined, of whom 830 have so far died before they reached 18, the majority when they were less than a year old. ...
The deaths of many of the children of the older fathers were related to congenital defects such as problems of the heart and spine, which increase the risk of infant mortality. But there were also higher rates of accidental death, which the researchers believe might be explained by the increased likelihood of suffering from autism, epilepsy or schizophrenia....
Previous research using the same data found that older men were four times as likely to father a child with Down's syndrome, while other studies have found that the genetic quality of sperm deteriorates as men age.

Further unintended consequences of our Brave New World of separating sex from reproduction and postponing child-bearing.

Gays Defend Marriage

David Benkof is blogging under the name Gays Defend Marriage David describes himself this way:

David Benkof is openly bisexual, but as an Orthodox Jew he is guided by Jewish law in the areas of sexuality and family life.
A few interesting facts about David:

• He has a master’s in Jewish history from Stanford and is getting a Ph.D. in the subject at NYU.

And he describes his mission this way:

Welcome to GaysDefendMarriage.com, a new voice in the “marriage equality” debate. For years, there has been an apparent consensus in the LGBT community that:

The man-woman definition of marriage is unacceptable and must be replaced by any means necessary with a new approach that allows us to marry our same-sex partners; and
Redefining marriage is overwhelmingly the most important issue facing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
Well, I don’t agree. I think insisting on redefining marriage will not help LGBT people very much (other than boosting our self-esteem) and could do real harm to innocents like straight couples, children, and traditionally religious people. I also think issues like the HIV/AIDS epidemic among African-American men who have sex with men, Florida’s bigoted refusal to let gays and lesbians adopt children, the FDA’s abhorrent gay blood ban, the dreadful disease syphilis (which is contracted most often through gay sex), the pointless ban on visitors and immigrants with HIV, and widespread prison rape (whose frequent victims are gay and bisexual men and transgender women) are far more important issues than “marriage equality” - even if you think the benefits of marriage equality outweigh the harms. After all, nobody ever suffered from a horrible death because the government called her relationship a “civil union” instead of a marriage. The LGBT community needs to get its priorities straight.

I discovered David over at Marriage Debate, where I sometimes post. Thank you David, for going against the tide within the gay community. I David's view of himself that gayness is not his one and only defining characteristic. In fact, I have been troubled by the view that sexual orientation is an essential characteristic of a person, while sex itself is relegated to a merely incidental trait. In my view, the exact opposite is the case: gender is essential and sexual orientation is a trait.

Beyond Same Sex Marriage

A lively debate is brewing over at Mercator, where I published my latest article about the CA same sex marriage decision. I expect to have some response to their commentary posted over there soon.
But in the meantime, here is some of what needs to be said in response:
Someone at Mercator pointed out that many of the gay couples who are already raising children had those children from previous heterosexual relationships. In other words, the couple is not raising “their” child. One partner is raising his or her own child, and the other partner is similar to a stepparent. The gay partner doesn’t automatically get parental rights because the child’s other biological parent is not automatically out of the picture. Unless that parent surrenders their parental rights, or is found to be unfit, the child’s biological parent continues to have parental rights toward them. Under this scenario, the child who is living with a same sex couple is not “their” child. Marriage does not and should not attach the child to both members of the gay couple in this situation, any more than a heterosexual divorced woman getting remarried should automatically attach her children to her new husband.
Who are the same sex couples who are raising their own children? They can only be couples who have somehow acquired genetic material from some third party. It is that third party parent who is being ignored. Or more precisely, it is the child’s relationship to that third party that no one wants to look at too closely. One typical scenario is that one member of a lesbian couple gets impregnated by an anonymous sperm donor. All the adults agree to it, and we somehow think that is sufficient. But the child’s right to have a relationship with that parent is fundamentally violated. It is the exact opposite of the trend toward open adoption, which honors the child’s right to relationship.

It Takes a Family to Raise a Village

My lecture of that title was published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute here.
But regular readers of this blog, and recipients of my e-newsletter saw that lecture long ago! BTW, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Alice Walker’s Daughter Rejects Feminism

 

Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker, has published a new book in which she rejects her mother's views in no uncertain terms. Rebecca, now 38, enjoys motherhood and longs for a second child, which she may not be able to have. She suffered from her parents' divorce and its aftermath. She wants lifelong love for herself and stability for her son. Naturally, these views distance her from her mother, Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple.

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn't take into account the toll on children. That's all part of the unfinished business of feminism.

Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: 'I'd like a child. If it happens, it happens.' I tell them: 'Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.' As I know only too well.

