Brookings Institute: three simple rules to avoid poverty

An editorial from the left-leaning Washington Post, by scholar from the left-leanings Brookings Institute.

Take a look at this:

Policy aimed at promoting economic opportunity for poor children must be framed within three stark realities. First, many poor children come from families that do not give them the kind of support that middle-class children get from their families. Second, as a result, these children enter kindergarten far behind their more advantaged peers and, on average, never catch up and even fall further behind. Third, in addition to the education deficit, poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and break the law.

In addition to the thousands of local and national programs that aim to help young people avoid these life-altering problems, we should figure out more ways to convince young people that their decisions will greatly influence whether they avoid poverty and enter the middle class. Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.

Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year). There are surely influences other than these principles at play, but following them guides a young adult away from poverty and toward the middle class.

The most interesting part of the editorial was where the left-wing pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood complained that telling people the likely consequences of their own actions was either “racist” or “judgmental”:

The recent attacks by Planned Parenthood on Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, for launching a campaign designed to inform teenagers of the consequences of teen pregnancy provides a good example of how many in our society face the effects of nonmarital births on teen mothers and their children. In one of the campaign posters, a baby with tears rolling down his face says: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Another shows a girl saying to her mom: “Chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” Planned Parenthood criticized the ads, displayed in the subway and bus shelters, for ignoring racial and economic factors that contribute to teen pregnancy. Other critics say the ads stigmatize teen parents and their children.

This is what George W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. Planned Parenthood thinks that trying to get women to think in terms of cause and effect is pointless. They are too stupid to do anything but have sex with brutes and then murder their children. Over and over. That’s Planned Parenthood’s view of women. They won’t lift a finger to help women towards marriage, and the prosperity and security it would bring them and their children.

The simple fact is that Planned Parenthood makes a lot of money off of killing babies, and they don’t want the killing to stop.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Contraception, Marriage, Michael Bloomberg, New York City, Out of Wedlock Birth, Planned Parenthood, Poverty, Premarital Sex, Teen Motherhood, Teen Pregnancy

Does abortion produce fewer out-of-wedlock births, less child abuse, and lower crime rates?

Here’s an article that commenter Scott sent me from the Public Discourse.

Topic snippet:

In the 1960s and 1970s, abortion advocates used a variety of arguments to advance their cause. Some emphasized women’s liberty and autonomy. Others tried to persuade people that easy access to abortion would benefit society as a whole. Consider just two representative quotations:

“A policy that makes contraception and abortion freely available will greatly reduce the number of unwanted children, and thereby curb the tragic rise of child abuse in our country.” (NARAL, 1978)

“The impact of the abortion revolution may be too vast to assess immediately. It should usher in an era when every child will be wanted, loved, and properly cared for.” (NARAL co-founder Larry Lader, 1974)

Legal abortion, advocates argued, would result in fewer out-of-wedlock births and less child abuse, and would ensure that every child was wanted. Over time, these arguments lost credibility because neither out-of-wedlock births nor child abuse was decreasing.

In the early 2000s, academics Steven Levitt (University of Chicago) and John Donohue (Yale University) published a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, titled “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime,” claiming that legal abortion unexpectedly lowered crime rates in many American cities during the 1990s. Groups supporting abortion rights generally distanced themselves from this argument, fearing its eugenic implications. Though the findings have received some widespread credibility because of Levitt’s popular book Freakonomics, they have been much criticized by other academics.

In this essay I show that easy access to abortion during the past forty years has not benefited society as a whole. Legal abortion has not reduced out-of-wedlock births, child abuse, or crime rates.

And here’s a sample: (I chose one that I haven’t posted about before)

Abortion advocates frequently argued that legal abortion would decrease child abuse. Children who were wanted, they claimed, would be less likely to suffer from abuse than those who were unwanted. But social science data suggest that this logic is flawed. A landmark study of 674 abused children by Edward Lenoski (University of Southern California) found that 91 percent of the parents admitted that they wanted the child they had abused.  A 2005 study by Priscilla Coleman (Bowling Green University) showed that women who obtained abortions were 144 percent more likely to abuse their own children.

