Commercial imperatives prevail
Alcohol Action's response to Government’s alcohol plans
Published in the Dominion Post 26 August 2010
The Government made an interesting little promise when announcing their long awaited response to the Law Commission’s review earlier this week which, more than the timid and minimal response itself, sums up their irresponsible and uncaring attitude to the victims of alcohol.
Don't worry, they reassured the public, their weak new alcohol laws will not come into effect until after the Rugby World Cup. Consider how morally bankrupt this is. The point of alcohol reform is to try to reduce New Zealand's out-of-control heavy drinking culture, with all the crime, personal harm, broken families, domestic violence and chronic disease, while allowing low risk drinkers to continue as they are. Yet, even as the Minister announced their ineffectual policies, the message to the country was that current dangerous drinking was going to be just fine at Party Central because there will be no new regulation of heavy drinking brought in until after the event. These are the same “leaders” who refused to reduce blood alcohol levels and protect New Zealanders from legal drunken drivers (40% of the resulting injuries are borne by people other than the drunk driver), even when two thirds of the country indicated they wanted the levels dropped to 0.05.
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Parent Abuse on the Rise: A Historical Review
American Association of Behavioural Social Science Online Journal 2004
In comparison to child and spouse abuse, the issue of parents being abused by their adolescent children has received very little attention by the mental health profession even though its prevalence is comparable. Parent abuse has been identified and addressed to some extent over the past twenty-five years: however, studies back in the 1950s were showing children's physical abuse of parents to be a concern. The most frequent form of parent abuse is physical at 57%, followed by verbal abuse at 22%, the use of a weapon, usually a knife or gun, at 17% and throwing items at 5%. Regardless of gender 11% of children under age ten physically abuse their parents. This percent stays steady for boys over age ten, but drops to 7% for girls. In pertaining to the victims, 82% percent of parent abuse is against mothers, while only 18% is against fathers. This is to say that Mothers are five times more likely than fathers to experience severe physical abuse, and that the highest rate of parent abuse occurs in families with a single mother. This paper will review a brief history of parent abuse starting with Casare Lombroso and ending with present day studies. Many of the more prevalent studies, from which much of the present knowledge of parent abuse stems, will be discussed in detail.
"...
the most important factor, is that these studies have shown parental permissiveness to play a major role in parent abuse. Many parents are still encouraged to take a lax, permissive approach to their parenting, which puts them at a higher risk for parent abuse, and their children at higher risk for delinquency."
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A reminder that the administration of the abortion law is a travesty
By KARL DU FRESNE - The Dominion Post 20/07/2010
OPINION: It went unnoticed by the media, but Justice Minister Simon Power recently issued a press statement announcing that Rosemary Fenwicke had decided not to seek reappointment to the Abortion Supervisory Committee. There's a story behind this. Dr Fenwicke, a member of the three-person committee since 2007, is an abortion certifying consultant who earns fees by approving the termination of pregnancies. She is also a former medical director of the Family Planning Association, a major abortion referral agency. She was nominated for the committee in 2007 by the Labour government of Helen Clark, whose pro-abortion sympathies are well known.
The appointment seemed not only an unconscionable conflict of interest, but a calculated insult to the many New Zealanders who regard abortion as deeply repugnant. Were they really expected to believe the government couldn't find someone who didn't have a material stake in the abortion business? (Certifying consultants were paid $5 million in 2008, and even pro-abortionists acknowledge it's a lucrative business.) The very nature of her professional activity suggested Dr Fenwicke was not neutral on this divisive issue, yet Parliament rejected an attempt by MP Gordon Copeland, a staunch opponent of abortion, to overturn her nomination. (It was supposedly a conscience vote but Labour MPs were instructed to support Dr Fenwicke, meaning her appointment was assured.)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/3935262/A-reminder-that-the-administration-of-the-abortion-law-is-a-travesty
Political grandstanding a futile gesture
By Garth George
NZ Herald Jun 24, 2010
There are just eight days left for the Government to show some logic and common sense and to defer, at least, or abandon, at best, the costly, stupid and useless emissions trading scheme (ETS). I don't accept what Act MP John Boscawen told a protest rally which gathered outside Parliament on Tuesday that the ETS is a fait accompli. Rather, I go along with Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson, who said he still hoped the Government would back down at the 11th hour and that pressure would be applied to Prime Minister John Key at the federation's annual conference tomorrow. Mr Nicholson said he believed the public had not been sufficiently informed of the secondary or indirect costs of the scheme. "The direct costs might be obvious in the first month," he said, "but the flow through is not. And that is where the deception in this whole thing is ... farmers and public are just waking up to the high folly of this ETS."
I go along, too, with Family First national director Bob McCoskrie, who told the gathering that the nation's families will be penalised by a tax that will have virtually no affect whatsoever on the climate.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10653908
Pornography is not a private issue
Otago Daily Time Opinion 21 Jun 2010
What we do in the privacy of our room defines character, argues Bob McCoskrie. Further, the media should show the same level of indignation towards their promotion of the pornography industry as they have towards Shane Jones.
In response to the viewing choices of Labour MP Shane Jones in his hotel room, both Labour leader Phil Goff and deputy leader Annette King said that what their MPs did in the privacy of their room was none of their business. While we always hope that our private attitudes and actions do not receive the same scrutiny as our public and outward appearance and words, they can not be separated because they define character. What we do in private manifests itself in the quality of our integrity, morality and leadership in the public domain.
Watching a movie containing bestiality or necrophilia, having an extra-marital affair, getting drunk and passing out, or purchasing the services of a prostitute can also happen in the privacy of our room and are completely legal. But are they right?
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/111581/pornography-not-private-issue?page=0%2C0
The Rise of Violence in Schools
Bruce Logan - NZCPR Essay 14 April 07
In 1989, just before the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, I was a member of the PPTA executive and invited to appear on a TV programme with Russell Marshall, the then Minister of Education. I commented that I was not convinced the majority of teachers were in favour of abolition.
The claim made at the time, which suggested a link between corporal punishment and violence in schools has been proved wrong. Violence in schools has increased tremendously since abolition. Of course there may be no actual causation either way, but the argument linking punishment and violence has now been extended and forged between violence and parental smacking. Every age has its blind spot. The late 20th century and early 21st century have been and remain very spotted indeed.
http://www.nzcpr.com/Guest49.htm
Do nonphysical punishments reduce antisocial behavior more than spanking?
A comparison using the strongest previous causal evidence against spanking
Robert E Larzelere, Ronald B Cox Jr, Gail L Smith
Published in BioMed Central Pediatrics April 2010
This study concludes that all corrective actions by parents and psychologists appear to increase children’s antisocial behavior due to child effects on parents. Improved research methods are needed to discriminate between effective vs. counterproductive implementations of disciplinary. How and when disciplinary tactics are used may be more important than which type of tactic is used.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2431-10-10.pdf
Childcare Debate
Is the Church speaking up for Children & Families?
Bob McCoskrie – National Director – Family First NZ March 2010
I recently drove past a church complex which had the following sign up for its daycare – “Now enrolling under-2’s”. I asked myself, “Is the church acting in the best interests of children and families?” Should we be concerned at the way that churches have become part of the massive daycare industry?
But what troubled me the most is that we have not even had real debate around this issue. Have churches been blinded by the ‘cash cow’ of early childhood education? (ECE) Have they swallowed the line “Well, kids have to go somewhere so it may as well be to a church one” – without considering the wider implications of the welfare of children and the important role of parents?
It has been argued that childcare is simply a reflection of changing working patterns and family arrangements. However, it could also be argued that work patterns have changed because of the availability and government subsidizing of childcare.
READ FULL ARTICLE
READ a sample of the Feedback on this issue
The Dangers of Fatherlessness
CultureWatch 16 Feb 10 (Bill Muehlenberg)
An article in yesterday’s press had this headline: “Boys lack role models”. The piece began with these words: “A decline in the number of male teachers is being blamed for rising youth violence. Just 28 per cent of state schoolteachers are men, down from 32 per cent 10 years ago. “Youth crime has soared in that time. Sex attacks, robberies, assaults and weapon offences have increased significantly, and psychologists and family groups told the Herald Sun the loss of male role models was an important factor.”
May I suggest that these experts have got things only partly right? Yes, kids suffer when there are no male role models around, and a lack of male teachers is indeed a worry. But this analysis simply does not go far enough. The real problem is more profound and of greater consequence. The real problem is boys lack fathers. The major cause of all of this is that increasingly children are growing up in broken homes or single parent families, where no father is present. It is not just the lack of male role models that is behind this rise in crime, anti-social behaviour, and out-of-control kids.
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/02/16/the-dangers-of-fatherlessness/
Pro-Spanking Studies May Have Global Effect
Newsmax.com 07 Jan 2010 By: Theodore Kettle
Two recent analyses – one psychological, the other legal – may debunk lenient modern parenting the way the Climategate e-mail scandal has short circuited global warming alarmism. A study entailing 2,600 interviews pertaining to corporal punishment, including the questioning of 179 teenagers about getting spanked and smacked by their parents, was conducted by Marjorie Gunnoe, professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Gunnoe’s findings, announced this week: “The claims made for not spanking children fail to hold up. They are not consistent with the data.” Those who were physically disciplined performed better than those who weren’t in a whole series of categories, including school grades, an optimistic outlook on life, the willingness to perform volunteer work, and the ambition to attend college, Gunnoe found. And they performed no worse than those who weren’t spanked in areas like early sexual activity, getting into fights, and becoming depressed. She found little difference between the sexes or races.
Another study published in the Akron Law Review last year examined criminal records and found that children raised where a legal ban on parental corporal punishment is in effect are much more likely to be involved in crime.
http://www.worthynews.com/top/newsmax-com-US-spanking-studies-children-spock-2010-01-07-id-345669
The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and CommunityFamily Research Council December 2009 Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D. EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual's concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behavior. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability.
Social scientists, clinical psychologists, and biologists have begun to clarify some of the social and psychological effects, and neurologists are beginning to delineate the biological mechanisms through which pornography produces its powerful negative effects.
KEY FINDINGS ON THE EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHYTHE FAMILY AND PORNOGRAPHY • Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.
• Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.
• Among couples affected by one spouse's addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse.
• Both spouses perceive pornography viewing as tantamount to infidelity.
• Pornography viewing leads to a loss of interest in good family relations.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND PORNOGRAPHY
• Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.
• Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornorgraphy they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography.
• Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity.
• Prolonged consumption of pornography by men produces stronger notions of women as commodities or as "sex objects."
• Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities.
• Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution.
OTHER EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY • Many adolescents who view pornography initially feel shame, diminished self-confidence, and sexual uncertainty, but these feelings quickly shift to unadulterated enjoyment with regular viewing.
• The presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values. • The main defenses against pornography are close family life, a good marriage and good relations between parents and children, coupled with deliberate parental monitoring of Internet use. Traditionally, government has kept a tight lid on sexual traffic and businesses, but in matters of pornography that has waned almost completely, except where child pornography is concerned. Given the massive, deleterious individual, marital, family, and social effects of pornography, it is time for citizens, communities, and government to reconsider their laissez-faire approach.
http://www.frc.org/pornography-effects
New Research on Spanking Might Need a Time Out
Studies Aim to Settle the Longstanding Debate Over the Disciplinary Practice's Effects, but Statistical Shortcomings Persist
Wall St Journal Oct 10 2009 CARL BIALIK
Three recent, widely reported studies on spanking children claimed to show that the disciplinary practice impairs cognitive development in children. Together, they held out the promise of providing the latest, definitive word on a passionate debate. Yet the three aren't likely to resolve anything. Many statisticians say they find in them less a firm conclusion than further proof of the difficulty of measuring spanking's impact.
