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A free floating commentary on culture, politics, economics, and religion based on a passionate commitment to the truth and a desire graciously to refute that which is contrary to it….
"He must hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it."
--Titus 1:9, Revised Standard Version
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My friends who grew up with dogs tell me how when they were teenagers and trusted no one in the world, they could tell their dog all their secrets. It was the one friend who would not gossip or betray, could be solemn or silly or silent as needed, could provide in the middle of the night the soft, unbegrudging comfort and peace that adolescence conspires to disrupt. An age that is all about growth and risk needs some anchors and weights, a model of steadfastness when all else is in flux. Sometimes I think Twist's abiding devotion keeps my girls on a benevolent leash, one that hangs quietly at their side as they trot along but occasionally yanks them back to safety and solid ground.
We've weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters--what school to send them to and what church to attend, whether to let them drop soccer or piano at the risk of teaching them irresponsibility, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.
Read it all.
We've weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters--what school to send them to and what church to attend, whether to let them drop soccer or piano at the risk of teaching them irresponsibility, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * General Interest • Animals • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
The number of women giving birth in the U.S. declined for the second year in a row as more women delayed motherhood during the worst recession since the 1930s.
The number of births dropped 2.6 percent to 4.14 million in 2009, even as the U.S. population rose slightly, according to the annual report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The national birthrate declined to 13.5 for every 1,000 people, from 14.3 in 2007, when the collapse of subprime loans led to falling home prices and the loss of more than 8 million jobs.
Read it all
The number of births dropped 2.6 percent to 4.14 million in 2009, even as the U.S. population rose slightly, according to the annual report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The national birthrate declined to 13.5 for every 1,000 people, from 14.3 in 2007, when the collapse of subprime loans led to falling home prices and the loss of more than 8 million jobs.
Read it all
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
Dr Williams, who is in the country for the All Africa Bishops' Conference, described his visit to the paediatric ward as "inspirational".
But he was told that the unit, which has cared for thousands of the country's sickest children over the years, faces imminent closure as Mildmay International, the British NGO that runs it, cannot afford to do so for much longer. The 33-bed specialist HIV paediatric unit - known as Elizabeth Ward - is expected to close down in just 37 days when the existing funds run out.
Read it all.
But he was told that the unit, which has cared for thousands of the country's sickest children over the years, faces imminent closure as Mildmay International, the British NGO that runs it, cannot afford to do so for much longer. The 33-bed specialist HIV paediatric unit - known as Elizabeth Ward - is expected to close down in just 37 days when the existing funds run out.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of Uganda • * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine
A Roman Catholic adoption charity's appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected.
Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.
The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination.
The Leeds-based charity said it was "very disappointed".
Read it all.
Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.
The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination.
The Leeds-based charity said it was "very disappointed".
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic
In one incident, [Taryn] Cregon [a mother] was getting ready for work and Zoe [her daughter] was getting ready for camp when, suddenly, Cregon heard hair-spraying in the living room. She'd recently bought a new couch and feared Zoe had spritzed it with hair chemicals. An argument ensued, and Cregon was left dumbfounded, wondering how her daughter could be so irresponsible and thoughtless — and then argue when called on it.
The dilemma is pretty typical, according to psychologist Laura Kastner, who along with Jennifer Wyatt wrote a recent book, Getting to Calm: Cool-headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens and Teens. For more than 30 years, Kastner has helped parents and children work toward greater calm in the home. In the hair-spray incident, both mother and daughter got tangled up in what Kastner describes as emotional flooding.
"When we flood, we are having neurons fire in this emotional part of the brain," says Kastner.
Read or listen to it all.
The dilemma is pretty typical, according to psychologist Laura Kastner, who along with Jennifer Wyatt wrote a recent book, Getting to Calm: Cool-headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens and Teens. For more than 30 years, Kastner has helped parents and children work toward greater calm in the home. In the hair-spray incident, both mother and daughter got tangled up in what Kastner describes as emotional flooding.