At a more theoretical level, Dr. Philip G. Ney, head of the Department of Psychiatry at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Canada, has outlined why abortion can lead directly to child abuse.

1. Abortion decreases an individual’s instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt toward those dependent on his or her care.
2. Permissive abortion diminishes the taboo against aggressing [against] the defenseless.
3. Abortion increases the hostility between the generations.
4. Abortion has devalued children, thus diminishing the value of caring for children.
5. Abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, which the parent takes out on the child.
6. Abortion increases hostile frustration, intensifying the battle of the sexes, for which children are scapegoated.
7. Abortion cuts the developing mother-infant bond, thereby diminishing her future mothering capability.

Overall, American statistics paint a clear picture. Legal abortion did not reduce child abuse. In fact, the exact opposite happened. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect has reported that child abuse has increased more than 1,000 percent since the legalization of abortion in 1973. According to data from the US Statistical Abstract, deaths due to child abuse continued to rise after the Roe v. Wade decision and increased by 400 percent between 1972 and 1990. Obviously, child abuse is caused by a variety of complicated factors. Still, our experience in the United States provides no evidence that legal abortion reduces child abuse.

This is a good one to bookmark, I’ll bet you will be able to use it in a debate. By the way, if you want more of a rebuttal of Freaknomics, you can check out John Lott’s book “Freedomnomics“. It has a whole section on abortion and crime.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Benefits, Bioethics, Child, Child Abuse, Children, Contraception, Crime, Crime Rates, Economics, Feminism, Legalized Abortion, Out of Wedlock, Out of Wedlock Birth, Parent, Premarital Sex, Pro-Abortion, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Recreational Premarital Sex, Unwanted Child, Wanted Child

Overpopulation? Latest research suggests that we face a decline in population

From the left-wing Slate, of all places.

Excerpt:

A report issued last month by the Pew Research Center found that immigrant births fell from 102 per 1,000 women in 2007 to 87.8 per 1,000 in 2012. That helped bring the overall U.S. birthrate to a mere 64 per 1,000 women—not enough to sustain our current population.

Moreover, the poor, highly fertile countries that once churned out immigrants by the boatload are now experiencing birthrate declines of their own. From 1960 to 2009, Mexico’s fertility rate tumbled from 7.3 live births per woman to 2.4, India’s dropped from six to 2.5, and Brazil’s fell from 6.15 to 1.9. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average birthrate remains a relatively blistering 4.66, fertility is projected to fall below replacement level by the 2070s. This change in developing countries will affect not only the U.S. population, of course, but eventually the world’s.

Why is this happening? Scientists who study population dynamics point to a phenomenon called “demographic transition.”

“For hundreds of thousands of years,” explains Warren Sanderson, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University, “in order for humanity to survive things like epidemics and wars and famine, birthrates had to be very high.” Eventually, thanks to technology, death rates started to fall in Europe and in North America, and the population size soared. In time, though, birthrates fell as well, and the population leveled out. The same pattern has repeated in countries around the world. Demographic transition, Sanderson says, “is a shift between two very different long-run states: from high death rates and high birthrates to low death rates and low birthrates.” Not only is the pattern well-documented, it’s well under way: Already, more than half the world’s population is reproducing at below the replacement rate.

If the Germany of today is the rest of the world tomorrow, then the future is going to look a lot different than we thought. Instead of skyrocketing toward uncountable Malthusian multitudes, researchers at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis foresee the global population maxing out at 9 billion some time around 2070. On the bright side, the long-dreaded resource shortage may turn out not to be a problem at all. On the not-so-bright side, the demographic shift toward more retirees and fewer workers could throw the rest of the world into the kind of interminable economic stagnation that Japan is experiencing right now.

