UK offers more money to working women and single mothers, nothing for stay-at-home moms

Dina sent me this UK Daily Mail article about the “Conservative Party” of the UK.

Excerpt:

Mothers who stay at home to look after their children do not need as much financial help as those who work, according to the Treasury.

The insulting claim was inadvertently published yesterday as part of a briefing on the Government’s new childcare plans.

It fuelled accusations that the scheme will deliberately discriminate against traditional single-earner families in an attempt to force more mothers back to work.

Critics described the new policy as a ‘slap in the face for two million stay-at-home mothers’.

The Treasury briefing, designed to help press officers ‘rebut’ criticism, stated: ‘Working families who are struggling with their childcare costs, or families where parents want to go to work but can’t afford to are in greater need of state support for child care than families where one parent chooses to stay at home and look after their children full-time.’

David Cameron and Nick Clegg yesterday confirmed that working couples who each earn less than £150,000 will qualify for child care tax breaks worth up to £1,200 a year per child from 2015. 

That means they could have a joint income of nearly £300,000 and still qualify.

They will receive 20 per cent – equivalent to the basic rate of tax – of their yearly childcare costs, up to a total of £6,000 per child. This will save a typical working family with two children under 12 up to £2,400 a year.

Single parents who are employed and earn less than £150,000 will also be eligible.

But, in a move that will anger Tory traditionalists, the Government confirmed that families in which only one parent works will not receive a penny.

David Cameron is also pushing gay marriage really hard, in spite of public opinion. I’m not even sure why he calls himself a conservative.

Filed under: News, Career, Child Abuse, Children, David Cameron, Day Care, Daycare, Family, Feminism, Home, Marriage, Men, Mother, Single-Motherhood, Stay at Home Mother, Stay-At-Home, UK, Women

Is it wise for women to postpone marriage?

This UK Daily Mail article that ECM posted on Facebook got a lot of comments.

Excerpt:

Eight years after that wonderful engagement party in 1989, I walked away from dear, devoted, loyal Matthew, convinced that somewhere out there, a better, more exciting, more fulfilling life awaited me.
Only there wasn’t.

Now I am 42 and have all the trappings of success – a high-flying career, financial security and a home in the heart of London’s trendy Notting Hill. But I don’t have the one thing I crave more than anything: a loving husband and family.

So what happened? Well, here’s what:

In the summer of 1989, while out for a romantic meal, Matthew proposed properly with a diamond solitaire ring. Two months later, we held our engagement party for 40 friends and family at the little house we were renting at the time.

The following year, we bought a tiny starter home in Grays, Essex, which we moved into with furniture we had begged, borrowed and stolen. We giggled with delight at the thought of this grown-up new life.
I was in my first junior role at a women’s magazine and Matthew worked fitting tyres and exhausts, so our combined salaries of around £15,000 a year meant we struggled to make the mortgage payments. But we didn’t care, telling ourselves that it wouldn’t be long before we were earning more and able to afford weekly treats and a bigger home where we could bring up the babies we had planned.

But then, the housing market crashed and we were plunged into negative equity.

Struggling should have brought us closer together, and at first it did. But as time went on, and my magazine career – and salary – advanced, I started to resent Matthew as he drifted from one dead-end job to another.

I still loved him, but I began to feel embarrassed by his blue-collar jobs, annoyed that, despite his intelligence, he didn’t have a career. Then he bought a lurid blue and pink VW  Beetle.

Why couldn’t he drive a normal car? Things that now seem incredibly insignificant began to niggle.

I began to wish he was more sophisticated and earned more. I felt envious of friends with better-off partners, who were able to support them as they started their families.

I stopped seeing Matthew as my equal. I stopped seeing all the qualities that had made me fall in love with him – his fierce intelligence, our shared sense of humour, his determination not to follow the crowd. Instead, I saw someone who was holding me back.

Our sex life had dwindled and nights out together were rare. I stopped appreciating little things he did, like leaving romantic notes on the pillow or scouring secondhand bookshops for novels he knew I’d love. He was my best friend, yet I took him totally for granted.

After festering for weeks about his shortcomings, I told Matthew I was leaving. We spent hours talking and crying as he tried to convince me to stay, but I was adamant.

My parents were horrified that I was walking away from a man they felt was right for me. My father’s words to me that day continue to haunt me. ‘Karen, think carefully about what you’re doing. There’s a lot to be said for someone who truly loves you.’