Statistical analysis of spanking's effects on cognition are clouded by many complicating factors. Effects can be attributed to the wrong cause, statisticians say; rather than spanking causing problems in children, it is possible that their existing cognitive problems can make spanking more likely. Moreover, any effects of spanking are difficult to measure and probably small. And unlike, say, a study on prescription drugs that removes a misleading placebo effect, no ethical study can assign some children to be spanked. Instead, parents must be trusted to remember and share their disciplinary practices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125548136491383915.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel
Sandra Paterson: My daughter missing dad
NZ Herald Jul 03, 2004 (and still applies today)
My daughter was about 2 1/2 when she looked up halfway through her porridge one day and asked, "Why don't I have a daddy at home, like Steven does?" Steven is the boy next door, and I am a single parent.
...Just a mum or just a dad simply doesn't cut it from a kid's point of view. And two mums or two dads wouldn't, either. The main problem with same-sex matrimony - be it by civil union or any other label - is that it legitimises same-sex parenting. The issue is not whether gay couples can love and care for each other or be loving parents. Of course they can. It's whether two men or two women can give kids what they really need. Two gay dads can't make up for not having a mum around; and neither can the very best lesbian mothers make up for missing out on a father. I suspect same-sex parenting is more about adults' wants than children's needs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3576185
Smacking question is clear enough
Otago Daily Times 18 Aug 2009
Opinion - Rex Ahdar is a professor in the Faculty of Law at Otago University
People should exercise their democratic rights and vote in the smacking referendum. I believe the objections to it are misplaced. Some cry, what about the expense? Could not the money have been spent on tackling child abuse? Yes, but the promoters of the referendum are not to blame. The government was asked to run the referendum in conjunction with the general election, but it said no. The referendum question might have proved an unpalatable, additional reason for voters not to give Labour and the Greens another term. It is thus disingenuous for the politicians to cry waste when they had a straightforward opportunity to avoid it.
Besides, $9 million is not a huge amount when considering an important parental practice and, as the abolitionists of smacking remind us, the welfare of children. If we can spend $80 million per year on possum eradication, we can afford a fraction of this on such an important matter of family governance.
Next, the wording is said to be ambiguous and confusing. Really? Read in isolation I suppose one could quibble with its meaning. But unless you have been living in the Fiordland bush for the last few years, or have just arrived from Latvia, you would readily understand the fateful sentence in its cultural context.
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/70140/smacking-question-clear-enough?page=0%2C0
Ain't no cure for crime
Otago Daily Times 23/07/2009
Jennifer E. Walsh is a professor of political science at Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles County, California. She was recently in New Zealand as a guest of Sensible Sentencing Trust and Family First NZ.
If you do the crime, you must do the time and such policies are paying off in the United States....in the first part of the 20th century, many state lawmakers embraced the "medical model" of crime by replacing punishment with treatment, changing the name of prisons to "correctional facilities", and referring to offenders as "clients" instead of "inmates". Such humane treatment was heralded by academics, practitioners, and liberal policymakers who had long decried the punitive nature of the American penal system.
However, after much analysis, researchers made a startling discovery about the rehabilitation approach: it did not work. Crime actually increased during the rehabilitation era, and offenders who had been treated and released were often the first to reoffend. Not surprisingly, the policy pendulum in many states soon began to swing the other way.
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/66496/ain039t-no-cure-crime
Good Motive, Bad Law
Grant Illingworth QC, Barrister
Specialises in public law and civil litigation, and has been in practice for over 30 years
There can be no doubt that those who promoted the recent amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act had the best of motives for doing so. There have been far too many cases of appalling violence being used against young children in New Zealand and something had to be done. But did we do the right thing? Did the legislative amendment improve the law or make it worse? And by what yardstick can a situation of that kind be judged?
There are three reasons for concluding that the amendment was an inappropriate response to the problem. The first is that the amendment is an extremely poor piece of legal drafting in that it is calculated to create confusion rather than clarity. The second is that it criminalizes behaviour which should not be classified as a criminal offence. The third is that it fails to provide adequate protection for those whom it was designed to help.
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Smacking debate needs some correction
By BOB McCOSKRIE - The Dominion Post 12/06/2009
Linley Boniface (A question smacking of deceit, June 8) is right on one thing. We should not be spending $10 million on a referendum on the anti-smacking law. But we are for two reasons. First, , the politicians failed to listen to the overwhelming majority of Kiwis who knew the law change would do nothing to tackle our horrendous rate of child abuse (and it hasn't). Second, the previous government failed to hold the referendum at the more economical time of a general election because it knew the issue would bring about its downfall. It did anyway.
But Boniface needs correction on many other things. A total of 113 politicians did vote for the law - after being whipped to vote that way by Helen Clark and John Key. Phil Goff and Paula Bennett have now admitted they don't agree with the law as stated. The law change was labelled the anti- smacking bill because this is what the architect of the law change (Green MP Sue Bradford) called it. And groups who supported it, such as Barnardos, Plunket, Epoch and the previous children's commissioner, have all been calling for a ban on smacking since 2001.
The question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ?" was publicly notified for submissions in 2007 but there was no opposition from these groups at that time. They never believed that more than 300,000 voters would sign a petition demanding a say on this issue, the majority of whom signed the petition after the amendment was passed. Those who oppose the question simply don't like the answer they came to: No!
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Families Commission – An Outsider’s View
Bob McCoskrie – National Director Family First
Published in Christchurch Press 3 June 2009
Let’s be honest. The Families Commission was set up by the previous Labour government as a sop to the United Future party with its then eight MP’s. United Future had run on a strong pro-family platform. Ironically, this kept in power a government who then rammed through a number of anti-family pieces of legislation including the decriminalisation of prostitution, the anti-smacking law, the ‘white elephant’ Civil Unions and Relationships legislation, opposed notifying parents when their teenagers wanted an abortion, and opposed raising the drinking age.
But back to the Families Commission. Some still hoped that it would listen and advocate for the views of families. Unfortunately they failed their biggest test when they blindly followed the government’s lead and supported the anti-smacking law without consulting the very people they were appointed to represent. Dr Pryor suggests that the anti-smacking law will help prevent family violence. The problem is that a smack on the bottom is not violent, an assault or child abuse. The ban on smacking can be compared to attempting to deal with boy racers by taking vehicles off senior citizens because we all know that boy-racing starts with driving a car!
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Gardasil - A guide for parents and caregivers
Family Life International - Guide
In recent months the New Zealand public has been subjected to an intense marketing campaign promoting the new Gardasil vaccine manufactured by the international pharmaceutical company
Merck & CO. This marketing campaign has involved everything from posters in GP clinics, to radio advertisements, and even a New Zealand website. On top of this intensive marketing campaign, the
introduction of Gardasil has also been accompanied by a lot of news coverage in the mainstream media.
While the marketing campaign and the media coverage of Gardasil has been widespread and at times very emotive, it hasn’t actually fully informed Kiwi parents about all of the important facts about the
vaccine. The end result of this has been that many parents have been left unable to make fully informed decisions about this vaccine, and in some cases parents are even dramatically overestimating
the actual effectiveness and safety of the Gardasil vaccine because of the lack of information that has been provided to them.
Unlike much of the current and narrowly focused coverage of the Gardasil vaccine, our hope is that this simple guide will provide parents with a broader perspective, and this will empower them with the
basic information they need to make truly informed decisions about the Gardasil vaccine.
http://www.fli.org.nz/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=9c3qirx1EMU%3d&tabid=2163&language=en-US
Smacking laws were never about the real issue of child abuse
NZ Herald Apr 16, 2009
Sue Reid - Family First NZ
It is a shame that we have a Families Commission that is driven by ideology rather than listening to families. Chief commissioner Jan Pryor espouses her beliefs that "positive parenting should never include a smack" (Herald, April 3). Her so-called justification for the anti-smacking laws are inflammatory and continue to vilify good parents who may use a smack as part of good parental correction.
As a mother of two young children, I resent the constant barrage that fully funded, power-packed organisations such as the Families Commission can constantly deliver from their lofty soap-boxes. One can be left wondering who represents mums like me who are focused on the task of raising good, law-abiding and positive contributors to society. Like many other mums, I know that I wish to parent within a sensible legal framework and we owe it to good parents to get this law right. The new flawed law has tried to link a smack on the bottom with child abuse of the worst kind and has put good parents in the same category as rotten parents who are a danger to their kids and to society.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10566823&pnum=0
Families Commission Pushes Anti-Smacking Ideology
In an Op-Ed in the Timaru Herald (27 March 09) entitled "Positive Parenting means not having to smack" the Chief Commissioner of the Families Commission says:
* the anti-smacking law is working well and is achieving what was intended (WRONG!)
* the law change did not introduce any new criminal offence (WRONG!)
* healthy, positive relationships within families do not involve people hitting each other.. (ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A PARENT CORRECTING A CHILD WITH A SMACK?)
* positive parenting strategies (such as rewarding good behaviour and distracting young children and ignoring minor unwanted behaviour) are far more effective and safer (SO DO I SIMPLY "IGNORE" MY TWO YEAR OLD LAUNCHING FOOD FROM THE HIGH CHAIR? DO I TURN ON THE WIGGLES TO "DISTRACT" MY 4 YEAR OLD EVERY TIME THEY HAVE A TANTRUM AND SCRATCH MY FACE!? AND WHAT IS 'MINOR UNWANTED BEHAVIOUR'?)
* the best and most effective parenting practices do not use physical punishment (NOT ACCORDING TO RESEARCH FROM OTAGO UNI AND CHRISTCHURCH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
* some of this 'progress' could be undermined by the Referendum (IN OTHER WORDS, 'THE PEOPLE' SHOULD SHUT UP!)
Family First responded with an Op-Ed published the next day in the same paper entitled "We owe it to good parents to get smacking law right" written by researcher for Family First Sue Reid. In it she says:
Pryor states ”there is no legal justification for the use of force to correct a child’s behaviour”, so why does ‘positive parenting’ not include correction? I know that as a mum I need to be able to teach my child the right from wrong and it is an ongoing process for me to ‘correct’ my child’s behaviour – society expects me to fulfil this role. We can all lament the daily cases in the media whereby individuals have not ‘corrected’ their behaviour and have become a blight on society!
Many parents would testify to aspects that are less than positive in the training of a child for the adult world. I am sure the child does not see ‘time out’ in a positive light nor see 'grounding' as positive. Parents are often seen in negative light when they proceed with knowing best what will work for their child. The role of parent is set apart from other relationships such as in the workplace or a sports team. Parents have the reserved responsibility to raise, train and shape the will and character of their child to maturity.
..People who don’t like the question in the referendum simply don’t like the answer they come to! Organisations like the Families Commission would better serve families when they consider the attitudes, needs and requirements of families rather than using their government funded weight to impose a flawed ideology on to good, healthy, functioning families.
READ BOTH ARTICLES
Time for Clarity On Smacking Law
John Boscawen ACT MP
NZCPR Midweek Politics 26 March 2009
All parents should have the fundamental ability to bring their children up as well rounded, law abiding citizens in the best way they see fit - a right that was taken away by Labour’s passage of Sue Bradford’s Anti-Smacking law 21 months ago. Labour and the Greens might not like to admit it but, although there are exceptions, the vast majority of New Zealand parents are decent and loving - and, as such, more than capable of deciding how best to raise their children into the successful and upstanding citizens that we want them to be.
It is for this reason that I have submitted my Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill: to restore parents’ fundamental right to use all reasonable methods available in order to raise their children as well-rounded and law-abiding citizens.
http://www.nzcpr.com/midweek58.htm
Informed choice and mass immunization programmes
Women's Health Action Trust - Women's Health Update Feb 2009 (partly funded by the Ministry of Health!)
Christy Parker looks at some of the ethical issues surrounding mass immunization programmes targeting children and young people and argues that the principles of informed choice and consent must not be compromised by population health objectives.