It kind of undercuts the need for the leftist fixation on abortion, environmentalism, etc. doesn’t it?

Ari also sent me this article from Foreign Policy magazine that argues that the declining rate of population is actually good news for conservatives.

Excerpt:

Declining birthrates also change national temperament. In the United States, for example, the percentage of women born in the late 1930s who remained childless was near 10 percent. By comparison, nearly 20 percent of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having had children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of their parents.

Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Nor do single-child families contribute much to future population. The 17.4 percent of baby boomer women who had only one child account for a mere 7.8 percent of children born in the next generation. By contrast, nearly a quarter of the children of baby boomers descend from the mere 11 percent of baby boomer women who had four or more children. These circumstances are leading to the emergence of a new society whose members will disproportionately be descended from parents who rejected the social tendencies that once made childlessness and small families the norm. These values include an adherence to traditional, patriarchal religion, and a strong identification with one’s own folk or nation.

This dynamic helps explain, for example, the gradual drift of American culture away from secular individualism and toward religious fundamentalism. Among states that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004, fertility rates are 12 percent higher than in states that voted for Sen. John Kerry. It may also help to explain the increasing popular resistance among rank-and-file Europeans to such crown jewels of secular liberalism as the European Union. It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as “world citizens” are also those least likely to have children.

Does this mean that today’s enlightened but slow-breeding societies face extinction? Probably not, but only because they face a dramatic, demographically driven transformation of their cultures. As has happened many times before in history, it is a transformation that occurs as secular and libertarian elements in society fail to reproduce, and as people adhering to more traditional, patriarchal values inherit society by default.

At least as long ago as ancient Greek and Roman times, many sophisticated members of society concluded that investing in children brought no advantage. Rather, children came to be seen as a costly impediment to self-fulfillment and worldly achievement. But, though these attitudes led to the extinction of many individual families, they did not lead to the extinction of society as a whole. Instead, through a process of cultural evolution, a set of values and norms that can roughly be described as patriarchy reemerged.

I think that if conservative men and women can get together and raise effective, influential children outside of the public school system, then we have some hope for the future. The welfare that is used to support single motherhood by choice is going to come to an end because of the debt crisis. When that happens, families headed by high-achieving men will be raising a higher proportion of the leaders of the next generation. Men and women who pool their resources and have more children will have more of an influence on the next generation.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Contraception, Demographic Crisis, Demographics, Entitlements, Environmentalism, Family, Feminism, Left, Liberal, Malthus, Marriage, Men, Overpopulation, Parenting, Patriarchy, Population Bomb, Socialism, Thomas Malthus, Welfare State

Female superintendent and ACLU fascists ban father-daughter school dances

From the radically left-wing Los Angeles Times. (H/T Captain Capitalism via The Elusive Wapiti)

Excerpt:

Father-daughter dances and mother-son ballgames — those cherished hallmarks of Americana — have been banned in a Rhode Island school district after they were targeted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU, the self-proclaimed guardian of the nation’s liberty, says such events violate the state’s gender-discrimination law. The organization challenged their existence following a complaint from a single mom who said her daughter was prevented from attending a father-daughter dance in the Cranston Public Schools district.

[...]For its part, the ACLU scoffed at the uproar, calling the change “old news” and defending its legal position in a statement laced with a touch of snark. Here it is, in part:

“The controversy that has suddenly arisen in a political campaign over father-daughter dances in Cranston is old news — the matter was amicably resolved with school officials over four months ago. And it was resolved for a simple reason: the school district recognized that in the 21st Century, public schools have no business fostering the notion that girls prefer to go to formal dances while boys prefer baseball games.

“This type of gender stereotyping only perpetuates outdated notions of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ activities and is contrary to federal law.

“[Parent-teacher organizations] remain free to hold family dances and other events, but the time has long since passed for public school resources to encourage stereotyping from the days of Ozzie and Harriet. Not every girl today is interested in growing up to be Cinderella — not even in Cranston. In fact, one of them might make a great major league baseball player someday.