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They've missed the opportunity and they're bereft.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women's movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them  -  as I have learned to my cost. I don't want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

I hope that my mother and I will be reconciled one day. Tenzin deserves to have a grandmother. But I am just so relieved that my viewpoint is no longer so utterly coloured by my mother's.

I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters  -  a happy family.

Rebecca's story could be the story of her generation. I hear this all the time from students and young adults. In fact, Rebecca could be the poster child for my new institute, the Ruth Institute, which tries to show intelligent women that they can have love and family and education and career, without all the feminism baggage we have all had to suffer with.

Alice Walker essentially disowned her daughter when she announced that she was pregnant, and delighted.

When I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I'd never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed  -  she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that?

Read the whole article here. Learn more about her book, Baby Love

I have to warn you: the comments on Amazon are terrible. She really rubbed the feminists the wrong way! So, to me, she must be doing something right! I have not read the book, only this article in the Mail. But, I have to say that Alice Walker doesn't know what she is missing. Based on what I've seen, I'd be proud to have Rebecca as my daughter.

Family Issues are Fiscal Issues

Speaking of poverty, my article on the Acton site takes a careful look at the Institute for American Values study on the impact of family fragmentation on the taxpayers. That study looks at how family fragmentation affects poverty, and after that, asks how dealing with the poverty costs the federal and state level taxpayers.

Poverty Prevention Strategies

About a month ago, I was a presenter at a conference at which James Q. Wilson was also presenting. Prof. Wilson alluded to the results of a rather famous study he did some years ago. He and his colleagues found that there are just 3 things a person needs to do in order to avoid poverty:
1. Graduate from high school.
2. Postpone having children until after age 20 and
3. postpone having children until marriage.
According to Wilson, if a person does these 3 things, his or her chance of being poor is only 8%. If a person fails to do these 3 things, their chances of becoming poor are 78%.
Now that I am thinking about it, I can't remember whether that 78% figure refers to people who fail to do any one of these three things, or to people who fail to do all three.
In any case, it is a pretty interesting summary finding.

Comfort Foods and Stress

Comfort foods seem to be a reaction to stress for the low status monkeys in these experiments.

the dominant females ordinarily eat a little more than the subordinates. The lower-status monkeys can get as much food as they want but seem to have less of a desire to eat, perhaps because of the higher level of stress hormones in their brains.
The anxiety of constantly toadying to their social superiors seems to curb their appetites, researchers suspect, at least when their regular high-fiber, low-fat chow is on the menu.

But suppose you tempted them with the equivalent of chocolate and potato chips and ice cream? Mark Wilson, a neuroscientist at Emory University, and a team tried that experiment at Yerkes by installing feeders with a constant supply of banana-flavored pellets – not exactly Dove bars, but they had enough sugar and fat to appeal even to human palates.

Once these foods were available, the low-status monkeys promptly developed an appetite. They began eating significantly more calories than their social superiors. While the dominant monkeys dabbled in the sweet, fatty pellets just during the daytime, the subordinate monkeys kept scarfing them down after dark. ...
Another possible explanation, the one favored by the Yerkes researchers, is that the snacks activated the reward pathways in the brain. They may have provided the same sort of dopamine reward as cocaine, which was studied in a previous experiment with monkeys by researchers at Wake Forest University.

In that experiment, the dominant monkeys didn't show much interest in pressing a lever that administered an intravenous dose of cocaine. But the subordinate monkeys kept pushing the lever to get more cocaine, just as the subordinates in the new study kept munching on the fatty pellets.

Wilson suggests that the snackers are reinforcing the dopamine systems that had been diminished by stress.

“Essentially, eating high-calorie foods becomes a coping strategy to deal with daily life events for an individual in a difficult social situation,” Wilson said. “The subordinates don't get beat up, but they get harassed by high-ranking monkeys. If they're sitting somewhere and a dominant monkey comes over, they give up their seat and move away. They're always looking over their shoulders.”

These results seem to jibe with the famous Whitehall study of British civil servants, which found that lower-ranking workers were more obese than higher-status workers. Even though the subordinate workers were neither poor nor lacking in health care, their lower status correlated with more health problems.
The new monkey data also jibe with an American study that looked at women's snacking tendencies. After they worked on puzzles and recorded a speech, the women in the study were tempted with an array of chocolate granola bars, potato chips, rice cakes and pretzels provided by the research team, led by Elissa Epel, a psychologist at the University of California San Francisco.

The women who seemed most stressed by the tasks, as measured by their levels of cortisol, ate more of the sweet, high-fat snacks – the same pattern observed in the subordinate monkeys with high cortisol levels.

Women win right to children without fathers

Sad.