But, I refused to listen, convinced there would be another, better Mr Right waiting around the corner.

I moved into a rented flat a few miles away in Hornchurch, Essex, and embraced single life with a vengeance. By now I was an editor on a national magazine. Life was one long round of premieres and dinner or drinks parties.

One of the commenters on Facebook said this:

This is what feminism and narcissism (which are rampant in our society) have done to women. Feminism told her that she should work, have a career, climb the ladder – and that this is the most important thing. Marriage and family are goals unworthy of a woman, according to feminism. Narcissism told her that her own goals and desires were the most important thing in the world. Other people and their needs are only important if they coincide with what she wants. If someone is “bringing her down” or “holding her back” they need to get out of the way because her desires are what is most important. So when her marriage required her to actually sacrifice a bit of her own ambition, she walked away from it. What a stupid and self-centered thing to do.

I found another article by her where she spent £5,000 on cosmetic surgery. It’s just strange where she ended up.

Filed under: Commentary, Career, Children, Commitment, Fashion, Feminism, Frugal, Frugality, Glamour, Love, Marriage, Spending, Wealth

New study: fewer than one in ten women staying home with children

Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Fewer than one in ten women stay at home to look after their children

• Latest census figures show 300,000 fewer staying home than thought
• Concerns for well-being of mothers and impact on toddlers in day care
• Stay-at-home figures dropped from 17 per cent of women 20 years ago

The stay-at-home mother is fast becoming consigned to history, according to the latest census figures.

Returns showed there are 300,000 fewer than officials  had previously estimated, with those who devote their lives to bringing up families now reduced to a tiny minority.

Fewer than one in ten women of working age are stay-at-home mothers.

The collapse follows a decade in which governments urged mothers to take jobs on the grounds that working is the route to fulfilment for women and that families with two incomes are much less likely to fall into poverty.

Critics, however, are concerned for the well-being of mothers who might prefer to be with their families, and the impact on increasing numbers of toddlers who spend long hours in day care.

The 2011 census results found there are 1,598,000 women who do not work because they are looking after their home and family – 298,000 fewer than estimates from the Office for National Statistics.

Note that this is applauded by feminist groups, like the UK Labour Party:

The decline in numbers of stay-at-home mothers will be welcomed by ministers as the Labour drive to push mothers into work has continued under the Coalition.

Childcare minister Elizabeth Truss has made a priority of providing cheaper day care to help mothers into jobs.

In an article earlier this year  she said it was ‘vital’ for mothers to work, adding: ‘To power ahead Britain needs to look at best practice from overseas to discover how to increase women’s participation, especially for those who are parents.’

But critics say the sky-high level of house prices and the lack of help for two-parent families in the tax and benefit systems means most mothers have to work, whether they like it or not.

Earlier this week I blogged studies that showed the importance of fathers to children. But it’s important to remember that mothers are also important to children, especially in the first few years of the child’s life. And we have studies to back that up as well.

Brain scans of 3-year old children: normal vs neglected

This was discussed before in another article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Both of these images are brain scans of a two three-year-old children, but the brain on the left is considerably larger, has fewer spots and less dark areas, compared to the one on the right.

According to neurologists this sizeable difference has one primary cause - the way each child was treated by their mothers.

The child with the larger and more fully developed brain was looked after by its mother – she was constantly responsive to her baby, reported The Sunday Telegraph.

But the child with the shrunken brain was the victim of severe neglect and abuse.

According to research reported by the newspaper, the brain on the right worryingly lacks some of the most fundamental areas present in the image on the left.

The consequences of these deficits are pronounced – the child on the left with the larger brain will be more intelligent and more likely to develop the social ability to empathise with others.

But in contrast, the child with the shrunken brain will be more likely to become addicted to drugs and involved in violent crimes, much more likely to be unemployed and to be dependent on state benefits.

The child is also more likely to develop mental and other serious health problems.

Professor Allan Schore, of UCLA, told The Sunday Telegraph that if a baby is not treated properly in the first two years of life, it can have a fundamental impact on development.

He pointed out that the genes for several aspects of brain function, including intelligence, cannot function.

[...]The study correlates with research released earlier this year that found that children who are given love and affection from their mothers early in life are smarter with a better ability to learn.

The study by child psychiatrists and neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found school-aged children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.