When extraordinarily high immunization targets, aggressive marketing campaigns, and one sided information resources are employed, they risk undermining consumers’ rights to informed choice and informed consent...Offering practitioners financial incentives to meet high uptake targets works to undermine informed consent processes, especially when practitioners also believe that it is their “moral responsibility” to ensure children are immunized.
Once again there are unanswered questions around how long the vaccine will offer immunity. HPV vaccination programmes are also solely targeting girls and women when HPV infection is present in boys and men and is associated with other cancers and genital warts. HPV is thus a sexual health issue, not a women’s health issue and young women should not have to bear the burden for reducing the incidence of HPV related diseases. Further we risk sending young women the message that they alone are responsible for sexual health. Gardasil is also one of the most expensive vaccines ever sold and the programme will cost hundreds of millions of dollars- prompting questions about the gains given that women still need regular cervical smears with or without the vaccine.
..Ethical issues aside, safety is a major issue if aggressive one-sided marketing campaigns and poor information resources reduce young women’s ability to make a meaningful informed choice about Gardasil. Young women must understand that they will still need to have regular cervical smears because Gardasil does not offer “lifetime protection from cervical cancer” (as parents believed with meningococcal B). Gardasil does not protect against all cancer causing types of HPV and it is unknown how long immunity will last - experience tells us the duration of immunity is likely to be shorter than first thought. If young women do not understand the limitations of Gardasil there is a major risk that they may not participate in New Zealand’s excellent cervical screening programme.
http://www.womens-health.org.nz/uploads/pdf/Informed%20choice%20and%20mass%20immunisation%20programmes.pdf
ADULT STEM CELL SUCCESS STORIES - 2008 UPDATE: JULY-DECEMBER
Family Research Council (US)
Research using adult stem cells continues to yield successful treatments for many human diseases and injuries. In this update we highlight some of those treatment successes from the last six months. This update follows on our previous releases of adult stem cell success stories from the first half of 2008, as well as from 2007 and 2006,[1] and our pamphlet with stories and pictures of patients successfully treated with adult stem cells.[2]
http://www.frc.org/insight/adult-stem-cell-success-stories-2008-update-july-december
Background
Advances in science, medicine, and technology may hold promises of improved health and well-being, but may also devalue human life and human dignity. Stem cells, cloning, genetic engineering, and other new technologies need to be evaluated carefully within both a scientific and an ethical framework. Family Research Council opposes research that destroys, harms, or manipulates an embryonic human being. However, we vigorously support research and therapies using "adult" stem cells (such as from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood), which is not ethically problematic and has already resulted in useful therapies in human patients. FRC opposes all forms of human cloning, whether "reproductive" to bring an infant to term, or "therapeutic," to destroy the cloned embryo for experiments. FRC believes that good science is also ethical science, and supports biotechnologies that advance scientific knowledge and medical treatments, while valuing all human life and maintaining human dignity. http://www.frc.org/life--bioethics#stem_cells
Alfie, Chantelle and the sheer madness of sex education that teaches nothing about morality
16th February 2009
MELANIE PHILLIPS WRITING IN THE DAILY MAIL (UK)
The story of 13-year-old Alfie, who reportedly has become a father by 15-year-old Chantelle, is a fable for our tragically degraded times. Most of the attention has focused upon Alfie, who looks about eight and doesn't even understand the word 'financial'. But while Alfie's youth is exceptional, this situation is not.
..But that in turn is part of a wider and deeper breakdown of the fundamental moral understanding that once kept our society together. There has been a profound loss of the very notions of self-restraint and boundaries of behaviour, promoted from the top by narcissistic liberals and funded at the bottom by welfare benefits which cushion people from the consequences of their actions. The liberal intelligentsia pushed the idea that the worst things in the world were stigma and shame. Illegitimacy was accordingly abolished, lone mothers provided with welfare benefits and any talk about the advantages to children from marriage and sexual continence was to be banned as 'judgmental'. With all constraints on behaviour vilified as 'moralising', sex became treated merely as a pleasurable pastime devoid of any spiritual dimension.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1146083/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Alfie-Chantelle-sheer-madness-sex-education-teaches-morality.html#
Is Gardasil a Godsend?
Bob McCoskrie – National Director Family First NZ
Published in Christchurch Press 20 January 2009
The previous government’s commitment to spend $160m over four years on the Gardasil vaccine for cervical cancer may have been more as a result of aggressive marketing by the drug company but without adequate research to warrant the huge taxpayer investment. Two recent articles the New England Journal of Medicine suggest that the vaccines against cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence as to their cost benefit, and their effectiveness in tackling the disease. “Despite great expectations and promising results of clinical trials, we still lack sufficient evidence of an effective vaccine against cervical cancer. With so many essential questions still unanswered, there is good reason to be cautious,” wrote Dr. Charlotte J. Haug, editor of The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association.
...Parents are ultimately being bullied into a medical response to a moral issue – similar to the myth of safe sex which has been misrepresented to teenagers for far too long. We are accepting by default that kids are going to be sexually active at a time that is not suitable or safe for them. It is ironic that we want to legislate to stop boy-racing, eating meat pies at school, and smoking – yet when it comes to at-risk sexual behaviour, we pump false information about supposed “safe-sex” programmes and then want to vaccinate children to protect them from the harms of that behaviour. While we are naturally all supportive of any attempts to fight cancer, parental knowledge or consent is essential when it involves children – especially when the infection is not a communicable disease but a consequence of behaviour – and while the jury is out on its long-term effectiveness.
READ MORE
Prostitution law: a South Sea model?
Andrea Mrozek - MercatorNet.com 28 Nov 08
Canadians should be wary of the much-touted legalised regime in New Zealand. Success is such a slippery term. Particularly, it would seem, when it comes to prostitution. Does success mean getting government job training? Or does it mean getting out of the business altogether? Judging by the New Zealand decriminalisation experience, success means more of the former. And some Canadian activists have gone there to learn, possibly with the intent of importing such measures here.
They could just as easily have gone to Sweden, which has rejected its former easy-going attitude and criminalized the purchase of sex; or to Norway, which has followed suit; or to the Netherlands -- a model for New Zealand’s law -- where the city of Amsterdam is fed up with its image as a prostitution capital and is closing down sex shops; or to practically anywhere in Europe where the presence of large numbers of trafficked women in the sex trade is forcing reviews of legalised regimes, Britain being the latest to reintroduce criminal measures.
Perhaps the Canadians did -- or will -- look at all that. They will certainly need to take it into account when considering the rah-rah reports about legalised prostitution they might hear from certain New Zealanders. They will need to take note of a recent statement from the National Council of Women (NZ) saying it is “alarmed by the passing down of lenient sentences for men convicted of having sex with girls under the age of 18 under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.” “What reform exactly?” they ask, admitting that they supported the law change because they thought it would give protection to those over 18.
In fact, those Canadians with the time, tenacity and possibly insomnia required to read the New Zealand Government’s recent Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the Operation of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 may come away feeling something other than unvarnished enthusiasm for the legalization of prostitution. It contains a guarded optimism about the reforms but is inconclusive about any outright success.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/prostitution_law_a_south_sea_model/
The harmful mistakes of sex education in school
Times Online (UK) Minette Marrin 21 Sep 2008
Those who can, do, according to the old saying, and those who can’t, teach. That has always seemed to me unfair. However, I have come to think that those who can’t teach, teach sex education.
Judged by its results – not a bad way of judging – sex education has been an utter failure. The increase in sex education here in recent years has coincided with an explosion of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease (STD) far worse than anywhere else in Europe. Since the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy was introduced in 1999, the number of girls having abortions has soared. You might well be tempted to argue that sex education causes sexual delinquency.
...When something fails, the usual procedure is to drop it and try something else. With sex education, the worse it gets, the more people cry out for more of it and earlier. ...Sex education – particularly compulsory and standardised sex education – is based on mistaken assumptions. The first is the pervasive assumption of equality – that is, that all six-year-olds or all 11-year-olds or 15-year-olds can discuss the complexities of sex in the same form in the same way. That’s nonsense.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4795056.ece
Obama's Abortion Extremism
by Robert George - The Witherspoon Institute October 14, 2008
Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.
...Obama, unlike even many "pro-choice" legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice. He has referred to a baby conceived inadvertently by a young woman as a "punishment" that she should not endure. He has stated that women's equality requires access to abortion on demand. Appallingly, he wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need. There is certainly nothing "pro-choice" about that.
..It gets worse yet. In an act of breathtaking injustice which the Obama campaign lied about until critics produced documentary proof of what he had done, as an Illinois state senator Obama opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist's unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability. This legislation would not have banned any abortions.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.10.14_George_Robert_Obama's%20Abortion%20Extremism_.xml
Permissive laws, permissive behaviour
Mercatornet.com 21 Oct 08
The research shows that legalising same-sex marriage will increase prevalence of homosexuality, says a psychologist
An accumulation of research from around the world finds that societies which endorse homosexual behavior increase the prevalence of homosexuality in those societies. The legalization of same-sex marriage—which is being considered by voters in several US states—is the ultimate in societal endorsement and will result in more individuals living a homosexual lifestyle.
Extensive research from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the United States reveals that homosexuality is primarily environmentally induced. Specifically, social and/or family factors, as well as permissive environments which affirm homosexuality, play major environmental roles in the development of homosexual behavior.
Social and cultural norms, as well as legal regulations, influence human behavior including sexual behavior. So not surprisingly, as the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly pro-homosexual—socially, politically, and legally—they have experienced an upward trend in the number of individuals engaging in homosexual behavior. That trend will continue if we move beyond mere tolerance of homosexual behavior (which is appropriate) to formally honoring it by legalizing same-sex marriage.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/permissive_laws_permissive_behaviour/
Happily Never After: New PTC Study Reveals TV Favors Non-Marital Sex
The Parents Television Council released a new study, Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television , which revealed that broadcast networks depict sex in the context of marriage as either non-existent or burdensome while showing positive depictions of extra-marital or adulterous sexual relationships with alarming frequency.
Across the broadcast networks, the new PTC report found that verbal references to non-marital sex outnumbered references to sex in the context of marriage by nearly 3 to 1, and scenes depicting or implying sex between non-married partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1.
"These study results suggest that many in Hollywood are actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner. Even more troubling than the marginalization of marriage and glorification of non-marital sex on television is TV's recent obsession with outr? sexual expression. Children and teens are now exposed to a host of sexual behaviors that less than a generation ago would have been considered off-limits for broadcast television," said PTC President Tim Winter. READ MORE
READ REPORT
Let kids be kids
Bob McCoskrie - published in latest issue of Investigate Magazine
A school principal recently said that the banning of physical games like bullrush and murder-ball is bubble-wrapping boys in a ‘feminised’ school system. He’s not encouraging brawls or fights, just physicality.. The recent case of a school banning birthday cakes because of obesity concerns shows just how far this ‘risk-averse’ approach is infiltrating into our schools – affecting both boys and girls.
..The cotton wool culture is denying the child’s right to be a child. Playing freely helps kids learn to follow and understand rules, and resolve disputes. It seems ironic that at the same time that we are wrapping our kids in cotton wool and banning tag in the playground, we are consumed with concern about our kids getting too fat.
READ MORE
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters
Fatherhood Foundation Australia
21 Reasons Why Gender Matters has 34 authors and contributors some of whom come from the USA like noted academic Dr Judith Reisman and well known author Dale O'Leary. Three of the authors are former homosexuals. Many others are noted Academics. The document is both well argued and compassionate and will prove a valuable resource for counselors and researchers. 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters has also had contributions from 5 medical doctors and a whole host of leaders and researchers' from within the Australian marriage and family friendly men's and fathers movement.
With 178 referenced footnotes and 34 authors, 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters has been released to the Family movement world wide as a resource document to be placed on family friendly web sites, printed out and used for the greater good of families around the world.
http://www.gendermatters.org.au/Home.html
PDF downloads of 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters are available at the website. http://www.gendermatters.org.au/Home_files/21%20Reasons%20Why%20Gender%20Matters%28low%20res%29.pdf
Family ‘diversity’ unpacked
Dale O’Leary is the author of The Gender Agenda and One Man, One Woman: A Catholic’s Guide to Defending Marriage.
