Does science support mothers who leave their young children to go to work?

Dina is very concerned about the UK’s leftist coalition government’s attempt to punish women who stay at home with their young children. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Under plans unveiled in the Budget on Wednesday, families will only benefit from the generous new deal, which will come into force in 2015, if ‘all parents’ have a job. If one parent works but the other stays at home looking after their young children, they will get nothing.

It is the second time in just a few months that the Government has triggered controversy with its changes to the tax and benefit systems, which appear to penalise stay-at-home mothers.

As a result of the recent child benefit changes, a couple can both earn £50,000 and keep their child benefit, worth £1,752 a year for two children.

But a couple where one parent earns £60,000 and the other earns nothing – but have a far lower joint income – do not get a penny.

Again, this week’s initiative favours those couples where both parents go out to work. It will even benefit parents who each earn a salary of £149,999.

Note that this plan is being put forward by socialist Liberal Democrat Party, as well as the “Conservative” Party.

Dina thinks that the science is pretty clear that children suffer if their mothers leave them at a young age. Take a look at the video above, and then the brain scan below.

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

Here’s the article that goes with the brain scan from the UK Daily Mail.

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.

This is why I argue that feminism, which is the ideology that demands that women work outside the home in order to be “equal” to men, is harmful to children. If we really cared about children, then we need to not be subsidizing the child abuse schemes of Liberal Democrats like Nick Clegg. We need to be clear that gender feminism (third-wave feminism) is an anti-child ideology and it should be opposed. The science is settled on this issue. Feminism harms innocent young children. And feminism isn’t just opposed to the rights of born children. They oppose the right to life of unborn children, too.

Filed under: News, Abuse, Baby, Brain, Child, Child Abuse, Child Care, Child Development, Child Neglect, Coalition, Conservative Party, David Cameron, Empathy, Equal, Equality, Family, Feminism, Health, Home, Intelligence, Leftism, Liberal Democrat, LIberal Democrat Party, Marriage, Mental Health, Mother, Neglect, Newborn, Nick Clegg, Parenting, Radical Feminism, Social Ability, UK

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

British private schools that teach intelligent design as science will lose funding

Jonathan M. explains what happened at Evolution News.

Excerpt:

The British Guardian newspaper reports on recent developments in UK governmental policy on teaching evolution in free schools (which, though state funded, are normally not required to follow the national curriculum):

The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary [Michael Gove] to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are “evidence-based views or theories” that run “contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations.”It appears that it is no longer merely religious notions that are being disallowed. It is nowall ”evidence-based views or theories” that run contrary to the current consensus paradigm.

[...]When one side of a debate is insecure enough to need to stifle dissenting viewpoints from being expressed, this legitimately raises doubts about the scientific robustness of the view being shielded from criticism. Whether Richard Dawkins and his ilk at the BCSE (British equivalent of the National Center for Science Education) and BHA choose to acknowledge it or not, there is a growing contingent of scientists who recognize a mounting body of evidence that militates against neo-Darwinian evolution. It can’t be ignored forever.

I’m actually shocked by this, because I thought that Michael Gove was a Conservative Party MP. I guess he’s not really that conservative that he supports conservative policies like school choice. Or maybe British conservatives are more like liberals, except a bit less liberal.

The decision to cut funding for private schools is being hailed by the Guardian as a victory for Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association, headed by Polly Toynbee. You remember them, don’t you? They are the two parties who refused to debate William Lane Craig when he was touring the UK looking for atheists brave enough to face him. (See the links below). The British humanist A.C. Grayling also chickened out of debating William Lane Craig. I don’t think that atheists are interested in debates and evidence at all – they seem to be more interested in forcing people to accept their views.

Why did Christians in the UK elect secular leftists so many times?