The research was the first to show that changes in this critical region of children’s brain anatomy are linked to a mother’s nurturing, Neurosciencenews.com reports.

The research is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

Lead author Joan L. Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry, said the study reinforces how important nurturing parents are to a child’s development.

If we are really interested in providing for the needs of young children, then we have to voluntarily limit the freedom of adults. Traditional marriage is the way that societies have provided for the needs of young children. Marriage puts boundaries on sexual activity (premarital chastity, post-marital fidelity) that are beneficial to children. Children need to have access to their parents over the course of their development.

We should be promoting behaviors and policies that strengthen marriage, like chastity and low tax rates. We should be opposing behaviors and policies that weaken marriages, like hooking-up and no-fault divorce. That’s what we would do if we really had the best interests of children at heart instead of the best interests of adults.

Filed under: News, Abuse, Anti-Child, Anti-Family, Baby, Brain, Career, Child, Child Care, Child Development, Children, Day Care, Empathy, Family, Feminism, Health, Home, Intelligence, Labor Party, Labour Party, Leftism, Marriage, Mental Health, Mother, Neglect, Newborn, Parenting, Social Ability, Work

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offers marriage advice

This post is a 3 in one: one lecture, one question and answer, and another lecture – all on different topics. My friend Neil S. requested this so I’m posting it.

I got this lecture from the Reasonable Faith web site.

Dr. William Lane Craig is the top living Christian apologist and debater in the world today, and has 2 Masters degrees and 2 Ph.Ds. He also has scores of academic publications including books from Oxford University Press, etc.

The MP3 file is here. (14.5 Mb, about 41 minutes)

Topics:

• the stresses of ministry on marriages
• the Christian position on divorce
• balancing marriage with academic pursuits
• the importance of marrying the right person
• Dr. Craig’s politically incorrect advice for choosing a spouse
• Advice for men: Marry someone who believes in you and who supports you in your calling
• Advice for women: Be the kind of person who can commit to being a helper and supporter
• Advice for men: Beware of the career woman who will put their career over supporting you in your calling
• Advice for women: Be careful about marrying if you think that your goals are more important than your husband’s goals
• Advice: Don’t try to find the right person for you but instead focus on learning about marriage and preparing for marriage
• Advice: Flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, love and peace
• Advice: God intends for sex to be within the bounds of marriage, so you need to guard yourself against unchastity
• Advice for men: be careful what images and movies you see with the goal of keeping your chastity
• Advice: your highest responsibility after your relationship with God is your spouse, and your studies are third
• Advice: it’s better to drop classes or give up your graduate studies entirely rather than destroy your marriage
• Advice for women: understand that you have to work at the marriage in order to help your man finish his studies
• Advice: set aside a period of the day for communicating and bonding with your spouse
• Advice: cultivate the ability to talk with your spouse on a personal level, and maintain eye contact
• Advice for men: do not break eye contact with your wife, and also hold her hand when communicating
• Advice: do not be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor, but make it a good counselor
• Advice:  don’t just be doing stuff for your mate, but also be vulnerable and transparent with your mate
• How your relationship with your wife helps you with your relationship with God
• How do you handle the rebellion of children without being overbearing and authoritarian?

There is a period of Q&A at the end. There is another piece of advice that comes out in the Q&A for women: take an interest in your spouse’s work even if you don’t care about it, and ask him about it every day and try to understand it. Go to the man’s workplace and see what he does. Go to his presentations. Get involved in the man’s ministry and help him in practical ways. Another piece of advice is to not paper over the differences – it’s good to argue, because it means that problems are being confronted and worked through. Husbands should have a good male friend to talk to, and wives should have a good female friend to talk to.

I like how Dr. Craig has thought about how to have a successful marriage, how to choose the right woman, and how to love his wife. I like how he calls out men on the chastity thing. I think that chastity is more important for men than for women, because it’s the men who take the lead in choosing and pursuing the right woman for their plan.

Secondly, here is my previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for married couples, where he gives 5 points of advice for married couples.

Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:

1. Resolve that there will be no divorce
2. Delay having children
3. Confront problems honestly
4. Seek marital counseling
5. Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship

And here’s the controversial one (#2):

2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.

Third and finally, here is a previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for choosing a good spouse, with illustrations from his own marriage.

For example, Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:

And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”

And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.