"When we flood, we are having neurons fire in this emotional part of the brain," says Kastner.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth
When more than 1,100 students arrive for the first day of the school year at Beech Hill Elementary today, Principal Rene Harris will be making sure everything is running smoothly.
Teachers will be easing children back into the learning world after lazy summer days. Food service workers will be preparing the first day's lunch.
And school counselor Tammy Masopust will be helping out in any way she's needed, while quietly watching for the subtle signs that indicate students might be having problems.
Read it all.
Teachers will be easing children back into the learning world after lazy summer days. Food service workers will be preparing the first day's lunch.
And school counselor Tammy Masopust will be helping out in any way she's needed, while quietly watching for the subtle signs that indicate students might be having problems.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • * South Carolina
Mr. Fisher, who is African-American, was arrested in upstate New York and returned to Oklahoma, where he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He faced execution if convicted, a prospect that, records show, his well-respected lawyer did little to avoid.
The lawyer, E. Melvin Porter, a civil rights advocate and the first African-American elected to the Oklahoma State Senate, later said that at the time he considered homosexuals to be “among the worst people in the world,” and Mr. Fisher to be a “very hostile client.”
Mr. Porter was shockingly ill-prepared for trial — “unwilling or unable to reveal evident holes in the state’s case,” a federal appellate court later noted, yet “remarkably successful in undermining his own client’s testimony.” He exhibited “actual doubt and hostility” about his client’s defense, the court said, and failed to present a closing argument, even though the state’s case “was hardly overwhelming.”
Read it all.
The lawyer, E. Melvin Porter, a civil rights advocate and the first African-American elected to the Oklahoma State Senate, later said that at the time he considered homosexuals to be “among the worst people in the world,” and Mr. Fisher to be a “very hostile client.”
Mr. Porter was shockingly ill-prepared for trial — “unwilling or unable to reveal evident holes in the state’s case,” a federal appellate court later noted, yet “remarkably successful in undermining his own client’s testimony.” He exhibited “actual doubt and hostility” about his client’s defense, the court said, and failed to present a closing argument, even though the state’s case “was hardly overwhelming.”
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Poverty • Prison/Prison Ministry • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.
I don't have children, but I know from friends who do that, despite the mind-boggling entertainment opportunities available in the 21st century, helping to alleviate their boredom in the summer holidays can be a test of creativity akin to sculpting them in marble. Children still think there's "nothing to do". They're still bored. And despite adults thinking of the phrase "I'm bored" as the whining mantra of the inexplicably dissatisfied child, we adults are bored too. Boredom is endemic. And it's getting worse....
Does this persistent, gnawing boredom damage us? It's not a question that's been asked much in the 150 years since we started moaning about it; even philosophers seem to find boredom boring, preferring instead to concentrate on ethics and epistemology. Goethe reckoned that boredom was the premier creative impulse, and without it we'd never even bother picking up a pen, paintbrush, musical instrument or, these days, a 5-megapixel digital camera. But the average teenager in an average British town on an average Friday night would find themselves hard pushed to value the boredom that's been forced upon them by modern life. Boredom is the predominant cause of inner city violence, because, tragically, violence is exciting. And that briefest of thrills is increasingly unlikely to be displaced by the prospect of a game of table tennis.
I'm not a philosopher, obviously. I'm just someone who's a bit bored, so the idea of me offering advice is laughable. But in the absence of religious fervour, class war or complete economic meltdown to distract us, a better way to deal with boredom than desperately pursuing excitement might be to embrace it. Welcome that feeling of mild dissatisfaction.
Read it all.
Does this persistent, gnawing boredom damage us? It's not a question that's been asked much in the 150 years since we started moaning about it; even philosophers seem to find boredom boring, preferring instead to concentrate on ethics and epistemology. Goethe reckoned that boredom was the premier creative impulse, and without it we'd never even bother picking up a pen, paintbrush, musical instrument or, these days, a 5-megapixel digital camera. But the average teenager in an average British town on an average Friday night would find themselves hard pushed to value the boredom that's been forced upon them by modern life. Boredom is the predominant cause of inner city violence, because, tragically, violence is exciting. And that briefest of thrills is increasingly unlikely to be displaced by the prospect of a game of table tennis.
