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

Sandy Hook CT school shooting shows need for tougher fatherlessness laws

If we were really serious about stopping gun crime, then we should go after the root cause of gun crime. So what is that root cause? The answer might surprise you.

Here is Dr. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation to explain:

Census data and the Fragile Families survey show that marriage can be extremely effective in reducing child poverty. But the positive effects of married fathers are not limited to income alone. Children raised by married parents have substantially better life outcomes compared to similar children raised in single-parent homes.

When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school.[19] Many of these negative outcomes are associated with the higher poverty rates of single mothers. In many cases, however, the improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income. This indicates that the father brings more to his home than just a paycheck.

The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, when compared to intact married families, children from single-parent homes are:

• More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime;[20]
• Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems;[21]
• Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school;[22] and
• A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[23]

The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families. [24] Compared to girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[25]

Finally, the decline of marriage generates poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience poverty as adults when compared to children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.[26]

People on the left claim that poverty causes crime, but they don’t look for the root cause of poverty. The root cause of poverty is the decline of marriage. But people on the left favor that, so they can’t admit the truth.

Dr. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute explains one of the causes of fatherlessness in his testimony to Congress:

Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.(3) Moreover, O’Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates.(4) Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.(5)

As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted in her seminal article for The Atlantic Monthly:

The relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime.(6)

At the same time, the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)

The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada’s social-welfare system on family structure concluded that “providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women.”(9)

The poverty that everyone complains about is not the root cause of crime. The poverty is caused by fatherlessness. The fatherlessness is caused by welfare. Fatherlessness is also caused by laws and policies that make it easier for people to divorce, e.g. – no-fault divorce laws. Again, it’s people on the left who push for no-fault divorce laws. So the left is pushing two policies, welfare and no-fault divorce, which cause crime.

What happened in Sandy Hook

The Connecticut shooter came from a broken home (H/T Tom) and had not spoken to his father in two years (H/T Dina). If we are serious about stopping school shootings, then we need to go after the source.

How do we stop this? We go after the laws and policies that promote fatherlessness. No-fault divorce laws make it easy to get out of a marriage, which means that people rely on “chemistry” and peer-approval to decide who to marry instead of choosing the right person for the actual duties of the job. The divorce court system rewards the person who files for divorce first, which is the women in about 70% of the cases. The incentives all favor fatherlessness.

If we were serious about fixing fatherlessness, we should reform divorce laws to make people take marriage more seriously. Instead of giving alternatives to marriage  the same benefits as marriage, we should give benefits to people who are able to get married, stay married and produce productive, law-abiding children.

Filed under: News, Adam Lanza, Aid, Big Government, Connecticut, Crime, Crime Rates, Divorce, Family, Father, Fatherless, Feminism, Government, Gun Ban, Gun Crime, Gun Violence, Guns, Homocide, Juvenile, Juvenile Crime, Marriage, Moral Relativism, Murder, No-Fault Divorce, Out of Wedlock, Out of Wedlock Birth, Premarital Sex, Recreational Sex, Sandy Hook, School Shooting, Sex, Sex Education, Shooting, Single-Mother, Socialism, Teen Pregnancy, Unwed Mother, Violent Crime, Violent Crime Rates, Welfare

Government-run health care: NHS handing out morning-after pill to 13-year-olds

Dina sent me this article from the Scottish Sun.

Excerpt:

Nurses dish out emergency contraception to teens at lunchtime ‘drop-in’ clinics.

And it has emerged the meds are being prescribed to young girls WITHOUT their parents’ knowledge at seven high schools across Dumfries and Galloway.

The controversial move was last night blasted by religious and political leaders who say it promotes underage sex.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: “There is a real danger this will breed complacency about safe sex.

“Making the morning-after pill available in this way sends out the message that there is nothing wrong with sex at any age.”

And a Catholic Church spokesman added: “It is utterly immoral and like throwing petrol on a fire.

“It gives the green light to promiscuity.”

[...]Scotland has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe.