If you want to hear another Christian husband talk about how his wife supports him, listen to this lecture called “Giants in the Land” with Dr. Walter Bradley. It’s actually my favorite lecture. I also really like his testimony lecture. If you’re looking for guidance, these are some of the people I would recommend.

Filed under: News, Ambition, Career, Chastity, Children, Courting, Divorce, Family, Feminism, Goal, Goals, Husband, Love, Marriage, Marriage Counseling, Parenting, Plan, Relationships, Spouse, Wife, William Lane Craig

To marry and have children, it’s important to make a realistic plan

This is a guest post by Mathetes entitled “The Road That Was Taken”.  You can find his last post here.

The Daily Mail is the gift that keeps on giving. And usually the gifts are a witness to the outcomes of bad choices. Previously, we discussed how to live your worst life. Unfortunately, some people serve as stark examples. Enter Megan, and her story that is told in “It’s NOT my fault that I missed the chance to become a mother”.

The story is familiar: a gal lamenting that she has no man or children. But in a world where women have the ability to define and achieve any of their goals, where does this lament come from?

Playing with her nieces one day, Megan burst into tears because “I couldn’t bring myself to articulate the truth — that, at the age of 38, I realised I’d probably never watch my own child doing somersaults on a summer’s day.”

But how did this come about for someone with children as a goal?

“I wasn’t childless for medical reasons, or out of choice. The right man had just never come along.

As a writer living in London, with a fulfilling career and a great social life, I was a doting aunt to Harry, Jack, Emily and Freya.”

This sounds so strange. In a world where women are go-getters, here we have a lady who just sat around waiting for a man to mysteriously “come along”. I don’t believe the incongruence struck her – she has a career in which she is fulfilled, but she probably didn’t devote as much time to finding her man as she did to getting her career in order.

We come to the problem a little later on:

“I’d just assumed I’d address the subject of having children when I met the right partner with whom to confront it later in life. But I never did.”

Wintery often states that it’s important to have a plan for your life. This unfortunate lass didn’t have one, and the result is typical.

Or maybe she did have a plan. Because a plan is a restricted range of choices that is meant to lead you to a particular goal. So how did Megan’s choices influence her life? We read:

“I lived with a long-term boyfriend throughout my 20s, but we were young, and parenthood seemed a long way away. In my early 30s, I entered into a relationship that was so unstable, I knew we would never have children. He was a commitment-phobic poet, and while my friends urged me to finish the relationship and find one in which children might be an option, I didn’t long for a family enough to give him up. At 35, I finally accepted that we were never going to work out. Other relationships came and went, but none turned into something more permanent.”

So here was Megan’s plan:

• Step 1: Live with boyfriend throughout her 20’s
• Step 2: Enter an unstable relationship in her early 30’s, where she knew she’d never have children
• Step 3: After a few year break up with a man who was unsuitable material for a husband

So Megan’s goal was to find a mate and have kids. And her plan was constructed to achieve the exact opposite result.

Maybe after her mid-30’s Megan figured this out. With age comes wisdom, so they say. So what did Megan set about to do:

“I began to think more about having children when I was in my late 30s, but didn’t start sizing up potential fathers on first dates because I didn’t want to rush into having children with someone I wasn’t certain about. “

So let’s add another step.

• Step 4: Date men but don’t evaluate them for spousal quality

Though Megan made some bad choices, she does see what’s necessary for a child, and she should be commended for this:

“Nor did I want to become a single parent by choice. I’d seen how hard it was to bring up children even with a partner, thanks to my sisters, and I’d witnessed at first hand the struggles of a close friend who had unexpectedly become a single parent.

I just didn’t think I could tough it out by myself. I wanted to share parenting, and never dreamed of becoming ‘accidentally’ pregnant. I wasn’t going to trick anyone, or short-change myself.”

This is to be commended, and I mean this in all seriousness.

But getting back to her choices, Megan was warned:

“A friend who had been ambivalent about children until she was 39, and became a mother at 41, warned me that I would go through a grieving process if I didn’t become a mother. I laughed it off, but my friend was right.”

And here we read the unfortunate result when dreams and aspirations collide with the harsh wall of reality.

“… it dawned on me that I was fast approaching 40 — the age at which it seemed that if I hadn’t had my own child, I probably never would. My feelings of panic grew.”

