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

SAS war hero jailed for keeping trophy pistol given to him by Iraqi Army

The UK Telegraph reports.

Excerpt:

An SAS soldier has been jailed for possessing a “war trophy” pistol presented to him by the Iraqi Army for outstanding service.

Sgt Danny Nightingale, a special forces sniper who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military detention by a court martial last week.

His sentence was described last night as the “betrayal of a war hero”, made worse because it was handed down in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

Sgt Nightingale had planned to fight the charge of illegally possessing the 9mm Glock.

But his lawyer said he pleaded guilty after being warned that he could otherwise face a five-year sentence.

The soldier had hoped for leniency given the circumstances. At the court martial, even the prosecution described him as a serviceman of exemplary character, who had served his country for 17 years, 11 in the special forces.

The court was told that he returned to Britain in a hurry after two friends were killed in Iraq, leaving his equipment — including the pistol — to be packed up by colleagues.

It accepted evidence from expert witnesses that he suffered severe memory loss due to a brain injury.

Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor, presiding over the court martial, could have spared the soldier prison by passing a suspended sentence. Instead he handed down the custodial term.

Sgt Nightingale and his family chose to waive the anonymity usually given to members of the special forces.

His wife, Sally, said her husband’s sentence was a “disgrace”. She called him a “hero who had been betrayed”. She said she and the couple’s two daughters, aged two and five, faced losing their home after his Army pay was stopped.

The soldier’s former commanding officer and politicians have called for the sentence to be overturned.

Lt Col Richard Williams, who won a Military Cross in Afghanistan in 2001 and was Sgt Nightingale’s commanding officer in Iraq, said the sentence “clearly needed to be overturned immediately”.

He said: “His military career has been ruined and his wife and children face being evicted from their home — this is a total betrayal of a man who dedicated his life to the service of his country.”

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative MP for Newark and a former infantry officer, said he planned to take up the case with the Defence Secretary. Simon McKay, Sgt Nightingale’s lawyer, said: “On Remembrance Sunday, when the nation remembers its war heroes, my client — one of their number — is in a prison cell.

“I consider the sentence to be excessive and the basis of the guilty plea unsafe. It is a gross miscarriage of justice and grounds of appeal are already being prepared.”

In 2007, Sgt Nightingale was serving in Iraq as a member of Task Force Black, a covert counter-terrorist unit that conducted operations under orders to capture and kill members of al-Qaeda.

He also helped train members of a secret counter-terrorist force called the Apostles. At the end of the training he was presented with the Glock, which he planned to donate to his regiment as a war trophy.

The Special Air Service is the absolute best counter-terrorism unit in the world. Better than the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, better than the U.S. Navy SEALS, better than the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Operations Group. This is no way to treat a member of the SAS.

There is more compassion for the criminal in the UK than for the law-abiding person. But why is that? I believe it’s because the UK has become dominated at every level by women, because of feminism. Women don’t like the sound of guns, and they don’t like people to own guns, even if they are ex-military or ex-police. Women just don’t value men who use strength and arms to do the right thing – strength and force makes them uncomfortable. Women tend to want to suppress moral judgments because they don’t want anyone, even burglars and criminals, to feel bad. Women like compassion. Women like tolerance. Women think that if every belief is true and all points of view are equally correct. They want to minimize disagreements and violence. They are uncomfortable with men using force because that makes evil people feel bad. That’s why they have these ridiculous anti-male laws.

Feminism seeks to abolish the special roles played by men, like protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. The policies of the UK government are designed to block men from filling those roles. Handguns were banned in 1997 and men who defend their families and homes are regularly prosecuted by the UK government. Tax rates are extremely high the more you earn, making it harder for a man to support a family on one income while his wife stays home with the children to raise them. Out-of-wedlock birth is facilitated through state-run health care and single-mother welfare payments, so that women can raise fatherless children with ease.  The antipathy against strong men reflected in laws and policies is probably one of the reasons why men shy away from marriage. Why take on a commitment like that when you cannot even defend your family from evil?

Filed under: News, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Arms, Compassion, Country, Emotions, Family, Feelings, Feminism, Feminist, Gun Ban, Handgun Ban, Harriet Harman, Hero, Honor, Iraq, Labor Party, Labour Party, Leader, Male, Marriage, Masculinity, Medal, Men, Military Cross, Moral Relativism, Postmodernism, Protector, Provider, Role, SAS, Soldier, Special Air Service, Special Forces, Task Force Black, UK, Universalism, War, War Hero

Melanie Phillips: the Left’s war on the family has left us with millions of lonely people

Dina has been really wonderful lately, calming me down after Tuesday’s election loss. I’m trying not to write about politics for a little while. For me the biggest impact of the election will be on the children. The children who will be aborted by their mothers, the children who will be raised without their fathers, the children who will be raised with no mother or no father in same-sex “marriages” and the children who will be saddled with over $200,000 of public debt the day they are born. Truly, leftism is a philosophy that makes war on children.