I'm not a philosopher, obviously. I'm just someone who's a bit bored, so the idea of me offering advice is laughable. But in the absence of religious fervour, class war or complete economic meltdown to distract us, a better way to deal with boredom than desperately pursuing excitement might be to embrace it. Welcome that feeling of mild dissatisfaction.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Theology • Pastoral Theology
With the cost of private universities now topping $35,000 for tuition, fees, room and board each year, Americans are tapping retirement accounts, asking extended family members to help out with college costs and keeping kids at home for the first few years of school to cut down on living expenses. One worrisome trend: Parents who took money from their retirement accounts withdrew an average of $8,554 in 2010 compared to $5,318 in 2009.
To pay for college, families are also borrowing more heavily from traditional sources including financial aid. And usage of 529 college savings plans is on the rise. ”Families are digging deeper and taking a number of measures to make college more affordable,” says Bill Diggins, senior consultant with Gallup. “They see great value in college. It’s an investment in the future. Most strongly agree that a college degree is more important now than ever.”
Read it all.
To pay for college, families are also borrowing more heavily from traditional sources including financial aid. And usage of 529 college savings plans is on the rise. ”Families are digging deeper and taking a number of measures to make college more affordable,” says Bill Diggins, senior consultant with Gallup. “They see great value in college. It’s an investment in the future. Most strongly agree that a college degree is more important now than ever.”
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance
...[What this debate is really about is]...a particular vision of marriage... This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.
[This view] was a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation...
[This view] was a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation...
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology
American girls are hitting puberty earlier than ever — a change that puts them at higher risk for behavioral problems as adolescents and breast cancer as adults, a new study shows.
About 15% of 1,239 girls studied showed the beginnings of breast development at age 7, according to an article in today's Pediatrics. One in 10 white girls, twice as many as in a 1997 study, showed breast growth by that age, as did 23% of black girls and 15% of Hispanic girls.
The median age of breast development fell from 10.9 years in 1991 to 9.9 in 2006, according to a Danish study published in Pediatrics last year.
Read it all.
About 15% of 1,239 girls studied showed the beginnings of breast development at age 7, according to an article in today's Pediatrics. One in 10 white girls, twice as many as in a 1997 study, showed breast growth by that age, as did 23% of black girls and 15% of Hispanic girls.
The median age of breast development fell from 10.9 years in 1991 to 9.9 in 2006, according to a Danish study published in Pediatrics last year.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Sexuality • Women
Gone are quiet classrooms with desks all in a row and a teacher at the blackboard.
Instead, a peek into nearly any classroom across the Miss-Lou will reveal noise, movement and technology that sometimes does the teaching.
And though little about how children learn today seems normal to adults, educators insist that learning in a global society means parents, grandparents and guardians must do a little learning of their own.
Read it all.
Instead, a peek into nearly any classroom across the Miss-Lou will reveal noise, movement and technology that sometimes does the teaching.
And though little about how children learn today seems normal to adults, educators insist that learning in a global society means parents, grandparents and guardians must do a little learning of their own.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Globalization • Science & Technology
That the Great Recession could then bring hope for a major recalibration — a resetting of all the clocks — is not surprising. Unfortunately, though, it’s not happening in any meaningful way. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich, despite stock-market setbacks, are still comparatively rich. The most devastating losses in household wealth over the past two years have been suffered by the middle class. And families are fraying at the seams. The Pew poll showed nearly half of people who had been unemployed for more than six months saying their family relationships had become strained, and a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults last winter found about 40 percent saying they believed their joblessness was causing behavioral change in their children.
Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”
What came out of the combined experience of the Great Depression and World War II — broad measures of quality-of-life equalization like a sharply progressive tax policy with rates on the wealthy unimaginable today, the G.I. Bill, government-subsidized home mortgages for veterans — permitted the easier, less-frenzied middle class family life that older Americans remember from the 1950s and ’60s and that younger Americans dream of. In other words, it wasn’t individual families that reformed themselves after the crucible of the Depression. It was our society.
Read it all.
Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”
What came out of the combined experience of the Great Depression and World War II — broad measures of quality-of-life equalization like a sharply progressive tax policy with rates on the wealthy unimaginable today, the G.I. Bill, government-subsidized home mortgages for veterans — permitted the easier, less-frenzied middle class family life that older Americans remember from the 1950s and ’60s and that younger Americans dream of. In other words, it wasn’t individual families that reformed themselves after the crucible of the Depression. It was our society.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Stress • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--
...victim advocates say that church law still allows offenders in ministry.
"The Episcopalians, like most denominations, have a long way to go," said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's alarming that the denomination hasn't even committed to a 'one-strike' policy on paper."
But Bishop Kenneth Price of Pittsburgh believes that the policies dioceses are required to enact create a de facto one-strike rule that keeps offenders out.
"Over the years this has become a much more public concern. The House of Bishops is very concerned for the protection of alleged victims ... and the canons are very clear on what to do," said Bishop Price, who is also secretary of the House of Bishops.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10214/1077004-455.stm#ixzz0vS3iD2jy
Read it all.
"The Episcopalians, like most denominations, have a long way to go," said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's alarming that the denomination hasn't even committed to a 'one-strike' policy on paper."
But Bishop Kenneth Price of Pittsburgh believes that the policies dioceses are required to enact create a de facto one-strike rule that keeps offenders out.
"Over the years this has become a much more public concern. The House of Bishops is very concerned for the protection of alleged victims ... and the canons are very clear on what to do," said Bishop Price, who is also secretary of the House of Bishops.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10214/1077004-455.stm#ixzz0vS3iD2jy
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Sexuality • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
The most sophisticated people I know--inside they are all children.
--Jim Henson
--Jim Henson
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Psychology
Though "Ramona and Beezus's" cinematic creators avoided blatant references to any particular era, the movie's constant celebration of self-actualization is thoroughly modern. "You don't worry about coloring inside the lines," Beezus remarks (admiringly) to Ramona. Mr. Quimby, discovered doodling in a book about new-economy jobs, remarks that "I used to be a creative guy." This being a movie, we trust he'll be one again.
The books, though, have a harder edge. When Mr. Quimby loses his job in the film, he turns into an affable, if forgetful, Mr. Mom. In the books, he succumbs to the more realistic depression that often accompanies a breadwinner's job loss. He sits on the couch, watching TV, smoking heavily and not taking Ramona to the park because someone might call to offer him a job.
In the movie, the great child-care snafu is when Ramona gets sick at school and Mr. Quimby cancels a job interview to take care of her. In the books, he once leaves her, at age seven, locked outside the house in the rain because he's stuck in the unemployment-insurance line.
Read it all.
The books, though, have a harder edge. When Mr. Quimby loses his job in the film, he turns into an affable, if forgetful, Mr. Mom. In the books, he succumbs to the more realistic depression that often accompanies a breadwinner's job loss. He sits on the couch, watching TV, smoking heavily and not taking Ramona to the park because someone might call to offer him a job.
In the movie, the great child-care snafu is when Ramona gets sick at school and Mr. Quimby cancels a job interview to take care of her. In the books, he once leaves her, at age seven, locked outside the house in the rain because he's stuck in the unemployment-insurance line.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television • * Economics, Politics • Economy
The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.
“You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” the letter said. In tiny print, in a disclaimer that Lohman says she didn’t notice, Prudential disclosed that what it called its Alliance Account was not guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.
Read it all.
Update: NPR did a whole segment on this story which is very worthwhile also.
Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.
“You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” the letter said. In tiny print, in a disclaimer that Lohman says she didn’t notice, Prudential disclosed that what it called its Alliance Account was not guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.
Read it all.
Update: NPR did a whole segment on this story which is very worthwhile also.
Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology
My grandfather was the Reverend Calvin Titus Perkins, known by all as C.T. He was a Southern Baptist evangelist—a traveling preacher in Oklahoma, the former Indian Territory. He arrived, when he was a very young boy and it was a very young state, in a covered wagon. That famous dry Oklahoma dust seems embedded in the few black-and-white photos I've seen of him and his unkempt, unsmiling siblings. Several of them went on to drink and divorce. He was a man of passion but also a lover of order, a believer in rules. The bare bones Calvinism that flourished on the frontier offered him not only a faith but a way beyond the chaos and poverty he knew as a child.
When I left home at 18 for Brown University—in part because it was farther from Oklahoma than any other school that accepted me—my grandfather epitomized what I felt I had to escape from. His was a small, closed world defined by judgment. I was throwing myself toward possibility, toward life with a liberating small "l." The Eternal Life that all his theology drove toward was really about the avoidance of death and damnation. As I grew older, this threat utterly lost its sense for me. How could every Catholic and Jew, every atheist in China and every northern Baptist in Chicago, for that matter—every non-Southern Baptist—be damned? Could God be so petty, and heaven so small?
The meanness of the God C.T. preached was contradicted, more poi gnantly, in his own person, though he would never have seen this in himself, nor did I have the words for many years to describe it. He was funny and smart and large-hearted.
Read it all.
When I left home at 18 for Brown University—in part because it was farther from Oklahoma than any other school that accepted me—my grandfather epitomized what I felt I had to escape from. His was a small, closed world defined by judgment. I was throwing myself toward possibility, toward life with a liberating small "l." The Eternal Life that all his theology drove toward was really about the avoidance of death and damnation. As I grew older, this threat utterly lost its sense for me. How could every Catholic and Jew, every atheist in China and every northern Baptist in Chicago, for that matter—every non-Southern Baptist—be damned? Could God be so petty, and heaven so small?
The meanness of the God C.T. preached was contradicted, more poi gnantly, in his own person, though he would never have seen this in himself, nor did I have the words for many years to describe it. He was funny and smart and large-hearted.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists
The pain coursing through American families is all too real and no one seems to know what to do about it. A rigorous new analysis for the Rockefeller Foundation shows that Americans are more economically insecure now than they have been in a quarter of a century, and the trend lines suggest that things will only get worse.
Rampant joblessness and skyrocketing medical costs are among the biggest factors tearing at the very fabric of American economic life so painstakingly put together in the early post-World War II decades.
Read it all.
Rampant joblessness and skyrocketing medical costs are among the biggest factors tearing at the very fabric of American economic life so painstakingly put together in the early post-World War II decades.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Politics in General
Blame Tom Sawyer: Americans have a skewed view of childhood and summertime. We associate the school year with oppression and the summer months with liberty. School is regimen; summer is creativity. School is work and summer is play. But when American students are competing with children around the globe who may be spending four weeks longer in school each year, larking through summer is a luxury we can't afford. What's more, for many children — especially children of low-income families — summer is a season of boredom, inactivity and isolation.
Deprived of healthy stimulation, millions of low-income kids lose a significant amount of what they learn during the school year. Call it "summer learning loss," as the academics do, or "the summer slide," but by any name summer is among the most pernicious — if least acknowledged — causes of achievement gaps in America's schools....
Read it all.
Deprived of healthy stimulation, millions of low-income kids lose a significant amount of what they learn during the school year. Call it "summer learning loss," as the academics do, or "the summer slide," but by any name summer is among the most pernicious — if least acknowledged — causes of achievement gaps in America's schools....
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Poverty • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. and insurers in Florida and Oklahoma stopped offering children-only health coverage because of the potential added costs of sick youngsters under the new U.S. health-care law, state officials said.
UnitedHealth won’t sell new policies that cover only children, foreclosing an option used by parents seeing cheaper care, Kevin McCarty, Florida’s insurance commissioner, said today at a meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in Washington, D.C. Tyler Mason, a UnitedHealth spokesman, disputed McCarty’s statement in a telephone interview, saying the company is still issuing such coverage.