MercatorNet 9 July 2008
To pretend that all families are equal denies the truth of the child’s experience... The diversity troops want to force educators, students, and parents to pretend that there is no difference between a family consisting of a husband and wife and their children, and other arrangements such as a family shattered by death or divorce, the situation of a single parent, or same-sex couples who have acquired children by artificial reproduction or adoption.
There are, in reality, huge differences. ...with children acquired by same-sex couples; they have by definition been made permanently and purposefully fatherless or motherless. The adults who did this expect to be applauded for their courage. They want the world to pretend that this is just “diversity” when in fact they have deprived their own children -- children they love and who love them --with something essential: a parent of the opposite sex. These parents are deeply offended when the school treats images of father/mother families as the norm. They think that if the school promotes “diversity” of family forms their children won’t notice they don’t have a parent of each sex. They are fooling themselves. The children know, but they also know they can’t mention it. Unlike the child whose parent dies, divorces, or never marries, these children are deprived not only of a parent, but also of the right to grieve their deprivation. They must pretend. The promoters of “diversity” are demanding that we join in the pretence – that we also betray these children.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/family_diversity_unpacked/
Sexualisation of Children (Aust)
Channel 9 Sunday programme June 22, 2008
Bras for four year olds, soft porn music videos during children's viewing times, dolls dressed as prostitutes, 14 year old fashion models, billboards for longer lasting sex. This is the world the contemporary Australian child grows up in and a Senate inquiry has asked this question: are our children being psychologically damaged by premature sexualisation? The Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the media has heard submissions from parents, psychologists and academics and most agree this is a trend that is having a detrimental effect. The Sunday program reviews the evidence presented and examines the strategies suggested to curb the disturbing trend.
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_2483.asp
Art or not, it's still exploitation
Steve Biddulph is a psychologist and the author of Raising Babies.
The Age (Australia) May 28, 2008
It is astonishing that the debate over Bill Henson's photographs has been framed as art versus pornography, as if these were mutually exclusive, tidy categories that settle the matter once and for all. And as if art somehow excuses us from moral behaviour. The real issue is exploitation. That is also the issue in pedophilia. Children's bodies are not always harmed by pedophiles, their minds almost always are. We are repulsed by pedophiles because they impose adult sexuality onto children who become depersonalised objects for gratification.
..Tens of thousands of parents now deal with the tensions in their daughters and sons as they struggle with self-image concerns they rarely had a generation ago, and teens themselves have to deal with the assumption that they will have sex long before they feel emotionally ready. This is a media-created problem, and art is just another media, though one that we might hope was more creative and less harmful. It seems idiotic to worry about our "freedoms" when children going to primary school routinely view ads for penis enlargers and brothels towering over our suburban shopping centres. To come out of sexual prudery is one thing, to be swamped in sexual pressure is as limiting and oppressive in the other direction.
..Artists, libertarians and parents, need to think beyond their own egos and wishes, because children actually matter more.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/art-or-not-its-still-exploitation/2008/05/27/1211654026964.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Video Game Violence and Public Policy
David Walsh, Ph.D. National Institute on Media and the Family 2001
Concern about violent video and computer games is based on the assumption that they contribute to aggression and violence among young players. That conclusion was originally based on the extensive body of research about the effects of television violence on children's behavior. Prominent organizations like the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association have all concluded that the scientific evidence shows a cause-effect relationship between television violence and aggression among the children and youth who watch it. Based on this research, many social scientists have hypothesized that we should expect video games to have an even greater impact for the following four reasons.
1. Children are more likely to imitate the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games the player is often required to take the point of view of the shooter or perpetrator.
2. Video games by their very nature require active participation rather than passive observation.
3. Repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral rehearsal for violent activity.
4. Rewards increase learning, and video games are based on a reward system.
While the research base conducted on video games is small compared to that conducted on television, early results are showing that the concern is indeed warranted. Anderson & Bushman have conducted a meta-analysis of 35 different studies of violent video games (2001). A meta-analysis is a type of study in which researchers analyze the results of other studies to see if there are similar patterns of results; Anderson and Bushman showed that there is a consistent pattern of results in five areas.
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/walsh.html
Why We Whisper - The Economic Costs of Sin
Chuck Colson - Breakpoint May 2, 2008
Imagine the following social experiment: You divide up Americans into two groups. Those who agreed to live by traditional moral values live in certain states. Those who reject traditional values take up residence in other states that would allow them to do whatever they pleased, morally speaking.
After 20 years, which states would be better off—economically speaking? The traditional values states would be far better off, because the liberal states would be spending $500 billion dollars every year dealing with the economic costs of their moral decisions.
Senator Jim DeMint and David Woodward outline those costs in their book, titled: Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It's Wrong. As the authors note, "As elected officials and judges continue to throw traditions overboard from the ship of state," conspicuously absent from the political debate "is the mounting cost in dollars [and] debt."
http://www.informz.net/pfm/archives/archive_595466.html
Giving kids our worst shot
MercatorNet - Carolyn Moynihan 20 April 2007
Do we really want to go down the path of vaccinating children against deficits of moral intelligence and willpower?
Launched nine months ago with the blessing of the United States Federal Drug Administration, Merck's long-heralded remedy for cervical cancer has been predictably controversial. Any new vaccine is going to raise safety concerns, but one designed to prevent a sexually transmitted disease while targeting young girls, as Gardasil does, had family values groups on high alert. Any element of compulsion would be strongly contested.
....Gardasil is controversial not only because it is new and untried on wide scale, but because it is different to other childhood vaccines. Most are aimed at diseases easily spread in schools: measles, mumps and whooping cough, for example. The genital human papillomavirus (HPV) that Gardisil targets is sexually transmitted. It is a disease eminently avoidable given a good human standard of behaviour. Gardasil therefore represents a new departure in medicine, where vaccines are used to protect people from the consequences of poor behaviour.
....But why stop at sexual behaviour? Alcohol and drug abuse produce nearly as big a social burden as sexual promiscuity. No wonder then that scientists in the US are said to be in the final stages of developing a vaccine against nicotine addiction, with cocaine and other drugs not far behind. If young people are going to experiment with these things, why not addiction-proof the kids when they are 12? All of them.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/giving_kids_our_worst_shot
Woman Becomes Pregnant - Alert the Press!
Jessica Cantelon - Townhall.com April 3, 2008
Born in Hawaii, thirty-four-year-old Thomas Beatie lives with his wife Nancy in the town of Bend in mountainous central Oregon. After several years of marriage, Thomas and Nancy are excited to be expecting their first child, a little girl. But if you’re assuming that Nancy is the pregnant one, you’re wrong. It’s Thomas. Put the words “pregnant man” together, and you will be pretty quick to create a small media frenzy. Thomas is no exception. A shirtless picture of him looking contemplative—complete with facial hair and protruding belly—is making quite the buzz on the web. Even Oprah jumped on board by having him on her show Thursday.
If Thomas’ situation were a medical phenomenon that doctor’s couldn’t explain, it might warrant some attention. But this is no medical mystery, simply because Thomas is not really a man. “He” is a biological woman—a lesbian once named Tracy—who decided several years ago to undergo breast removal surgery and take male hormones to grow facial hair. Legally Thomas is a man, but with reproductive organs that are still fully female. Finish unraveling the gender-bending layers, and what sort of news story are you left with? “Woman becomes pregnant.”
Big deal. But the media are eating this up because it’s a freak show.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JessicaCantelon/2008/04/03/woman_becomes_pregnant_-_alert_the_press!?page=full&comments=true
Evidence points to social cost of not being able to afford own house
Bob McCoskrie - National Director Family First NZ
NZ Herald February 25, 2008
The debate on home ownership has tended to come from a fiscal perspective - whether the cost of owning a home is out of reach for many families of middle to low income. Since 1991, home ownership rates in New Zealand have fallen from 74 per cent to 67 per cent and most notably for the those in their twenties and thirties - young Kiwi families. But is there also a societal cost of making home ownership a diminishing prospect? Does it really matter whether we own or rent the house - as long as we have a shelter over our head?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10494275
Parents Deserve the Right To Raise Their Children
Bob McCoskrie – National Director Family First NZ
(published in Dominion Post 13 February 2008)
Politicians, with the support of the UN, Children’s Commissioner and Youth Law Project to name a few, have sought to increase children’s rights without considering the vital role of parents.
On one hand, a parent is responsible for the actions of their child in the community and school, but at the same time their role is being undermined by growing pressure on mothers to work and enroll their child in daycare, criminalising effective methods of parental correction, providing the Independent Youth Benefit, provision of contraception and abortion without the consent or even knowledge of the parents, and the recent example of a school dobbing in a parent to CYF for giving their child a light smack.
The huge irony is that the more the state undermines the authority of parents, the less responsibility parents will take for their children. If the government wants parents to be responsible parents, they must firstly respect their authority.
A child’s rights should never be at the expense of the parental right to nurture, protect and set boundaries in a family setting. Rights of children have been shifted from simply (and rightly) protecting vulnerable children to granting them rights that are destructive to them, to good parenting practice, and to the welfare of the whole family in which they are being raised.
READ MORE
Young people duped by a culture of degrading sexual attitudes
By Maree Crabbe - Online Opinion (Aust) 15 November 2007
The non-custodial sentencing last week of eight young men who humiliated and sexually assaulted a young woman has generated a strong public response. A Children's Court judge convicted seven of the eight youths after they pleaded guilty to making a film in Werribee last year that showed them forcing a 17-year-old girl to perform sex acts with two of the boys while others spat on her and set her hair on fire.
..For the last five years I have been running a sexual violence prevention program in secondary schools in Warrnambool. The program is designed to explore with students what healthy relationships might look and feel like. Too often, both male and female students display attitudes that suggest that women are things of disrespect and humiliation, and that a woman's role in sexual relationships is about fulfilling men's desires and wishes. ...The attitudes of the young women and men with whom I work reflect a culture where women are often devalued, degraded, dismissed and seen as objects. Advertising and media regularly present women as sexual objects to be looked at and used.
Pornography, the ultimate objectification of women as mere bodies for men's sexual pleasure (and often, it should be said, violation), has moved from the fringes into the mainstream and studies suggest that growing numbers of young men are using the Internet to get access to it. Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg told a conference earlier this week that girls who were just beginning puberty were copying sex acts, including group and anal sex, that they see on the Internet, believing that such behaviour is normal. When women are not seen as fully human and deserving of respect, violence against them is easier to commit. In Australia, about 1 in 3 young women will experience sexual assault by the time they're 18.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6633
Child sexualisation is no game
Online Opinion Australia 26 September 2007
It’s time to correct the single most common misunderstanding about the sexualisation of children. Recently, Pamela Bone became the latest in a long line of commentators to suggest that those concerned about premature sexualisation are tilting at windmills. She wrote: & little girls have been tottering around in their mothers' high heels, smearing on lipstick and nagging to have their ears pierced ever since these things were invented. Most don't know the meaning of the word sex. They are merely playing at being grown up. (“Sexploitation campaign masks forum’s agenda”, The Canberra Times, August 27, 2007) This kind of creative “dressing up” play has nothing to do with the concerns articulated by the many people speaking out against the increasing sexualisation of children. They are worried about the major shift in marketing to children in the last decade and the impacts that shift may have on children’s healthy development.
The sexualisation of children stems from the fact that many of the same corporations that create and sell popular culture and fashions to teenage girls and adult women are now competing to capture girl-children’s allegiance to their brands. In doing so, they aim to build both an immediate and a future market for their products. But premature sexualisation has risks for children. The broadest risk is that a premature interest in “sexy” appearance and behaviour may distract children’s attention from more traditional childhood activities that lay a stronger and more balanced foundation for their later development as teenagers and adults.