“Feelings of resentment began to build inside me when, in the space of a year, five of my closest girlfriends told me they were pregnant. I felt happy for them, and increasingly sad for myself.“

“I tried to hide my feelings. I bought baby gifts and picked up newborns with a smile fixed on my face, even as my heart sank when I thought of the children I might never have.”

“Panic flooded over me every time I read a celebrity talking about how their little Petula/Tommy/Isabella was the best thing that had ever happened to them.”

“More and more, I felt weighed down by all the judgments — some proffered, some unspoken — about single and childless women. From being too picky to be satisfied by a partner, to just too career-orientated and selfish, the judgments are endless. In my experience, they’re generally inaccurate, too.“

This is an object lesson in the internal psychic dissonance that takes place when one’s goals collide with their choices.

Perhaps enlightenment at this stage is the best that can be hoped for. Mature adults come to accept that the choices they’ve made have resulted in the position they are in. Thus, we are able reflect and see where we went wrong and how to grow from this. Perhaps Megan will take responsibility for her choices and her current situation.

Not entirely.

“When I analysed the reasons why they and I were in this position, I came to one conclusion: bad luck, bad choices or bad timing. Not selfishness.”

Her choices she can control. But luck and timing? Perhaps, but not as likely, given her focus on career and relationships. And her choices? Doesn’t that imply that she is choosing?

And why blame luck or timing at all?

The reason for this is simple: it’s very hard to realize that you are responsible for your position. This isn’t a hard rule, but you usually got where you’re at because you followed your own path.

And she’s not alone. Other women share her plight:

“‘One of them is that more and more women are childless through circumstance. They are grieving for something few people acknowledge they have the right to grieve for, and many of them don’t even realise that’s what’s happening to them.

‘Some of them are losing some of the most powerful and productive years of their lives as they get stuck in their grief.’

I know what you’re thinking. Now, at last, maybe Megan realizes the way out. She can decide to make sure she dates in the right way. That she won’t waste time on things that take away from her goal. Even if she can’t have kids, she should still be able to find a mate and adopt. So there are possibilities for her.

The question is: where does she go from here?

And the answer is:

Morocco!

“I was determined not to lose some of the best years of my life in this way. I’d written eight books, had a life full of friends and family, and yet I felt like a failure. I had to do something.

So I did. I bought a plane ticket to Marrakesh in Morocco — a place I’d visited just once for a long weekend.”

“If I wasn’t going to have the rhythms and responsibilities of parenthood, I could make the most of my freedom.”

Megan is educated and has a successful career. She’s enjoying her freedom. But there’s still her life-long goal of having children.  How do these diverging paths reconcile with each other?

And here we come to the end. The need to rationalize, and downplay what others have, so that one’s situation is more palatable.

“I’d spent months thinking that motherhood was the answer, but I now began to realise that it wasn’t an instant passport to growth. Just look at the one-track minds some mothers have about their children.”

“You have to be open to change, and that’s possible with or without being a mother. Each side of the coin loses and gains.”

“For all I’d envied about the lives of mothers I knew, they’d envied what I had — freedom, time and the ability to nurture other relationships in a way I never would if I was a parent.”

“More importantly, I realised I wasn’t childless. I had my sisters’ children, my godchildren and a gaggle of girlfriends who were all generous with theirs.”

“For now I am splitting my time between England and Morocco, enjoying the best of both worlds. I no longer feel weighed down in England, just happy to visit.

“And while our lives might be different to the ones we envisaged when we were young, they are just as complete.”

And so Megan’s rationalization takes us full circle. Megan actually is a mother. She is completely free. She can do what she wants with her life. Her friends with children envy her. She is more open than her friends, who have one-track minds. And she, of course, realizes that motherhood was never the answer. It wasn’t a passport to growth. Her life is complete.

As I walked the halls of my work a few months ago I found a notice on a door that showed someone in an uncomfortable situation. The caption said: Sometimes the purpose of someone’s life is to be a lesson to others.

Megan, of course, may never be able to grapple with the repercussions of the feminist lies she bought into. She followed them, despite consciously knowing her choices were not leading her to the life she wanted.

But we can observe and know how to act. Let her story be a lesson to you if you are contemplating her path. Find out what you want, and live with this in mind.

Filed under: News, Age, Binge Drinking, Career, Carousel, Children, Delay, Ends and Means, Family, Father, Feminism, Fun, Hedonism, Husband, Marriage, Men, Planning, Pregnancy, Premarital Sex, Sex, Women