Dina sent me this related article from Melanie Phillips, a well-known Jewish conservative based in the UK. It’s a really good article.

Excerpt:

Britain appears to be turning into a disunited kingdom of solitary and lonely people.

Recent figures have shown that ever-increasing numbers of middle-aged men and women are living alone.

According to the Office of National Statistics, almost 2.5 million people aged between 45 and 64 have their own home but no spouse, partner or children to live with them. Since the mid-Nineties, their number has grown by more than 50 per cent.

[...]A devastating study published last week revealed that, by the time they are 15, little more than half of British children are still living with both their natural parents. That means nearly half of 15-year-olds are not.

First the broken links between parents and children:

[I]f a parent disappears from his or her children’s lives, those children are far less likely to want to look after that parent when he or she becomes old and frail.

Nor will children want to look after a step-parent who, even if not actively resented, will not command the same bonds of love and duty as someone’s natural father or mother.

And the broken links in romantic relationships:

[O]ur post-religious, post-modern, post-moral society prizes above all else independence, which is seen as essential to fulfilling one’s potential without any constraints or interference by anyone else.

This fact more than anything else helps explain the rise and rise of cohabitation, and the reason why so many now prefer it to marriage.

The key point about marriage is that it is not a partnership or a relationship but a union in which two people bind themselves to each other for ever in solemn obligation.

By contrast, those who choose to cohabit regard their relationship as a partnership of independent individuals — in which they reserve for themselves the right to opt out, with no binding obligation on either side.

[...]Nor is it surprising that a principal reason why cohabitations collapse is the arrival of a baby. For a child demands unconditional obligation to another human being. And that’s what cohabitants don’t want.

And children who grow up without both of their biological parents:

Of course, there are lone parents who do a heroic job in bringing up their children against all the odds, but in general children in fragmented families suffer in every aspect of their lives.

They do worse at school and are less likely to get a job, are more prone to drugs, teenage pregnancy and crime, suffer more from depression and other mental disorders and are more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

Worse still, they go on disproportionately to replicate in their adult lives the very same disordered or broken family patterns that did them so much damage.

For in fractured families, where one spouse has betrayed or abandoned another and where partners may come and go, the children grow up without any understanding of what it takes to overcome difficulties in a relationship, or what things such as trust, loyalty — and yes, real love — actually mean.

[...]From easier divorce to the abolition of laws covering illegitimacy; from the promotion of unmarried motherhood to the feminist demonisation of men; from the doctrine of non-judgmentalism, which gave a free pass to the abandonment of children, to the loading of the tax and welfare dice against marriage and in favour of lone parenthood — the wrecking ball of the Left has succeeded in smashing the traditional family to bits.

I love Melanie Phillips! And, like Dina and I, she also likes Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith – the best MP in the UK.

Now everybody click here and go read the whole thing.

Filed under: Commentary, Abortion, Children, Divorce, Family, Father, Feminism, Illegitimacy, Labour Party, LIberal Democrat Party, Marriage, Melanie Phillips, Mother, Out of Wedlock Birth, Premarital Sex, Recreational Sex, Single-Motherhood, Socialism, UK, Welfare

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith proposes reforms to the UK welfare state

Dina sent me this exciting article from the UK Daily Mail about our favorite conservative MP.

Excerpt:

Jobless couples with more than two children should have benefit payments limited, Iain Duncan Smith suggested yesterday.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said there were ‘large numbers’ of couples on welfare having big families – unlike middle-income parents who had to weigh up if they could afford to have another child.

Mr Duncan Smith condemned the ‘madness’ of the state subsidising large workless families – saying it would be fairer to the ‘vast majority’ of responsible taxpayers if benefits were limited to the first two children in future.

He has agreed to find another £10billion in welfare savings by 2016, having already slashed £18billion from a vast budget that grew by 60 per cent under Labour.

As well as cuts to child benefit and tax credits for large workless families, he suggested housing benefit could be stripped for those who expected to go straight from school on to welfare and a state-subsidised house.

[...]He [insisted] the real cruelty was leaving people languishing on welfare for years. ‘We have accepted for far too long in this country that it is possible for people to just stay on benefits,’ he said. ‘It is all about saying, we will give you massive support to find work… But also, we have an expectation, as the taxpayer pays for these bills, that you try your hardest to find work.’

Most controversially, Mr Duncan Smith suggested the present system encouraged poorer families to have large numbers of children without worrying about the cost.

‘When you look at families across the board, at all incomes, you find the vast, vast majority make decisions about the kind of numbers of children they have, the families they want, based on what they think they can afford,’ he said.