The second risk is related to body image. Studies show that girls as young as six and seven are now concerned about their physical appearance, particularly their weight, and that some are beginning to develop “disordered eating behaviours”. This is not clearly related to childhood obesity. In one recent study of girls aged nine to 12, half wanted to be thinner but only 15 per cent were in any way overweight by medical criteria. There is also some evidence that children are developing severe eating disorders - usually anorexia - at earlier ages. Eating disorders are difficult to treat, and can be fatal. Medical experts and psychologists are extremely concerned and this apparent trend is now being carefully monitored.
The third risk of premature sexualisation is that it may encourage sexual predation on children. Those who sexually abuse children remain wholly responsible for their abhorrent actions. But there is a risk that publicly displaying sexualised images of children undermines the existing social prohibition against seeing children as sexually interesting.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6422
Science, myths and same-sex parenting
Mercator Net - 2 Oct 2007 - Dale O'Leary is an award-winning American journalist with a special interest in marriage and gender issues.
Research shows that children do best when raised by a mother and father. But what about those studies that show they do just as well with two mommies or daddies?
What is best for the children? The legal battles over marriage frequently revolve around this very question. Gay activists argue that many same-sex couples already have children, and these children need the protections afforded by legal recognition of their relationship. To support this line of argument, they present the courts with numerous studies claiming to prove that children raised by persons with same-sex attractions (SSA) are just as happy, healthy, and academically successful as children raised by their married biological parents.
In her book Children as Trophies? European sociologist Patricia Morgan reviews 144 published studies on same-sex parenting and concludes that it fosters homosexual behaviour, confused gender roles, and increased likelihood of serious psychological problems later in life. A French parliamentary report on the rights of children decried the "flagrant lack of objectivity" in much of the pro-gay research in this area, and concluded with the warning that "we do not yet know all the effects on the construction of the adopted child's psychological identity. As long as there is uncertainty, however small, is it not in the best interest of the child to apply the precautionary principle, as is done in other domains?"
Read more http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/science_myths_and_same_sex_parenting
A Lost Art: Instilling Respect
Patricia Dalton - Washington Post September 11, 2007
There's been a fundamental change in family life, and it has played out over the years in my office. Teachers, pediatricians and therapists like me are seeing children of all ages who are not afraid of their parents. Not one bit. Not of their power, not of their position, not of their ability to apply standards and enforce consequences.
I am not advocating authoritarian or abusive parental behavior, which can do untold damage. No, I am talking about a feeling that was common to us baby boomers when we were kids. One of my friends described it this way: "All my mother had to do was shoot me a look." I knew exactly what she was talking about. It was a look that stopped us in our tracks -- or got us moving. And not when we felt like it. Now.
These days, that look seems to have been replaced by a feeble nod of parental acquiescence -- and an earnest acknowledgment of "how hard it is to be a kid these days."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091001174.html
Motherhood is a day job too
Francis Phillips - MercatorNet 21 September 2007
Review of Mothering: A Spiritual and Practical Approach - by Anna Melchior
That grand old war-horse, Sir Winston Churchill, once said, "There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained." Despite these wise words of an elder statesman, it has been the aim of the Labour government in the UK during the ten years of Tony Blair's premiership to get as many mothers as possible into full-time paid work, lured by promises of cr?ches for babies, nursery places for toddlers and 'wrap-around care' for schoolchildren.
So when will government ministers grasp the obvious, and recognise that society benefits from healthy, stable families and that families benefit when mothers raise their own children, especially when they are young? Anna Melchior's thoughtful book is not a political programme, though it has huge political implications; it is a well-argued defence of the most important work that mothers engage in: raising happy, well-balanced children on whose adult emotional maturity society depends. As the author remarks: motherhood is "awesome".
Challenging feminists with their own terminology, she describes as "radical feminism" the decision to spend unhurried time (rather than carefully structured "quality" time) with the children you love. To those women who have been led to believe that staying at home is boring and does not stretch them, she replies that motherhood is not wasting one's genius, it is about "using your genius" in "loving, educating and managing" your children and household. It is mothers, not child-minders or state nannies, that transmit the consistent security and love without which children cannot develop into well-adjusted adults.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/motherhood_is_a_day_job_too
Extended Childcare No Miracle For Children
Bob McCoskrie - National Director Family First NZ
Published in the NZ Herald September 10, 2007
The impending opening of the first 24-hour childcare centre in Auckland, while well-intentioned, is simply an expansion of the most untested social experiment we have done on children. As child expert and author Steve Biddulph says, childcare is too much, too early and too long for our children. Yet our Government seems totally focused on pouring millions of taxpayers' money into encouraging parents to leave their children for longer periods of time in daycare.
It has been argued that 24 hour childcare is simply a reflection of changing working patterns and family arrangements. Parents deserve ‘time out’ and don’t always have access to relatives or friends to care for their children during working hours or ‘date nights’. Yet is childcare the solution? Is this what’s best for children, or is this more about convenience for parents? Why does the government pay millions for professionals to care for our children, but offer no tax breaks or financial recognition for parents who do it?
READ MORE "Extended Childcare No Miracle for Children"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10462594&pnum=0
Tips for Parents to Protect Family Values from School Tampering
LifeSiteNews.com September 7, 2007
With the school year getting underway, the law firm of Mauck & Baker has prepared a list of opportunities and rights to inform parents how to help reinforce the values taught in their homes in the public schools.
According to John Mauck, a partner at Mauck & Baker, these ten simple preventative measures can prevent legal clashes between parents and administrators:
1. Participate in school committees. Parents have strategic opportunities to serve as "gatekeepers" to reform or enrich curricula in family supportive ways.
2. Find out what will be taught to your child before it is taught. Be vigilant about movies in class, since some districts allow vulgar, even R-rated films to be shown in class without parental notification.
3. Insist that faith expression be respected in homework assignments. Students can use many types of assignments to discuss their faith, for example, writing a book report from the Bible, Torah, or Koran.
4. Work with -not against- educators. Developing a relationship with your child's teacher will make it easier for your concerns to be heard.
5. Enourage involvement in extra-curricular clubs. Student groups centered on faith, race, or other particular interests can make a tremendous difference in a student's maturation and school experience and can be more openly expressed in that context.
6. Teach about sex at home. Ask for copies of all sex- education materials and assignments. Object if you feel they are offensive or undermine values taught at home. Help your child understand how differing views of sexuality derive from the divergent social and spiritual ideas about the value of a human being.
7. Examine teachings on homosexuality carefully. Make sure students at age appropriate levels are allowed to fully and fairly consider all view points and explain your views to your child particularly if the public school presentation is unbalanced.
8. Review textbooks and Assignments. For example, if you feel they omit or distort important aspects of American history or give an unbalanced view of life through assigned reading, raise questions.
9. Never tolerate Discrimination. Ask your child what occurs in class. Not only racial discrimination but discrimination based upon faith, disability, gender, obesity or income should not be permitted in the classroom or curriculum.
10. Know where to get help. Talk to the principal if you think your child's teacher is distorting values you wish your child to have. If the principal is unresponsive contact members of the school board with your concerns
READ MORE: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/sep/07090703.html
BEBO – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
By Mark Campbell
With an estimated 2/3 of young people in NZ having a Bebo sight, parents would do well to take notice of this recent online community. Styled similar to MySpace, Face book and other personal website/ blogsites, Bebo has captured the interest of young people with its easy to use format and ability to simply upload music, photos and videos. It surpasses Myspace in preference in NZ and several other developed nations. You can share your details with others and build a huge online community connecting with friends and acquaintances from anywhere in the world.
As a youth worker I have mixed feelings about Bebo because of its potential to be a great tool for connecting with friends or an avenue for the more unsavory abuses of the internet, including ONLINE PREDATORS, EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND THEMES, BULLYING AND ABUSE, PERSONAL PHOTOS.
READ MORE
Canada ponders polygamy
MercatorNet (Margaret Somerville) 20 August 2007
Now that same-sex marriage has been legalised, it seems inconsistent to prosecute Canada's polygamists.
Currently, in Canada, polygamy is in the news. The Canadian Criminal Code prohibits polygamy, but it is being practiced in some communities and the question is whether the people involved should be prosecuted. Recently, the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s nationally distributed newspapers, published an editorial entitled "No to polygamy". It’s relevant that the Globe was a major voice in support of same-sex marriage in the public debate that culminated in its legal recognition in Canada. The core argument in the editorial reads as follows:
"In no way has gay marriage lent legitimacy to polygamy. Gay marriage was legalised by the courts in part because it so resembled heterosexual marriage; for instance, it has two people. The courts endorsed gay marriage only after a large cultural shift had occurred in the arts, in the workplace and in neighbourhoods& No such groundswell has occurred in the case of polygamy... It would be very odd if the Charter were read to require Canadians to give up their defence of core values; the document is supposed to encapsulate the country’s core values."
Are the Globe editorialists correct that gay marriage hasn’t lent legitimacy to polygamy? Does gay marriage, as claimed, resemble monogamous heterosexual marriage more than polygamy does? Is the "two people" union the distinguishing and most important characteristic of marriage? Does a cultural shift to recognise the wrongs of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation translate to approval of same-sex marriage? If so, why wouldn’t recognising the wrongs of breach of freedom of religion do the same for polygamy? If, as same-sex marriage proponents successfully argued, marriage is simply a social construct not based on any core biological reality, and if what constitutes a family is just a matter of adults’ personal preferences, why should polygamy be excluded as an option?
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/canada_ponders_polygamy/
No-Fault Divorce at Fault for Divorce Increase
A REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH, 1995-2006 By Prof. Douglas W. Allen and Maggie Gallagher
Douglas Allen is a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University. Maggie Gallagher is President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Between 1960 and 1980, most states in the US adopted some version of no-fault divorce - and the U.S. divorce rate roughly doubled.
Gallagher examined all the empirical research since 1995 that looked at the impact of no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates. She found that 17 of 24 recent empirical studies find that the introduction of no-fault divorce laws increased the divorce rate. Most studies estimate no-fault divorce increased divorce rates on the order of 5 to 30 percent.
Gallagher also notes that couples respond to the increased divorce risk from no-fault divorce law by delaying or forgoing marriages altogether. This might be considered a positive outcome if unilateral divorce merely discouraged divorce-prone couples from marrying. But the real result is that couples are choosing to cohabitate and have children out of wedlock rather than enter into a union that can be so easily broken.
READ MORE
Paid care for babies a pale imitation of parental love
Sydney Morning Herald Opinion
Steve Biddulph is the author of a series of best-selling books on childhood and parenting.
...In Britain, the Blair government's attempt at being mother-friendly consisted of building a vast number of new day-care centres. But the news out of Britain in May was stunning. Almost a quarter - 22 per cent - of the country's nursery places are unfilled. Day care has gone out of fashion. British families are making the sacrifices that enable them to stay home when their babies are small.
The reason is not hard to find. A slew of research, from large and well designed studies, has found that too much day care harms under threes in several ways. Lacking one-to-one care, the fine interactions between a loving parent or family member and a baby or toddler do not happen. Group care by paid strangers is a dulled and muted version of the love babies are meant to receive around the clock. Quality care - from university-trained carers, stable staff in high ratios - is helpful, but does not eliminate the damage.
Care-raised babies don't all become psychopaths, but they are measurably more anxious, aggressive and disobedient as they move through preschool and the primary grades. We even know why this is so. The stress hormone cortisol, measured in a baby's saliva, doubles if they are placed in care, and it is still elevated even months after they start. It also rises as the day goes on, whereas it falls away in home-raised babies. Australian studies have replicated this. Elevated cortisol suppresses growth, including brain growth, and reduces immunity.