Does handing out contraception normalize premarital sex, resulting in higher rates of abortion and teenage pregnancy?

Let’s see.

This article from the liberal New York Times answers that part of that question. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt: (links removed)

To begin with, a lack of contraceptive access simply doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception.

At the same time, if liberal social policies really led inexorably to fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, you would expect “blue” regions of the country to have lower teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions per capita than demographically similar “red” regions.

But that isn’t what the data show. Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. “Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part.

What’s more, another Guttmacher Institute study suggests that liberal states don’t necessarily do better than conservative ones at preventing teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place. Instead, the lower teenage birth rates in many blue states are mostly just a consequence of (again) their higher abortion rates. Liberal California, for instance, has a higher teen pregnancy rate than socially conservative Alabama; the Californian teenage birth rate is only lower because the Californian abortion rate is more than twice as high.

This is similar to what we know from other countries like Spain, where promoting contraception actually led to higher rates of abortion.

Here’s the article from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Abortion advocates often promote contraception by claiming that as contraception use increases, the number of “unwanted” pregnancies and therefore abortions will decrease. But a new study out of Spain has found the exact opposite, suggesting that contraception actually increases abortion rates.

The authors, who published their findings in the January 2011 issue of the journal Contraception, conducted surveys of about 2,000 Spanish women aged 15 to 49 every two years from 1997 to 2007.  They found that over this period the number of women using contraceptives increased from 49.1% to 79.9%.

Yet they noted that in the same time frame the country’s abortion rate more than doubled from 5.52 per 1,000 women to 11.49.

This UK Daily Mail story explains how more contraception means more abortion and more teen pregnancy in the UK.

Excerpt:

Most pregnancies among girls under 18 ended in abortion last year.

Out of around 40,000 pregnancies more than 20,000 were terminated – the first time more had chosen this option than become mothers.

The figure is higher than 2007, when it just hit 50 per cent, and consistent with a steady upwards trend since the Government started its controversial Teenage Pregnancy Strategy in 1999.

Figures out on May 21 will also show that for the first time the number of abortions performed on women living in England and Wales topped 200,000.

The teenage pregnancy strategy, which has cost taxpayers more than £300million, was meant to halve the number of conceptions among girls under 18 in England between 1998 and 2010.

Ministers have tried to slash teenage pregnancies by freely handing out contraceptives and expanding sex education.

But the fall in pregnancy rates has not met Government targets, and in 2007 the rate actually rose.

Teenage pregnancy rates are now higher than they were in 1995. Pregnancies among girls under 16 – below the age of consent – are also at the highest level since 1998.

It is like throwing petrol / gasoline on a fire. The more sex you have, the more abortions and/or teen pregnancy you get.

Should Christians support single-payer health care systems run by a secular leftist government? Of course not. What government-run health care means, in practice, is that businesses and workers will be subsidizing things like abortion, teen pregnancy, sex changes, IVF, single motherhood by choice, no-fault divorce, and other irresponsible choices. Whatever you subsidize, you get more of. Whatever you tax, you get less of. Should we be wanting more abortion and teen pregnancy?

My Dad and I were discussing this article last night and we were thinking about whether sexual activity at age 13 really prepares a woman for life-long married love. This blog has highlighted studies showing that marital stability is increased by pre-marital chastity, and other studies showing that an increased number of premarital sex partners increases the odds of divorce and most recently about how delaying sexual activity in a relationship increases relationship quality. Marital instability is especially bad for children who will grow up fatherless. Children who grow in non-married homes are far more likely to be poor, for example, but also more likely to be exposed to violence. Should we be promoting and subsidizing behaviors that cause these problems? Permitting the behaviors is one thing, but subsidizing them is something else entirely.