Single women and lesbian couples won landmark parental rights last night as MPs voted to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will replace the rule with a “need for supportive parenting” after opponents were defeated in two votes by unexpectedly wide margins.

The Government had been prepared for defeat but won the free votes by majorities of 75 and 68. The decisions mean that the legislation will grant the most significant extension to homosexual family rights since gay adoption was sanctioned.

It will stop fertility clinics turning away lesbians and single women because their children will not have a father or male role model. While the current law does not block such therapy, it is sometimes used to justify refusals...

Find the rest here: Time Online

TWO MOTHERS GOOD, FATHER FIGURE BAD IN NEW UK LAW

Check out this brief article from the London Telegraph.

Following the logic of laws recognising homosexual partnerships (civil unions) and adoption by gay couples, the Labour-led British Parliament has given the status of legal parent to both partners in a lesbian relationship when one of them gives birth by means of in vitro fertilisation. The move was rejected by most Conservative Party MPs, but a bid by one of them -- former leader Iain Duncan Smith -- to retain a rule recognising the need for a father was lost by 292 votes to 217. Mr Smith said the new rule would send the wrong message about fathers to the heterosexual world as well as same sex couples using fertility treatments.

The change comes as part of a Bill updating the UK's rules on fertility treatments, embryo research and abortion. Male gay couples who have children via surrogate mothers are not covered by the law change. Where there is reference to the father of a child, such as on birth certificates, this is to be read as reference to the female partner who did not give birth. The law will now say for the first time that babies born through fertility treatment do not need to have a father figure.
To objections that the change went against common sense, Labour MP Emily Thornberry said the term "common sense" worried her because it was often "a cover for discrimination, narrowness and an inability to face the 21st century".

The "important thing" was to give legal rights to lesbian couples and single women. Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister (pictured), said reinstating the need for a father would be discriminatory as it would "create an additional hurdle" for such women. This would be "wholly inappropriate" following the decisions to allow civil partnerships and adoption by gay couples. ~ London Telegraph, May 20

Everybody Pays for Single Parenthood - In More Ways Than One

My friend Dutch Martin’s recent article entitled "Everybody Pays for Single Parenthood - In More Ways Than One," has been reprinted by both The Washington Times and The Philadelphia Sunday Sun. Check it out, and see what you think.

Beyond same sex marriage

Civil unions, same sex marriage, then what? The final stop on this train ride is the complete de-gendering of society. Check out my article, based on the new legalization of gay marriage in California here. I know this is a hot topic with strong feelings on both sides. Tell me what you think, but please, let's keep it civil.

8 Ways to Affair-Proof Your Marriage

Check out this worthy article. Some good tips here. Do you agree? Have any of your own to add?

Check out "How to Bimbo-Proof your Daugher."

This is an interesting article on how to keep your teenage daughter from becoming like her celebrity "role models." Find it here. There are several good tips here, and I wholeheartedly agree up to the point at the end stating you don't have to "burn every Playboy in your husband’s stash." Uum, yeah you do! Why would you marry someone with a porn obsession in the first place? I agree with the author's assertion that you wouldn't want your daughter to come across that stash. But also ask yourself, would you want your daughter to marry someone who has such a collection? No? Then why did you?

I find particulary rewarding this readers comments:

"That doesn’t mean you have to burn every Playboy in your husband’s stash. But you might do well asking him to consider how he’d feel if his daughter found a copy."
And therein lies the problem. My recommendation: burn them. Don't ask, just burn--and expect more.
As a husband, and father of two sons and two daughters, I suggest wives ask more from your husbands, and husbands, expect more from yourselves.
I can ask my son to respect women, or I can show him how--and that begins with respecting my wife and not allowing another woman, printed, painted or otherwise in my home or bedroom. My daughters see--and comment--on my exacting standards, and already expects as much, or more, from whomever they marry.
And to all the naysayers out there:
No, I'm not a Puritan
Yes, I appreciate fine art and the female form
Yes, my wife is the love of my life
No, I don't have a secret stash of porn
No, I'm not lying
Yes, I'm straight

Posted by Betsy

To read more on the dangers of porn, read Dr. J's review of the book Pornified here.

CA Same Sex marriage chronology

I have submitted an article on the CA ssm ruling, so I can't say much until it appears in print (make that, in electrons.) Anyhow, in the course of researching that article, I came across this chronology of key events in CA's policy march toward same sex marriage.
I discovered that one of the facts on the list is not quite right.

— 2002: Domestic partners given additional rights under state law, including the right to draft wills for each other ...