I often get into discussions with Christian apologists about the importance of understanding how Christianity relates to economics, politics, law and many other areas. One area where there is an obvious conflict is education policy. Christian parents don’t want their children being influenced by a curriculum designed by secular leftists for the purpose of advancing secular leftists causes and ideals.  The way that conservatives work against that is by opposing federal control of schools, so that what children learn is pushed back to the states and the municipalities. Conservatives favor local control of schools, and school choice, so that parents can have more control over what their children learn – not bureaucrats in Washington, Ottawa, or London. The Bible tells Christians what we should want, but it’s up to us to vote for the policies that will achieve those goals. We have to know what those policies are – by reading and studying the issues.

Frankly, the British people have (by and large) been voting to have big government to drain the pockets of private citizens and businesses for decades so that left-wing bureaucrats in the Labor party and now the Liberal Democrats, are making all the policy decisions. The bigger a government becomes, the more likely they are to intrude into your family – including your decisions about education. When you talk to leftists like Harriet Harman, they are quite up front about their social agenda – feminism, moral relativism, the destruction of the family, changing the definition of marriage, etc. So why put these people in charge of your children’s education? How does that serve God? It doesn’t.

So why did so many British Christians elect these secular leftists over and over again? The answer is that British Christians were swayed by the rhetoric of “social justice” to think that big government was “nice”. However, Christianity is not in the business of being “nice” through government-controlled redistribution of wealth. Christians favor individual charity and liberty – not redistributing wealth so that everyone is equal no matter what they do. And it’s not government’s job to provide security either. Individuals have to take responsibility for their own actions and make plans for their own education costs, health care costs, and so on. Stop empowering government to make your decisions for you – they are just going to take your money and then use it against you! Good government is small government – government that empowers the individual and the private business. Good government lets you decide what you are going to do with your life, based on your values.

Here is a trustworthy saying:

Whether we like it or not, the American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
– Gerald Ford

If you are a UK Christian, I would really recommend that you read something about free market capitalism, marriage, abortion, foreign policy, just war and the many other issues where the Bible has something to say. A very good book to pick up is Wayne Grudem’s “Politics According to the Bible“. Or you can listen to some of his lectures here, like this one and this one. A good basic book on economics and foreign policy like Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” would also be helpful. If you want someone British, then try reading Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom“. I posted links to all the chapters in that book here, so you can read it for free.

Related posts

• Video: William Lane Craig lectures coward Dawkins’ empty chair in Oxford
• UK Independent joins UK Guardian in call for Dawkins to debate Craig
• Atheist philosopher: Dawkins refusal to debate is cynical and anti-intellectual
• Richard Dawkins responds to Craig’s debate challenge in a UK Guardian editorial
• Richard Dawkins, A.C. Grayling and Polly Toynbee refuse to debate atheism
• Humanist Association president Polly Toynbee runs away from debate on God
• Coward A.C. Grayling and chicken Dawkins flee debate with William Lane Craig
• UK Telegraph on Richard Dawkins’ cowardly refusal to debate William Lane Craig
• Cowardly Richard Dawkins explains why he won’t debate William Lane Craig

Filed under: News, Compassion, Conservative Party, Department of Education, Education, English Socialism, Feminism, Free School, Intelligent Design, Labor Party, Labour Party, LIberal Democrat Party, Michael Gove, Postmodernism, Private School, Public School, Redistribution of Wealth, School Choice, Social Justice, Socialism, Tax the Rich, UK, United Kingdom, Wealth Redistribution

UK approves explicit sex education materials for five-year old children

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Creative Minority Report via Foxfier)

Excerpt:

Explicit cartoons, films and books have been cleared for use to teach sex education to schoolchildren as young as five.

A disturbing dossier exposes a wide range of graphic resources recommended for primary school lessons.

The shocking material – promoted by local councils and even the BBC – teaches youngsters about adult language and sexual intercourse.

Among the books singled out in the report is How Did I Begin? by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom which has a cartoon image of a couple in bed in an intimate embrace.

It is accompanied by an explanation – using frank and adult terminology – of the act of intercourse.