“We commend the school district for its resolution of the matter, and are sorry to see some people turning it into a political football — a game that they may think only boys should be interested in.”

It’s a well-known fact that daughters growing up without fathers are far more prone to a whole host of behavioral disorders and tragedies. It’s also well-known, among men, that one the major reasons for a man to get married is because of the social respect of being a provider, protector and moral/spiritual leader. When society, under the influence of moral relativism and feminist ideology, decides to denigrate and marginalize fatherhood, we should expect to see the next generation of girls suffering from it. Girls need their fathers. The more we allow our policy to be made by leftists, the more we cheat young women out of their fathers, and the more we leave them open to tragedy.

Related posts

• New study: relationship quality diminished by early sexual activity, especially for women
• New study: marriage drops probability of child poverty by 82%
• What do radical feminists want women to want?
• New study finds that Christians who regularly attend church divorce less
• How do prostitutes stay in business in an era of hook-up sex?
• Can recreational sex turn a selfish, irresponsible man into a marriage-minded provider?
• New study finds that cohabitation damages children
• New peer-reviewed paper highlights the benefits of pre-marital chastity/abstinence
• Does being a virgin before marriage affect marital stability?
• How important are biological fathers for healthy child development?
• What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?
• New study shows that children of working mothers live unhealthier lives
• New Scientist article shows why fathers are necessary for children’s well-being
• New study finds that women choose mates based on appearance
• Men should prefer women who allow moral judging and spiritual leading
• Where have all the good men gone, and why aren’t men marrying?
• Do men have a responsibility not to marry feminists?
• Why do some women tolerate jerks as boyfriends?
• The dangers of sentimentality in relationships
• Is Mark Driscoll afraid to hold a woman accountable for her own choices?
• How feminism made women unsuitable for marriage and parenting
• Why Christian men should be chaste
• Study: 80% of single evangelicals aged 18-29 are no longer virigins
• Should Christian men marry? What’s the worst that could happen?
• For women under 30, most births occur outside of marriage
• How feminist pastors like Mark Driscoll and Kevin DeYoung undermine marriage
• In the UK welfare state, single motherhood is passed from mother to daughter
• New study finds that teens who lose their virginity are more likely to divorce
• How more compassion and less moral judgments increases teen pregnancy
• Can a person be a feminist and still believe in marriage?
• What happens when the government pays people to have babies out-of-wedlock?
• New survey finds women more sexually active than men in high school
• Research to help you understand the “hook-up” culture on campus
• Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?
• Who is responsible for the abolition of marriage? Men or feminists?
• Who is to blame for the hook-up culture?
• How the feminist welfare state causes generations of fatherlessness
• How feminism’s war against men ends up hurting women
• Less than half of 7 to 21 year old women think marriage precedes child-bearing

Filed under: News, Break-Up, Chastity, Child, Cohabitation, Contraception, Dad, Daughter, Divorce, Family, Father, Fatherhood, Fatherless, Fatherlessness, Feminism, Feminist, Fidelity, Girl, Immorality, Marital Stability, Marriage, Men, Morality, No-Fault Divorce, Number, Pre-marital Sex, Research, Sex, Sexual Immorality, Sexuality, Single-Motherhood, Stability, Study, Survey, Unilateral Divorce, Virgin, Virginity, Women

New study: relationship quality diminished by early sexual activity, especially for women

Regarding the studies on the consequences of sexual activity that Mathetes wrote about before on this blog, I had something to add.

I thought these comments from Stuart Schneiderman about those studies were interesting. He writes about the response of feminists to the paper’s finding that women are more affected by early sexual activity, (the paper calls it “relationship tempo”), than men.

Excerpt:

As you might have guessed, feminists are torqued by this study. Witness the bilge offered by Amanda Hessat the DoubleX blog.

To her confused mind, a woman who has a happy marriage might, in her heart of hearts be unhappy. Because it does not satisfy her personhood!