‘Where you see the clustering of the large families is really down at the very lowest incomes, those on significant levels of welfare, and those on the very top incomes. In other words, the problem for those who are paying the taxes, paying the bills – they make the decisions about their lives, even if they sometimes would like to maybe have extra children, they make decisions.

‘People who are having support through welfare are often free from that decision. We want to support people if they have children when they are out of work, of course.

‘But can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to remember you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and what finances you have?’

The UK Telegraph added:

Official figures show that 120,000 of the most troubled and difficult families cost the taxpayer about £9 billion a year. Every household is now spending the equivalent of £3,000 a year in tax for welfare payments.

There are about one in five households where no one works and 1.5 million children are growing up with a parent addicted to drugs or alcohol.

[...]Mr Duncan Smith will say that the poor use of government money in recent times has led to people being “written off”.

“Our failure to make each pound count has cost us again and again over the years, Not only in terms of a financial cost – higher taxes, inflated welfare bills and lower productivity, as people sit on benefits long term. But also the social cost of a fundamentally divided Britain – one in which a section of society has been left behind. We must no longer allow ourselves to accept that some people are written off.”

[...]The Liberal Democrats are threatening to block further cuts in benefits unless the Coalition also introduces new taxes on the rich.

The article notes that members of the British socialist party (the Labor Party) British communist party (the Liberal Democrats) oppose the cuts to welfare. Of course! That’s how they get their votes – by redistributing money from working people to many more people who don’t work.

Filed under: News, Big Government, Cambridge Public Policy, Coalition, Conservative, Conservative Party, Debt, Deficit, Government, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS, Labor Party, Labour Party, Speech, UK, Welfare, Welfare State, Work and Pensions Secretary

Patients starving and dying of thirst in socialized NHS health care system

From the UK Telegraph, a story about government-run health care in the UK.

Excerpt:

Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today.

The death toll was disclosed by the Government amid mounting concern over the dignity of patients on NHS wards.

They will also fuel concerns about care homes, as it was disclosed that eight people starved to death and 21 people died of thirst while in care.

Last night there were warnings that they must prompt action by the NHS and care home regulators to prevent further deaths among patients.

The Office for National Statistics figures also showed that:

• as well as 43 people who starved to death, 287 people were recorded by doctors as being malnourished when they died in hospitals;
• there were 558 cases where doctors recorded that a patient had died in a state of severe dehydration in hospitals;
• 78 hospital and 39 care home patients were killed by bedsores, while a further 650 people who died had their presence noted on their death certificates;
• 21,696 were recorded as suffering from septicemia when they died, a condition which experts say is most often associated with infected wounds.

The records, from the Office for National Statistics, follow a series of scandals of care of the elderly, with doctors forced to prescribe patients with drinking water or put them on drips to make sure they do not become severely dehydrated .

This is the problem with socialized medicine. You pay your money up front and then later on the government decides how much treatment you get. They have no reason to be nice to you – you already paid them. They don’t get paid more or less based on the quality of care they give you. You can’t get a refund on taxes paid. And where else can you go? It’s a single payer system.

Related posts

• UK socialism in action: patients waiting on trolleys for over 50 hours
• NHS makes patients wait unnecessarily in order to avoid “raising expectations”
• NHS refuses to treat woman who is starving to death
• Former NHS hospital director dies on surgery waiting list
• Women gives birth after NHS nurses send her home from hospital
• UK patients denied treatment as “public option” system makes cutbacks
• How do governments control costs in a single-payer health care systems?
• NHS patients giving birth in waiting rooms
• What does universal health care really mean?
• How well is government-run health care working out in the UK?
• British national health care system prepares to cut 20 billion dollars
• NHS kills a man’s wife by delaying cancer treatment for 7 months
• How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?
• Police probe death of NHS hospital patient who begged for water
• How government-run health care leads to euthanasia
• NHS employees leapfrog their own waiting lists to access private health care
• NHS delays treatment for broken arm for four months and counting
• One in six patients misdiagnosed by NHS
• The deadly consequences of rationing health care
• Health care in Britain: question a doctor and lose your children
• How death panels work in the British health care system
• One million NHS patients receive brutally inadequate health care
• 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children
• Woman gives birth on pavement after NHS refuses to send an ambulance
• NHS hospitals infested with a dozen varieties of vermin
• 39-year old woman is prescribed painkillers and dies after 11-minute NHS exam
• NHS refuses to pay for lower-back painkillers

Filed under: News, Benefits, Big Government, Bureaucracy, Fairness, Government, Health-care, Hospital, Labour Party, Medicine, National Health Service, NHS Horror Stories, NHS Horror Story, Redistribution of Wealth, Single-Payer, Social Justice, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Wealth Redistribution, Welfare State