OK, that doesn't make sense. Do I have the right to draft a will for my husband? I don't think so. I think this statement is referring to AB2216 in 2002, which provided for intestate succession for domestic partners. That is, if a domestic partner dies without a will, their estate will be distributed to their surviving partner and any blood relatives, on the same terms as married couples. I think that is what the note in the Mercury News chronology is referring to.
You can get information about AB 2216 by going here, and clicking on the 2001-2002 session on the drop-down menu. Then type in either AB 2216 or just "domestic partners," and this bill should pop up.

Same Sex Marriage Imposed on California by Our Robes Masters

Maggie Gallagher's commentary is here. National Review Commentary is here.

Economics for a Crowded Planet: Which One would that be?

Jeffrey Sachs evidently believes the earth is overcrowded. I can't believe I'm reading this. His book is called: Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. Which one is the crowded planet?

Sachs presents “four compelling reasons why the poorest countries need to speed the demographic transition,” “a list of seven requirements to enable family planning programs to accelerate the decline in fertility."

He has missed out on the news, even supported by the United Nations, that underpopulation is likely to be the big new problem on the horizon, not overpopulation.
To be fair, I am only quoting from a review in the NYT, and have not read the book itself. I'm not likely to, unless somebody pays me. Life is too short.

A Non-Conservative Defense of Pro-Family Policies

I just got this message in my inbox:

Check out this book by a U.C. Berkeley professor who suggests policies that favor stay-at-home parents are good. I think you'll enjoy this bit of fresh air now coming from the Left. What Nel Gilbert says in A Mother's Work is policies that reward working mothers/fathers really reward consumerism and corporations. So I think the problem here is not socialism, but unrestrained capitalism or just plan corporate greed manipulating the public.

The she is referring to is A Mother's Work. I have read it, and think it is a good book. I don’t think he thinks the problem is “corporate greed.” And I wouldn’t necessarily call him a man of the Left. I think he is more of an old-fashioned New Deal Democrat, type of person, a type that is almost a dying breed. This book is as much an indictment of feminist ideology as of capitalist greed.

Also, I seem to recall that he was sceptical of some of the more extreme feminist claims about domestic violence. I think he was on a panel sponsored by the Women's Freedom Network, back in the late 80's or early 90's, that tried to take a hard look at some of the data concerning various feminist arguments. If I'm not mistaken, it was published in this first volume of teh Women's Freedom Network, Neither Victim Nor Enemy.

Collapse of the Family in Europe

The Times of London reports on this massive EU study of the family. Highlights:

It said that almost one million fewer babies were born in the 27 EU countries last year than in 1980. There were six million more over65s than under14s in Europe last year, against 36 million more children than pensioners in 1980.

The institute said: “Europe is now an elderly continent.” Almost one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion. The marriage rate fell by 24 per cent between 1980 and 2006. Two out of three households have no children, and nearly 28 per cent of households contain only one person.

The EU suggested solution? I'm not making this up:

The report urges national governments to set up a ministry for the family.

You might think they would ask themselves whether setting up yet another government ministry could be part of the problem, rather than the solution.
Cross-posted at Marriage Debate.

It's About Time...

It's about time somebody thought of correcting the huge marriage penalty built into our entitlements programs. Now, David Blankenhorn and Sen Sam Brownback have come up with a simple proposal to end one of the policies that discourages marriage among the lower classes. Here is their summary of the problem:

What if the federal government forced couples to pay 20% of their annual income just to get or stay married? And suppose a couple could avoid this tax if they either got a divorce or never got married in the first place?

Does it sound like good public policy to force a couple earning, say, $60,000 a year to pay $12,000 just for being married?

That's more or less what we demand of millions of low-income Americans who receive government welfare benefits. For most couples on welfare, getting married is among the more expensive decisions they will face as newlyweds, because saying "I do" will reduce the benefits they receive, on average, by 10% to 20% of their total income.

Here is their idea for a solution:

it's time to eliminate the marriage penalty for low-income Americans. Our proposal is simple: Don't make them pay it. We should allow newly married couples to continue to receive all of their benefits for the first three years of marriage, thus mitigating the marriage penalty currently paid by lower-income couples. This adjustment should give newly married couples a sufficient grace period to realize the economic benefits of marriage – and save some money to stabilize their financial situation – before government benefits cease.

They suggest trial programs in several states and cities across the country. Perhaps they already have places in mind. But if not, this looks like a very worthwhile program for churches with an inner city presence to volunteer themselves for. Most Catholic dioceses, for instance, have some poor parishes, as well as better off parishes. Some diocese should volunteer to partner suburban parishes with inner city parishes to offer them the support, information and guidance they need to take advantage of the temporary end of the marriage penalty.