In her words:

What the Daily Mail doesn’t say is that half-year stretches of celibacy may make a woman more satisfied in a long-term relationship, but they don’t necessarily make her a more satisfied person.

In the feminist life plan women are supposed to find happiness on their jobs, not in their relationships. This is convenient for feminists since an ideological commitment to their cause tends to be a relationship killer.

Hess points out, correctly, that not all women want long term relationships. Some don’t even want to get married.

If she is suggesting that women who sleep around are perfectly contented with their love lives, she is, as I see it, deluded.

Besides, if women are being pressured into having sex before they want to—which is a main reason why women have sex too early—then one reason is that a sufficient number of their sisters have been giving it away for free, thus skewing the marketplace.

Why don’t writers like Amanda Hess recommend that the women who are giving it away for free change their ways? Why do they always assume that women who want to get married need to act in a way that is not going to help them achieve their goals?

Feminism is the denial of gender differences. What follows from women thinking that they are no different from men when it comes to sex? Pain. Just so everyone knows, I was appalled that everyone was having sex so early according to that study. I’m in my mid-thirties and have not so much as kissed a girl on the lips. The research just doesn’t support rushed physical intimacy as a legitimate pathway to marital stability and a high quality relationship. That’s my goal, so I don’t rush physical intimacy. We should all make an effort to make relationships more about communication and co-operation. If we care about the next generation, then we will do what it takes to provide them with a stable environment in which to grow up.

Related posts

• New study: marriage drops probability of child poverty by 82%
• What do radical feminists want women to want?
• New study finds that Christians who regularly attend church divorce less
• How do prostitutes stay in business in an era of hook-up sex?
• Can recreational sex turn a selfish, irresponsible man into a marriage-minded provider?
• New study finds that cohabitation damages children
• New peer-reviewed paper highlights the benefits of pre-marital chastity/abstinence
• Does being a virgin before marriage affect marital stability?
• How important are biological fathers for healthy child development?
• What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?
• New study shows that children of working mothers live unhealthier lives
• New Scientist article shows why fathers are necessary for children’s well-being
• New study finds that women choose mates based on appearance
• Men should prefer women who allow moral judging and spiritual leading
• Where have all the good men gone, and why aren’t men marrying?
• Do men have a responsibility not to marry feminists?
• Why do some women tolerate jerks as boyfriends?
• The dangers of sentimentality in relationships
• Is Mark Driscoll afraid to hold a woman accountable for her own choices?
• How feminism made women unsuitable for marriage and parenting
• Why Christian men should be chaste
• Study: 80% of single evangelicals aged 18-29 are no longer virigins
• Should Christian men marry? What’s the worst that could happen?
• For women under 30, most births occur outside of marriage
• How feminist pastors like Mark Driscoll and Kevin DeYoung undermine marriage
• In the UK welfare state, single motherhood is passed from mother to daughter
• New study finds that teens who lose their virginity are more likely to divorce
• How more compassion and less moral judgments increases teen pregnancy
• Can a person be a feminist and still believe in marriage?
• What happens when the government pays people to have babies out-of-wedlock?
• New survey finds women more sexually active than men in high school
• Research to help you understand the “hook-up” culture on campus
• Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?
• Who is responsible for the abolition of marriage? Men or feminists?
• Who is to blame for the hook-up culture?
• How the feminist welfare state causes generations of fatherlessness
• How feminism’s war against men ends up hurting women
• Less than half of 7 to 21 year old women think marriage precedes child-bearing

Filed under: Polemics, Break-Up, Chastity, Cohabitation, Contraception, Divorce, Family, Feminism, Feminist, Fidelity, Immorality, Marital Stability, Marriage, Men, Morality, No-Fault Divorce, Number, Pre-marital Sex, Research, Sex, Sexual Immorality, Sexuality, Stability, Study, Survey, Unilateral Divorce, Virgin, Virginity, Women