...babies don't combine well with anything except total devotion. Parents know these years are precious and fragile, and not to be messed with. Politicians and big business are the last to wake up.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/paid-care-for-babies-a-pale-imitation-of-parental-love/2007/07/15/1184438146584.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
The Facts Behind Cohabitation
civitas - The Institute for the Study of Civil SocietyFamilies have changed in the last several decades. Instead of getting married, many people are living together or ‘cohabiting’. Some of these cohabitating couples eventually get married. Many of them
break up. Very few stay together as cohabitants for long. Is cohabitation a good alternative to marriage? Is it a good way to ‘test out’ the relationship? Many researchers have looked into these
questions. In her book Marriage-Lite Patricia Morgan reviews the research into the results of cohabitation, compared with marriage, and finds that marriage is much more than ‘just a piece of paper’.
Marriage fundamentally changes the nature of a relationship, leading to many striking differences.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/cohabitation.pdf
Abortion Trends are Tragedy for Our Teenagers
Bob McCoskrie – National Director – Family First NZ
(Published in the Otago Daily Times 25 June 2007)
The abortion figures for 2006 released by Statistics NZ continue to paint a terrible picture for our teenagers. Since 1991, the number of 11-14 year olds having an abortion has increased by 144%. The number of abortions for 15-19 year olds has increased by 74%. Each week, almost 80 teenagers have an abortion, and represent almost a quarter of all abortions performed in NZ. In 2004, our MP’s recently voted down an amendment to the Care of Children Bill that would have meant that parents were notified if their teenage daughter was pregnant and seeking an abortion, except in exceptional circumstances.
Researchers at Baruch College at City University of New York studied the records of teen abortions and births for the two years before a similar Texas law took effect in 2000 and for the three years afterwards. After the state enacted the parental notification law, abortion rates dropped for girls ages 15 through 18, even though the 18-year-olds were not subject to the law. But the drop was more pronounced among the younger girls. Their rates fell 11 to 20 percent more than the rate among the 18-year-olds did.
The bottom line is that whether a person is pro- or anti-abortion, we probably all agree that it is not in the best interests of a young teenage girl to become pregnant and be forced into making the decision of whether to keep or abort the baby. Yet, we are doing little to prevent this scenario happening, and teenagers are not being informed of the research surrounding the possible effects of having an abortion.
READ MORE
Who’s rights are we talking about: legalised prostitution
OnlineOpinion.com.au 25 June 2007
At the beginning of the 21st century governments worldwide are confronted with an unprecedented escalation of the global sex industry. An intrinsic component of this new world sex market is the trafficking of millions of people, mainly women and girls, for commercial sexual exploitation.
The US Government has intimated that after drug dealing, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world, with the majority of people trafficked for sexual exploitation. Increasingly governments are opting for legalisation of prostitution as the solution to this crisis. Uncritiqued, the arguments proffered by pro-prostitution advocates for treating prostitution as “work” appear persuasive. They argue that a legally regulated industry will contain industry expansion, eliminate organised crime and help eradicate sex trafficking and child prostitution.
... But just whose rights are being protected when women and girls become just another sought-after consumer good in the market place?
In 1984 the Victorian Labor Government under John Cain introduced legalised prostitution, one of the first governments in the world to do so. Victoria’s experience allows us to put the spotlight on the real consequences, particularly for women, of treating prostitution as a job just like any other. Not only does legalisation not control prostitution’s harms, it produces many of its own making. The purported benefits of for women in prostitution of legitimising the trade are a myth. State endorsement of prostitution greatly expands the legal, as well as illegal, sectors of the industry, with the latter four to five times that of the regulated trade.
Read More: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6011
Benefits of Home Ownership Not Just Economic
Bob McCoskrie – National Director Family First
(Published in Christchurch Press)
The debate on home ownership has tended to come from a fiscal perspective – whether the cost of owning a home is out of reach for many middle- to low-income families. Since 1991, home ownership rates in New Zealand have fallen from 74% to 67%, and most notably for the twenty and thirty-year-old age groups – the young kiwi families.
But is there also a societal cost of making home ownership a diminishing prospect? Does it really matter whether we own or rent the house – as long as we have a shelter over our head?
READ MORE
Nigel Latta: Relax and enjoy kids
Clinical psychologist Nigel Latta's latest book "How to Have Kids and Stay Sane" - 3 June 07
How did raising kids ever get so complicated? Our parents had it far easier than us. Oh sure, they had little things to worry about - like the Cold War, Rogernomics and carless days - but generally speaking, parenting was a doddle back then. For one thing, self-esteem hadn't been invented, which made their job much easier. Instead of worrying about whether or not we had enough of it, they just got on with things. Conveniently, they weren't burdened with guilt if they smacked our bottoms. Politicians left children's bottoms alone in those days, which seemed to work quite well.
Another reason our parents had it easier is that they had to look after only their own social life. It wasn't their responsibility to make sure that we had one as well. They didn't have to arrange "play dates", because we simply walked to our friends' houses. What's more, after-school activities were much easier to schedule, because there were none. After-school activities consisted of whatever you wanted to do, as long as you didn't get into trouble.
Read More: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10443335&pnum=0
Facts, not flattery, about same-sex attraction
Ad Hoc Committee on Homosexuality and Scientific Research - Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Blithe assertions about the gay lifestyle are seldom backed up by scientific studies -- and when they are, the studies are weak. Who helps you: someone who fails to tell you the truth or someone who does tell you the truth? The former may make you feel better; they may soothe and flatter, but the truth is more loving. It will help you live a healthier, happier and more fulfilled life.
Defenders and promoters of homosexuality try to cover up the scientifically documented serious promiscuity, inability to maintain sexual fidelity, partner abuse and psychological and medical illnesses associated with the lifestyle. Also, they tell persons with same-sex attractions (SSA) that "It's genetic," "You were born that way," or worse "God made you gay."
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/facts_not_flattery_about_same_sex_attraction/?view
Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences http://www.americanvalues.org/html/r-wmm.html
Sixteen of the top scholars on family life have re-issued a joint report on the importance of marriage. First released in 2002, the newly revised edition highlights five new themes in marriage-related research.
Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences was produced by a politically diverse and interdisciplinary group of leading family scholars, chaired by W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and includes psychologist John Gottman, best selling author of books about marriage and relationships, Linda Waite, coauthor of The Case for Marriage, Norval Glenn and Steven Nock, two of the top family social scientists in the country, William Galston, a Clinton Administration domestic policy advisor, and Judith Wallerstein, author of the national bestseller The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.
Since 1960, the proportion of children who do not live with their own two parents has risen sharply—from 19.4% to 42.3% in the Nineties. This change has been caused, first, by large increases in divorce, and more recently, by a big jump in single mothers and cohabiting couples who have children but don't marry. For several decades the impact of this dramatic change in family structure has been the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. No longer. These 26 findings are now widely agreed upon.
Five New Themes
* In addition to reviewing research on family topics covered in the first edition of the report, Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition highlights five new themes in marriage-related research.
* Even though marriage has lost ground in the minority communities in recent years, marriage has not lost its value in these communities.
* An emerging line of research indicates that marriage benefits poor Americans, and Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds, even though these Americans are now less likely to get and stay married.
* Marriage seems to be particularly important in civilizing men, turning their attention away from dangerous, antisocial, or self-centered activities and towards the needs of a family.
* Beyond its well-known contributions to adult health, marriage influences the biological functioning of adults and children in ways that can have important social consequences.
* The relationship quality of intimate partners is related to both their marital status and, for married adults, to the degree to which these partners are committed to marriage.
Giving girls the wrong message
MercatorNet 13 April 2007
Graham Leo is the Principal of Emmanuel College on the Gold Coast of Australia
An Australian principal objects to being press-ganged into a scheme to vaccinate schoolgirls against the HPV virus.
In the early 1990s an Australian medical research team headed by Dr Ian Frazer at the University of Queensland made an amazing breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Dr Frazer's team created a vaccine for one of the most aggressive cancers amongst women. We are now all familiar with it as Gardasil, the name given it by Merck, the drug company behind the project.
...The genital HPV in question can only be transmitted through sexual contact. Therefore, the vaccine is only relevant for people who have sexual contact outside of marriage, or for those who marry partners who have had such contact and who might bring the virus into the marriage relationship. Aside from the possibility of being assaulted by an HPV carrier, no one else who leads a sexually moral life needs to be at risk of this particular cause of cervical cancer. Incidentally, although the vaccine protects against cervical cancer, it does not protect women from many of the other common STDs, such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea, hepatitis B or HIV/AIDS.
READ MORE: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/giving_girls_the_wrong_message/
ALSO: Parents divided over mandates for HPV vaccine
Washington Times 24 May 2007
According to the poll of 1,342 parents, the 44 percent who agree with mandatory state HPV-vaccination laws were outnumbered by 30 percent who described themselves as neutral on the matter and 26 percent who oppose.
The study was released as the public-interest group Judicial Watch said three deaths were related to the lone HPV vaccine on the market, Merck & Co.'s Gardasil, and that there were 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the inoculations based on its analysis of documents it obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "The FDA adverse-event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "Any state or local government now beset by Merck's lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for young girls ought to take a look at these adverse health reports. It looks as if an unproven vaccine with dangerous side effects is being pushed as a miracle drug." Judicial Watch said one physician's assistant reported that a patient "died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine." Two other reports, on a girl 12 and a young woman 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting. It also said 371 of the 1,637 adverse reactions to the inoculation were serious.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070523-115135-9371r.htm
Choosing Video Games for Kids
Focus on the Family May 2007
As a parent, what do you do when violent video games are atop your child’s list of must-have entertainment? The vast majority of people who play games do so with friends and family. Almost 60 percent of frequent game players play with friends, 33 percent play with siblings and about one-quarter play with their spouse and/or parents.
This trend will only increase. Parents need to make an effort to educate themselves about video games so they can model appropriate choices for their children. Specifically:
* Are there any real benefits to playing video games or is it all detrimental?
* How do you choose family-friendly games?
* What types are there?
* How can you control the way the games are used once they’re in your home?
The content of concern is graphic in nature. Hand-to-hand combat, shoot ’em up and blood-and-guts are just inappropriate for children and desensitize them to violence.
READ MORE: http://www.family.org/entertainment/A000000993.cfm
Does anything work in sex education?
Jennifer Roback Morse is the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, and the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World.
Abstinence education doesn’t work. That was the big hoopla in the American press over the publication of a study by Mathematica, purporting to show that abstinence education programmes don’t work. But with a bit of checking, I found something you are not likely to hear on the evening news. Sex education programmes don’t “work” either.
Read more - http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/does_anything_work_in_sex_education
How to control adults by means of 'children's rights'.
By Lynette Burrows
This article is published by The Human Life Foundation, Inc. New York, in the HUMAN LIFE REVIEW, Vol. XXV, No. 2, Spring 1999, pages 65 - 73. Lynette Burrows is a well-known English educator and journalist. Her latest book, The Fight for the Family, was published in 1998, revised and reprinted in March 1999 by the Family Education Trust, Family Publications, Oxford, England.
When you think about it, the fashionable crusade of 'children's rights' is bound to be anti-family. It is a movement which declares itself to be more interested in the welfare of children than are ordinary parents. It seeks rights and laws for children that neither they, nor their parents, want. It promises to give children legal sanctions against their parents and, in so doing, pits the interests of children against their parents. The inescapable implication is that children are not in safe hands with their own parents and that a whole movement has had to be called into being in order to protect them. It is an innocent-sounding piece of subliminal, anti-family propaganda, advertising the fact that parents are, at best, inadequate and, at worst, hostile to the needs of their children.....
Read more of this excellent article http://www.nkmr.org/english/how_to_control_adults_by_means_%20of_childrens_rights.htm
Virginia Tech Tragedy is a Wake-Up Call to Parents
George Barna - The Barna Group April 23, 2007
Researcher and bestselling author George Barna says the current public debate about the implications of the Virginia Tech tragedy is missing the point. "The animated conversations about gun control, campus security, counseling standards, campus communications, drug abuse and mental health funding do not address the core issue raised by this event. This situation is not primarily a challenge to politicians, educators or police. It’s a dramatic wake-up call to parents."