This is an issue that libertarians and fiscal conservatives should also care about. Family breakdown will only result in an increase in the size of government to deal with the messes. Not just more police, but more divorce courts, more child protection, more welfare, and so on.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Abstinence, Birth Control, Breast Cancer, Chastity, Children, Contraceptives, Divorce, Ella, Family, Fatherless, Fatherlessness, Marriage, Plan B, Sex, Sexual Activity, Stability, Teen, Teen Pregnancy, The Pill

NYC Department of Education to hand out Plan B to high school students

From the New York Post. (H/T Strange Herring)

Excerpt:

The Department of Education is giving morning-after pills and other birth-control drugs to students at 13 high schools, The Post has learned.

School nurse offices stocked with the contraceptives can dispense “Plan B” emergency contraception and other oral or injectable birth control to girls without telling their parents — unless parents opt out after getting a school informational letter about the new program.

CATCH — Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Health — is part of a citywide attack against the epidemic of teen pregnancy, which spurs many girls — most of them poor — to drop out of school.

While Big Apple high schools have long supplied free condoms to sexually active teens, this is the first time city schools have dispensed hormonal birth control and Plan B, which can prevent pregnancy if taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex.

[...]Parents at the 14 schools were sent letters informing them about CATCH. Parents may bar their kids from getting pregnancy tests or contraceptives if they sign and return an opt-out statement.

If they do not, schools can confidentially give the contraception without permission.

Does handing children contraceptives make them less likely to get pregnant?

Here’s the article from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Abortion advocates often promote contraception by claiming that as contraception use increases, the number of “unwanted” pregnancies and therefore abortions will decrease. But a new study out of Spain has found the exact opposite, suggesting that contraception actually increases abortion rates.

The authors, who published their findings in the January 2011 issue of the journal Contraception, conducted surveys of about 2,000 Spanish women aged 15 to 49 every two years from 1997 to 2007.  They found that over this period the number of women using contraceptives increased from 49.1% to 79.9%.

Yet they noted that in the same time frame the country’s abortion rate more than doubled from 5.52 per 1,000 women to 11.49.

Does this Plan B cause an abortion?

Consider this story from Life Site News about the morning after pill.

Excerpt:

A poll has shown that as many as one fifth of all young women in the UK have used the morning after pill (MAP) in the past year after “unprotected sex.”

A Co-Operative Pharmacy survey of 3000 people found that 20 percent of women aged 18 to 35 took the “emergency contraceptive” pill last year. The same group said they had typically used the drug, which only acts as a genuine contraceptive in some cases, when they had had sex after using drugs and/or alcohol.

The poll further found that up to 250,000 women had used the drug two or more times during the year. One in fifty 18-21 year-olds said they used the MAP as their normal form of contraception. One sixth of the women surveyed said they had contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

While a National Health Service spokesman warned that the MAP fails to protect women from sexually transmitted diseases, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has long warned that the medical community is simply not telling women what MAP really is, or what it does.

The morning after pill, a large dose of the same hormones used in contraceptive pills, can either prevent ovulation or prevent the implantation of an existing embryo in the uterine lining.

“Very few women will know precisely when they ovulate,” SPUC said, “so, if they take the morning-after pill, they will not know whether it has prevented conception or caused an abortion.”

This is what happens when you are forced to fund public schools. They don’t get paid more for pleasing you and they don’t get paid less for not pleasing you. They get paid regardless of performance. They get paid by lobbying politicians and influencing elections. They go to work every day and their main goal is getting more money by influencing elections. They don’t get paid more to teach your children better. What they would really like to do is turn your children into little leftists who will vote them higher salaries and better benefits. That’s what they really do all day.

Related posts

Must-see videos on education policy

• MUST-SEE: John Stossel’s documentary about public schools and school choice
• MUST-SEE: Cato Institute lady explains why competition is better than monopoly