Another, called The Primary School Sex And Relationships Education Pack by HIT UK, includes material to allow children aged five to 11 to learn about different sexual positions and prostitution.

The BBC has been highlighted for an educational video featuring full frontal nudity, while its learning resources department, BBC Active, shows computer-generated images of male genitalia.

All the material has been recommended by councils for use at ages ‘seven-plus’.

[...]Before the election, the Liberal Democrats said they ‘unreservedly’ supported mandatory sex education in primary schools.

I wonder if they will be doing away with the right of parents to opt their students out of the sex education curriculum, like they do in Ontario, Canada. And in Germany, if your child doesn’t attend the sex education classes, then you are fined – and if you can’t pay the fine then you go to jail. Sweden also jails parents for homeschooling.

Related posts

• What happens when the government pays people to have babies out-of-wedlock?
• British woman has sex with strangers in order to get fatherless child
• The UK has generous welfare benefits for single mothers
• Switzerland company to manufacture condoms for 12-14 year olds
• Sex-education video prompts mother to transfer out 7-year old daughter
• Most children of British mothers born out of wedlock – UK Telegraph
• Less than half of 7 to 21 year old women think marriage precedes child-bearing
• Public schools hand out condoms to 5-year olds without parental consent
• Teacher union promotes sexualizing children at United Nations conference
• 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 really responsible for the abolition of marriage? Men or feminists?
• Who is to blame for the hook-up culture?
• What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?
• Canadian study suggests how parents can influence children’s sexual choices

Filed under: News, Abortion, AIDS, Children, Education, Educrat, Feminism, Harriet Harman, Health-care, HIV, HPV, Kindergarten, Labor, Labor Party, Labour, Labour Party, Liberal Democrat, LIberal Democrat Party, Parental Authority, Parental Rights, Public School, School, Sex Education, Sexually-Transmitted Disease, Teen Pregnancy, UK

UK Equalities Minister introduces law allowing gays to marry in churches

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Lex Communis)

Excerpt:

Gays and lesbians will be able to ‘marry’ in church under new laws to be unveiled this week.

The historic decision by Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone will end the legal definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.

A gay couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a ‘husband’, and a lesbian couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a ‘wife’.

A key part of the reform will bring an end to the ban that prevents civil partnerships being conducted in places of worship.

In a major concession to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems, the Government will announce that for the first time, such ceremonies will be allowed to have a religious element, including hymns and Bible readings. They could be carried out by priests or other religious officials.

[...]Ms Featherstone will also say gays should be able to hold traditional weddings in register offices and other civil settings such as country houses and even football grounds.

[...]The change could also lead to legal action by gay couples denied the right to marry in church.

Gay marriages are already legal in Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands and some American states.

The Liberal Democrats are to the left of the Labour Party in the UK. They are like the New Democrats in Canada.

Even though the Liberal Democrats are hostile to Christianity, there were probably many Christians who voted for them as a way of promoting “equality” and “social justice” through redistribution of wealth. But the more government grows, the more they meddle in civil society. No billionaire business owner has the power to coerce and control a private citizen as much as the lowest level politician has. Businesses can only sell you things if you freely choose to buy them – hardly oppressive. But the most feeble government bureaucrat can coerce you and sanction you for failing to comply with his will – you don’t have a choice of whether to comply or not.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
(Thomas Jefferson)

Note that this sort of thing happens in Canada, too.

Related posts

• Which family configuration is best for raising children?
• Why do people oppose same-sex marriage?
• What causes homosexuality? Is there a gay gene?

Filed under: News, Britain, Christianity, Church, Family, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Religion, Gay Activism, Gay Activist, Labour, Labour Party, Liberal Democrat, LIberal Democrat Party, Lynne Featherstone, Marriage, Morality, Nick Clegg, Religious Liberty, Same-Sex Marriage, Traditional Marriage, UK, United Kingdom