Barna indicated that he was sympathetic toward the parents of the college student who murdered 31 classmates and faculty before taking his own life. But he also stated that it sometimes takes a crisis to focus attention on important issues that a society must address.
Barna’s studies on parenting and child development led him to offer a series of facts and observations related to the Virginia Tech situation.
By the time an American child is 23 years old, as was the killer in Virginia, he will have seen countless murders among the more than 30,000 acts of violence to which he is exposed through television, movies and video games.
By the age of 23, the average American will have viewed thousands of hours of pornographic images, which diminish the dignity and value of human life.
After nearly a quarter century on earth, the typical American will have listened to hundreds of hours of music that fosters anger, hatred, disrespect for authority, selfishness, and radical independence.
Read More - http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrowPreview&BarnaUpdateID=269
Wrong to smack but right to kill?
UK Telegraph Opinion - Ross Clark 07/11/2004
A ban on smacking, said David Hinchcliffe, the Labour MP who led the calls for such a ban in last week's Commons' debate, "would criminalise hitting children to exactly the same extent as hitting adults. That is equality and children, who are far more fragile and vulnerable than us, deserve nothing less." As it turned out, MPs rejected Mr Hinchcliffe's demand for an outright ban in favour of a compromise that will make it a criminal offence to redden the skin of a child. But even if he had got his way, it would still have been legal to do one thing to children that it is illegal to do to adults: kill them.
In fact, killing children is an activity that Mr Hinchcliffe has gone out of his way to condone. He was in the Commons, too, on April 24, 1990 when, in an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, MPs debated whether to reduce the legal limit for abortion from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 18 weeks. ....David Hinchcliffe and his colleagues should take note that there are a good many of us who believe the real abuse of children is not smacking them when they are naughty but terminating their lives before they have even had a chance to misbehave.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/11/07/do0702.xml
Worst Violence is Abortion - Jim Hopkins
NZ Herald 23 Feb 07
..... But the presence of Sue Bradford's bill requires it to be challenged. Because it is utterly inconsistent to assert that the decision to do a violent thing before a baby is born is a matter of personal choice, but the decision to do a less violent thing after a baby is born is something over which we should have no choice at all.
If it's not okay to beat or smack a baby then it cannot be okay to abort it.
But if aborting a baby before it is born is a matter of choice for half the human race, then a consistent politician must - however reluctantly - give all parents the same right to choose.
Either that or ban both. It has to be one or the other.
But if Sue Bradford's bill passes, abortion will be the only act of reasonable force which anyone caring for our babies can choose to perform. Everything else will be illegal.
This untenable double standard is something we all need to confront.
Read more: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10425293
Why Religion Matters Even More: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability
Patrick F. Fagan - The Heritage Foundation
Over the past decade, considerable research has emerged that demonstrates the benefits of religious practice within society.[1] Religious practice promotes the well-being of individuals, families, and the community. Of particular note are the studies that indicate the benefits of religion to the poor.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Religion/bg1992.cfm
Forgiveness is a powerful tool at Christmas [31 Kb]
Author and Theologian Lewis B Smedes said To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover the prisoner was you.
Justice depends on the effectiveness of the legal system. But offenders also have to deal with their own conscience, the legacy of their life, and their judgement to come. The recent death of Augusto Pinochet reported in this newspaper was rightly titled Judgement Day for Pinochet.
Childrens Needs, not Rights, should be the Focus [30 Kb]
Childrens Needs, not Rights, should be the Focus
Published in the Dominion Post 13 Dec 06
Bob McCoskrie National Director Family First
Parents have every right to be very nervous over recent media reports of cases involving the rise in Childrens Rights.
....A childs rights should never be at the expense of the parental right to nurture, protect and set boundaries in a family setting. Rights of children have been shifted from simply protecting vulnerable children to granting them rights that are destructive to them, to good parenting practice, and to the welfare of the whole family in which they are being raised.
Gays are too proud to confront AIDS, still the real killer
John Heard Sydney Morning Herald Opinion 01 Dec 06
FORGET gay marriage: the real story about homosexual Australians on this World AIDS Day is, once again and shamefully, an HIV/AIDS tragedy.
....It is time, then, that ordinary Australians - whether same-sex attracted like me, or otherwise - stood up and demanded more from leaders and activists. It is time to clear away the politically correct nonsense, to stop focusing on fripperies such as gay marriage and other diversions and start focusing on something that will really assist gay men and the wider community: an intense campaign aimed at HIV/AIDS prevention.
.....Who can blame AIDS officials, however, for their pragmatic allocation of tight resources, especially if the choice is between more eduction for a fool who ignores 25 years of the same and an innocent African child who is at risk of acquiring the illness via hermother?
....Perhaps it is time, in 2006, to encourage the return of a proper sense of personal and collective shame, for the sake of all of us, or at least to insist upon a more public accountability for the private decisions that are too often the cause of such increases in HIV infections. Because, no matter how one looks at these miserable figures and their depressingly familiar reflections in the infection rates of New York City, San Francisco and other Western cities, pride may literally be killing us.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20849414-7583,00.html
The Revolution in Parenthood - The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs
Institute for American Values 2006
Around the world, the two-person, mother-father model of parenthood is being fundamentally challenged.
In Canada, with virtually no debate, the controversial law that brought about samesex marriage quietly included the provision to erase the term “natural parent” across
the board in federal law, replacing it with the term “legal parent.” With that law, the locus of power in defining who a child’s parents are shifts precipitously from civil
society to the state, with the consequences as yet unknown.
In Spain, after the recent legalization of same-sex marriage the legislature changed the birth certificates for all children in that nation to read “Progenitor A” and
“Progenitor B” instead of “mother” and “father.” With that change, the words “mother” and “father” were struck from the first document issued to every newborn by the
state. Similar proposals have been made in other jurisdictions that have legalized same-sex marriage.
In New Zealand and Australia, influential law commissions have proposed allowing children conceived with use of sperm or egg donors to have three legal parents. Yet
neither group addresses the real possibility that a child’s three legal parents could break up and feud over the child’s best interests.
In the United States, courts often must determine who the legal parents are among the many adults who might be involved in planning, conceiving, birthing, and raising
a child. In a growing practice, judges in several states have seized upon the idea of “psychological” parenthood to award legal parent status to adults who are not related
to children by blood, adoption, or marriage. At times they have done so even over the objection of the child’s biological parent. Also, successes in the same-sex marriage
debate have encouraged group marriage advocates who wish to break open the two-person understanding of marriage and parenthood....
Read more
Smacking ban is slap in the face to parents [21 Kb]
Smacking ban is slap in the face to parents
Published in the Christchurch Press
Bob McCoskrie - National Director
Build Good Marriages - Build Good and Safe Societies [42 Kb]
Build Good Marriage - Build Good and Safe Societies
Bob McCoskrie - National Director
Stem-Cell Research Explained
Focus on the Family
Stem cell research is a new and exciting frontier in medical science that is already providing tangible benefits to patients with a variety of diseases and afflictions. Stem cell research can be conducted within an ethical and moral framework, and at the same time provide treatments and cures for suffering patients.
Read more articles - http://www.family.org/socialissues/a000000373.cfm
Abstinence Makes the Mind Work Harder
(Source: Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, "Teenage Sexual Abstinence and Academic Achievement, The Heritage Foundation," August 2005.)
Many health educators dismiss the idea of teaching sexual abstinence until marriage, thinking it leaves teens ignorant and ill prepared to make transitions to adulthood. However, a new study by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., finds just the reverse, documenting that teens who heed the abstinence message-relative to those who do not-are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to attend and graduate from college.
Looking at the rich data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which interviewed a cohort of 14,000 teens in 1994, 1995, and 2001, researchers Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson found consistent and robust correlations between teen virginity and several positive academic outcomes. Most important, by narrowing the comparison among teens to those with identical social background characteristics, the researchers were able to isolate the effects of teen virginity from the effects of socioeconomic differences that might also account for such outcomes.
Controlling for parental education, race, gender, family structure, religiosity, and family income, their multivariate logistic regressions confirmed teen abstinence as a "significant and independent predictor of academic success," being associated with a 40 percent lower rate of high school expulsion, a 50 percent lower rate of dropping out of high school, a 70 percent increase in the probability of attending or graduating from college, and a 66 percent increase in college graduation.
These statistically significant correlations held firm even when girls who had given birth before 18 were excluded from the analysis, evidence that the academic differences were not due to the disruptive effects of non-marital pregnancy and childbearing. The associations also held in tests that controlled for the educational expectations of teens that were 16 and under at the time of the 1994 Add Health follow-up, evidence that abstinence contributes to higher academic outcomes independent of a teen's desire or expectations to attend college.
While not claiming that teen virginity directly causes academic achievement, the researchers nonetheless theorize that virginity both reinforces and reflects the academic capacities and personality traits that contribute to academic success. "Teens who abstain [from sexual relations] will be subject to less emotional turmoil and fewer psychological distractions; this will enable them to better focus on schoolwork." Furthermore, virgin teens "are likely to have greater future orientation, greater impulse control, greater perseverance, greater resistance to peer pressure, and more respect for parental and social values."
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/whitepaper10272005-1.cfm
Losing the right to a mommy and daddy
National Post - Canada 27 Sep 06
"I believe children have the right to a mother and a father, and preferably their biological parents." These words -- I agree with them, and so do the UN Conventions of the Child -- were once the equivalent of saying you believed in peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. But in postmodern societies obsessed with gender equity, as ours has been for the past quarter-century, "mother and father" and "biological parents" have become politically incorrect locutions when joined to "children's rights."
In her report, released Monday across North America and Europe, Marquardt details the ripple effect from emerging reproductive technologies and gender-neutral redefinitions of parenthood. Her research revolved around the question of "Who is parenthood for -- adults or children?" She cites troubling global evidence that adults' rights are privileged over children's. Among many diverse examples: In New Zealand and Australia, influential law commissions propose that children conceived through sperm or egg donation have three legal parents; in Quebec the female partner of a biological mother in a same-sex union is noted as the "father" on the birth certificate; judges in several states in the U.S. have seized on the notion of "psychological" parenthood to award legal parent status to adults (invariably women) not related to the child by blood, adoption or marriage.
Read more of this great Comment: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=5279d94e-828c-4624-9a3b-ba27453672b5&k=89599&p=1
Kids Rule - Unless we learn to say 'no' we are brewing an enormous pot of trouble for our children
Dr Peter West is Head of the Research Group on Men and Families at the University of Western Sydney. His last book was What is the Matter with Boys? (Choice Books, Sydney). See Boys' Learning - a research group on men and families.
We need to do the following:
- reinforce parents’ authority. Until we do that we will have young people out of control;
- work much harder to keep dads in families as people actively bringing boys into intelligent manhood. Dads play a vital role with daughters, too. We can’t have authoritative parenting for most kids until we put fathers back in the picture;
- parent education is necessary to tell parents what they can and should do with their children. Part of this will be teaching parents to say “no”;
- we have to find ways of working intelligently with police and local communities to show kids more constructive ways of growing up;
- give teachers more authority over children, so they learn the skills they need; and
- dismantle the state education bureaucracies and put schools under the control of parents and local communities.
Read more: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5042
Every young girl needs to see this....
Fake beauty, video about transhuman tricks used on models
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (bus-ads with pictures of beautiful, but heavy, or old, or off-average models) has posted a video called Evolution.
It depicts an attractive -- but blemished and drab -- model being prepped for a bill-board, from the makeup to the photoshop. It's a very effective short film.
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home_films_evolution_v2.swf
What is the effect of being raised in a homosexual household?