Related posts

• Atlanta public schools caught helping students to cheat on standardized tests
• Republicans in Florida, Indiana and Pennsylvania push school choice
• Do public school teachers want to give children a quality education?
• Sex-education video prompts mother to transfer out 7-year old daughter
• 10% of US students are subject to sexual misconduct by school staff
• How Obama’s new 2011 budget fails the poorest children in two ways
• How teacher unions lobby government to block educational reform
• What helps kids to learn? Parents, teacher unions or education bureaucrats?
• New study reveals how school choice benefits the poorest students
• Eleven schools teaching children to praise and worship Obama
• Do teacher unions care about providing high quality education?
• Does the education system discriminate against boys?
• NEA lawyer explains the real goals of teacher unions: money and power
• Are teacher unions interested in helping your children to succeed in life?
• Economist Walter Williams evaluates whether teachers are earning their huge salaries
• How teacher’s unions make war on charter schools

Filed under: News, Abortion, Contraceptives, Democrat, Democrat Party, Education, Feminism, Leftism, Oral Contraceptives, Parents, Plan B, Premarital Sex, Promiscuity, Public School, Recreational Sex, Sex Education, Teacher, Teacher Union, Teen Pregnancy, Voucher

Jennifer Roback Morse lectures on sex and sexuality at Harvard University

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Dr. Morse delivers a talk based on her book “Smart Sex” at Harvard University.

The MP3 file is here. (30 Mb)

Topics:

• the hook-up culture and its effects on men and women
• cohabitation and its effect on marriage stability
• balancing marriage, family and career
• single motherhood by choice and IVF
• donor-conceived children
• modern sex: a sterile, recreation activity
• the real purposes of sex: procreation and spousal unity
• the hormone oxytocin: when it is secreted and what it does
• the hormone vassopressin: when it is secreted and what it does
• the sexual revolution and the commoditization of sex
• the consumer view of sex vs the organic view of sex
• fatherlessness and multi-partner fertility
• how the “sex-without-relationship” view harms children

52 minutes of lecture, 33 minutes of Q&A from the Harvard students. The Q&A is worth listening to – the first question is from a gay student, and Dr. Morse pulls a William Lane Craig to defeat her objection. It was awesome! I never get tired of listening to her talk, and especially on the topics of marriage and family. She is a debater, as well (see below).

And just so everyone knows, the Wintery Knight is pro-chastity and pro-marriage. I believe in chastity and I am chaste. I recommend chastity to men who are contemplating a stable, effective marriage. The research shows that you will have a better marriage by being chaste before marriage.

Related posts

• Jennifer Roback Morse interviews UK lawyer on religious liberty and free speech
• Jennifer Roback Morse debates Christine Sun on the definition of marriage
• Should government get out of the marriage business?
• Jennifer Roback Morse on the injustice of the American family court system
• Jennifer Roback Morse lectures on sexual liberation and social justice
• Jennifer Roback Morse debates same-sex marriage at Southern Methodist University
• Jennifer Roback Morse: Father’s Day is also Husband’s Day
• Jennifer Roback Morse explains how divorce laws changed marriage
• Jennifer Roback Morse lectures on marriage at Stanford University
• Jennifer Roback Morse on Obama’s rejection of traditional marriage
• Three lectures in three days from Jennifer Roback Morse
• Jennifer Roback Morse on contraceptives, divorce, cohabitation, SSM and ART
• Is marriage just an arrangement for people for love each other?
• New version of Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics talk
• Jennifer Roback Morse debates feminism with abortion radical
• Jennifer Roback Morse discusses the rise of single, childless women
• New talks on marrriage by Jennifer Roback Morse and Maggie Gallagher
• Are two mommies as good for a child as a biological mother and father?

Filed under: Podcasts, Abortion, Abstinence, Attachment, Baby, Bonding, Boyfriend, Campus, Chastity, Children, Co-habitation, Cohabitation, College, Contraception, Contraceptives, Divorce, Dorm, Economics, Family, Father, Fatherless, Fatherlessness, Feminism, Feminist, Fertility, Hook-Up, Hookup, In Vitro, In Vitro Fertilization, IVF, Law, Marriage, Mother, Multi-Partner Fertility, Natural Marriage, No-Fault Divorce, Parent, Pregnancy, Premarital Sex, Procreation, Recreational Sex, Teen Pregnancy, Traditional Marriage, University, Vasopressin