Dawn Stefanowicz is an author, public speaker, media spokesperson, designated professional accountant and home educator. Dawn has been married for 22 years and was raised in a homosexual household. She acknowledges that children are impacted and influenced long-term by various family structures and living arrangements. Dawn addresses the impact of legislation affecting children.
Dawn's story: http://www.acl.org.au/national/browse.stw?article_id=11359
The Dawn Stefanowicz website : http://www.dawnstefanowicz.com/
Bradford links smacking with sexual perversion
Green MP Sue Bradford has made a speech to MAP- Movement for Alternatives to Prison about her take on peoples' views of the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act.
In it she claims:
* Christans who submit to the select committee have said that opponents of her bill condone " brutalising" of small children.
* She has had threats of defamation. (In fact she has had only one informal threat and that wasn't for anything that was defamatory).
* There is a connection between sexual perversion and the "beating" of children. In fact she said that there was a "legacy of hidden sexual violence practised on children and young people under a mantle of so-called discipline" accentuated by groups such as Carey College and Tyndale Park Christian Schools.
* Parents who smack their children feel guilty for doing so, and that is why they want the law left as it is.
Read the speech and make your own judgement http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/speech10204.html
You can email Sue Bradford sue.bradford@parliament.govt.nz
Why marriage matters in a violent society [38 Kb]
Our government continues to undermine and weaken the defence of the traditional family structure through legislation. By decriminalising prostitution, equating non-marriage relationships with marriage, allowing teenagers to get an abortion without the parents being informed, teaching kids how to put on a condom but not exercise self-control, encouraging both parents to be in the workforce, funding childcare centres to raise your pre-schooler but not funding the parent themselves, and making out-of-wedlock parenting a better economic alternative to marriage, government contributes to the growth of violent crime.
Home truths about family law
By The Institute for American Values and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
26 Sep 06 Getting marriage law right requires a new modesty and realism on the part of the state, including the courts, says a group of prominent family and legal scholars.
http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=373
Kids Left Behind as Parenthood Is Redefined
Zenit.org 30 Sep 06
Family structures and parenthood roles are being redefined without sufficient consideration for the needs of children. This is the warning of a report just published that describes worldwide trends in family law and reproductive technology.
"The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children's Needs" is published by the Commission on Parenthood's Future. The commission "is an independent, nonpartisan group of scholars and leaders," active in the area of the family, according to a press release on the Web site of the Institute for American Values. The New York-based institute is one of the organizations behind the commission.
The report finds that worldwide trends in law and reproductive technologies are redefining parenthood in ways that put the interests of adults before the needs of children. "The two-person mother-father model of parenthood," it states, "is being changed to meet adults' rights to children rather than children's needs to know and be raised, whenever possible, by their mother and father."
-- In New Zealand and Australia, law commissions have proposed allowing children conceived with use of sperm or egg donors to have three legal parents. The proposals fail to address what would happen if the three parents break up and feud over the child.
Read more: http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=95721
By Fear and Fallacy - The repression of reason and public good by the anti-smacking lobby in NZ
Michael L Drake - Principal - Carey College
This is a superb article, well researched, which highlights some of the tactics of the anti-smacking lobby. Shocking reading!
A big read - but well worth it.
http://careycollege.com/documents/By%20Fear%20&%20Fallacy.pdf
Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research
Visit this very good Australian website containing information to oppose the cloning of human beings and promote ethical stem cell research which does not rely on cloned human embryos.
http://www.cloning.org.au/index.html
Parents are heroes to Australian children, ahead of rock and sports celebrities.
Every Child needs a hero - A report tracking Australian children's concerns and attitudes about childhood - Tucci, Mitchell, Goddard
The Australian Childhood Foundation said that children overwhelmingly admired their parents over a range of other people of influence.
Mothers scored the top vote, with 42% of the nearly 1,000 young people aged 10 to 17 rating them the "most admired".
Fathers were ranked second.
Nearly 90% of the young people surveyed also said family was the most important thing to them.
http://www.childhood.org.au/downloads/2006%20Every%20Child%20needs%20a%20hero%20Report.pdf
The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community
by Patrick F. Fagan - The Heritage FoundationFull Article - http://www.heritage.org/Research/Crime/BG1026.cfm
Overview
• Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers.
• State-by-state analysis by Heritage scholars indicates that a 10 percent increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes leads typically to a 17 percent increase in juvenile crime.
• The type of aggression and hostility demonstrated by a future criminal often is foreshadowed in unusual aggressiveness as early as age five or six.
• The mother's strong affectionate attachment to her child is the child's best buffer against a life of crime.
• The father's authority and involvement in raising his children are also a great buffer against a life of crime.
Race and Crime
... a closer look at the data shows that the real variable is not race but family structure ... The incidence of broken families is much higher in the black community.
Crime starts early
Teenage criminal behavior has its roots in habitual deprivation of parental love and affection going back to early infancy. Future delinquents invariably have a chaotic, disintegrating family life. .. This hostility is established in the first few years of life. By age six, habits of aggression and free-floating anger typically are already formed.
2-parent families not immune
... the incidence of delinquent behavior was higher in intact homes characterized by a high degree of conflict and neglect than it was in broken homes without conflict. ..the lack of emotional attachment to parents is more strongly related to delinquency than is an intact home. &Breakup of his parents' marriage during the first five years of his life places a child at high risk of becoming a juvenile delinquent.
How to solve the problem
... the real work of reducing violent crime is the work of rebuilding the family. Instead, thanks to policies that do little to preserve the traditional family and much to undermine it, government continues to misdiagnose the root cause of social collapse as an absence of goods and services. This misdiagnosis is government's own contribution to the growth of crime. Having misdiagnosed, it misleads.
Conclusion – and a warning
Despite the good news that overall crime rates have dropped in recent years, the frightening news is that both the level and viciousness of teenage violent crime have been rising steadily. More ominous still, this was set in motion sixteen to eighteen years ago, when these violent teenagers were born into chaotic family and social conditions. Since then these conditions have become more prevalent, and we will see a continued rise in violent teenage crime. Furthermore, America is headed toward a 50 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate sometime in the next twelve to twenty years, inching more and more of the country closer to today's inner-city illegitimacy rate. If this trend is not reversed, Americans must prepare for extensive and serious erosion of public safety and practical freedoms.
Bob’s comment: The same could be said about New Zealand!
Child-free and losing it
MercatorNet 08 Sep 06 Carolyn Moynihan
More people are not having children. Could the reason be a lack of faith?
A new spectre is haunting the developed world: terrorists still get the biggest headlines but the threat posed by babies can no longer be ignored. The babies we are not having, that is. Less than 40 years since Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb, called for "population control at home" by compulsion if necessary, and less than 50 years since the contraceptive pill came on the market, Newsweek's current cover story is about childlessness. Even in once conservative societies like Greece, says the magazine, more and more couples are choosing not to have kids. And, while this means "good things for restaurants and real estate", the trend is worrying politicians and economists.
http://www.mercatornet.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=360&Itemid=0&pop=1&page=0
When prayer was taken out of US schools [1.18 Mb]
How did the removal of voluntary prayer from the schools of the United States affect our nation as a whole? That question has been answered in detail by a research company in Texas which has gathered and tabulated statistics from hundreds of sources relating to the rates of moral decline in America.
Teens and Eating Disorders
Focus on the Family's Youth Culture Department
Are your kids "immune" to developing an eating disorder? Don’t be so sure. Our society is narcissistically obsessed with physical perfection, declaring war on fat and the slightest physical flaws. Our kids are the group that's typically most vulnerable to the message.
http://www.focusonyourchild.com/health/art1/A0000965.html
Topless parade is destined to offend
Bob McCoskrie – National Director Family First Lobby
It is disappointing that the police will turn a blind eye to the Erotica Parade today. In doing so, they are ignoring not only the law, but the standards of decency held by the wider community. Auckland City Councillors have received almost ten times more emails objecting to this parade than those protesting the planned rates increase. This is how strongly families feel about the planned display of nudity and the promotion of the pornography industry in a public place – namely Queen St during the busy lunchtime hour. Read more
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=250&objectid=10397513&pnum=0
AIDS a Glamorous Multi-Billion Dollar Industry – Sufferers Forgotten
Huge profits for pharmaceutical and condom manufacturers, bottomless grants for researchers and NGO’s
TORONTO, August 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Huge profits for pharmaceutical and condom manufacturers, bottomless grants for researchers and NGO’s, publicity and money for research foundations, six-digit salaries for advertising executives and increasing fame for big name celebrities are creating a disincentive to actually stop the disease say some AIDS activists.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06081704.html
The De-Institutionalization of Marriage: The Case of Sweden
By Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D.- President of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois.
The Swedish model of family policy sees the full equity feminist agenda as the answer to the fertility crisis spawned by modernity. If European peoples want to survive in the 21st century, the argument goes, they should eliminate the full-time mother and homemaker, banish the family wage concept, end the married-couple home as an economic institution, welcome out-of-wedlock births and non-marital cohabitation, push all women—especially actual or potential mothers—into the labor force, enforce strict gender equality in all areas of life, engineer men into childcare-givers, and embrace expensive state child allowances, parental leave, and public day-care programs. The result will be more babies.
Did it work?
Read more - http://www.profam.org/pub/fia/fia.2002.3.htm
Violent Video Games Reduce Sensitivity to Real Violence
"The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitisation to Real-Life Violence," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2006
Playing violent video games, even for a short time, can desensitise people to real violence, new research has proved. "The results demonstrate that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence," said Carnagey. "Participants randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play non-violent video games. It appears that individuals who play violent video games & 'get used to' all the violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it."
Read more
A Village doesn't raise a child
Sue Reid - Guest Writer for Family First - in response to Children's Commissioner wanting "hour long interviews with children, health checks and a data base listing every child as part of an ambitious plan to stop them falling through the gaps"
More bureaucracy and another layer of departmental checks is not the eternal answer so many are looking for in response to our meeting the needs of children. It does not take ‘a village to raise a child’, it takes one or two parents committed 24/7 to the well-being of that child
read more....
In Search of the ‘Values’ Voter (US)
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty 01 Aug 06
The Democrats’ challenge is to answer the question: How can government best uphold Christian values? The right’s traditional answer is through legislating morality issues that are central to family values or the sanctity of life. It looks like the left will counter this with an expanded version of government.
http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=335
Why Labour despises the family (UK)
Daily Mail, 27 July 2006
The family, because it promotes self-reliance, is the bulwark of individual liberty against the incursions of an oppressive state.
Bob comments - a superb article, whcih could easily be applied to NZ situation
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=440
Related Article - Mothers feel family is under threat from Labour
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=D1SSQOB14ATMJQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/06/28/nfam28.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/28/ixuknews.html
Related Article - 80% of Canadians want one parent home with children
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jul/06071802.html
Sweden's smacking ban [243 Kb]
Sweden's Smacking Ban : More Harm than Good
Robert E Larzelere - Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Nebraska Medical Center
The Fatherless Families [181 Kb]
Experiments in Living - The Fatherless Families
The Institute for the Study of Civil Society UK
www.civitas.org.uk
Obesity [38 Kb]
Families need to own the issue of obesity
Bob McCoskrie, National Director, Family First Lobby
TV watching [31 Kb]
TV Watching should concern parents
Bob McCoskrie, National Director, Family First NZ
Standards Boards [35 Kb]
Standards Board needs to show leadership
Bob McCoskrie National Director Family First Lobby
I have only complained to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) and the Advertising Standards Complaints Board (ASCB) a couple of times. It is not because I havent felt the urgent need to, but more because I see these Boards as part of the problem, not the solution.......
Childcare [39 Kb]
Childs view of daycare must be considered
Bob McCoskrie, National Director, Family First Lobby
The Family First Lobby has come under fire because of its concern over 24 hour Childcare and the increasing trend of putting children into Childcare for longer periods of time.
Sex Education [26 Kb]
Our youth deserve to know the facts of life
Bob McCoskrie, National Director, Family First NZ