The law championed by President Barack Obama bans insurers from denying coverage to children based on their health. That makes it more difficult for health plans to predict costs because families can wait until a child is sick to buy coverage, according to Kim Holland, Oklahoma’s commissioner. She and Sandy Praeger, Kansas’ commissioner, said insurers in their states have dropped child-only plans as well, or discussed the idea.
Read it all.
UnitedHealth won’t sell new policies that cover only children, foreclosing an option used by parents seeing cheaper care, Kevin McCarty, Florida’s insurance commissioner, said today at a meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in Washington, D.C. Tyler Mason, a UnitedHealth spokesman, disputed McCarty’s statement in a telephone interview, saying the company is still issuing such coverage.
The law championed by President Barack Obama bans insurers from denying coverage to children based on their health. That makes it more difficult for health plans to predict costs because families can wait until a child is sick to buy coverage, according to Kim Holland, Oklahoma’s commissioner. She and Sandy Praeger, Kansas’ commissioner, said insurers in their states have dropped child-only plans as well, or discussed the idea.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama
The recent Australian Institute of Family Studies report highlighting the changing nature of family forms should come as no surprise. The rate of children born outside of marriage has reached one in three births and many more children are now likely to have experienced a series of parent-type relationships before they reach the age of 18.
What should surprise us, however, is the continuing lack of desire from government to institute social policies that support family forms that are in the best interests of children. So much of the debate around family forms is founded in what adults and parents primarily want for themselves. It is worrying that there is no collective social resolve to promote and encourage the natural family, given the proven capacity of this family structure to contribute to child wellbeing.
Read it all.
What should surprise us, however, is the continuing lack of desire from government to institute social policies that support family forms that are in the best interests of children. So much of the debate around family forms is founded in what adults and parents primarily want for themselves. It is worrying that there is no collective social resolve to promote and encourage the natural family, given the proven capacity of this family structure to contribute to child wellbeing.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ
The Australian Institute of Family Studies recently held its biennial conference, celebrating 30 years of "advancing understanding of Australian families". The conference recognised key statistics that illustrate some of the dramatic changes in the landscape of families, including declining marriage rates and the increase in cohabitation and ex-nuptial births.
One only has to glance at the 500-plus comments expressing outrage at Bettina Ardnt's "backward opinions" (which suggested that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's de facto relationship might not be setting the best example for young female onlookers) or, more recently, the response to the article by Chris Meney to conclude that we seem to have reached consensus: cohabitation is another stage on the pathway to a family.
When it comes to children's wellbeing, AIFS director Professor Alan Hayes recognises that the function of the family unit is what matters, rather than the form. What is crucial is that children have an example of a loving relationship that doesn't disappear before their eyes; that they're brought up in an environment of love.
Please take special note of that line: "the function...is what matters, rather than the form." A better statement of modern gnosticism you will rarely see. Read it all--KSH.
One only has to glance at the 500-plus comments expressing outrage at Bettina Ardnt's "backward opinions" (which suggested that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's de facto relationship might not be setting the best example for young female onlookers) or, more recently, the response to the article by Chris Meney to conclude that we seem to have reached consensus: cohabitation is another stage on the pathway to a family.
When it comes to children's wellbeing, AIFS director Professor Alan Hayes recognises that the function of the family unit is what matters, rather than the form. What is crucial is that children have an example of a loving relationship that doesn't disappear before their eyes; that they're brought up in an environment of love.
Please take special note of that line: "the function...is what matters, rather than the form." A better statement of modern gnosticism you will rarely see. Read it all--KSH.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ
Middle School students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.
Read it all.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Science & Technology
A former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania sexually abused at least four girls while he was leader of the Erie-based diocese.
The abuse by the Rev. Donald Davis was made public today by the diocese's current bishop, the Right Rev. Sean Rowe, who learned of the abuse earlier this year from one of the victims.
"Our first goal is to tell the truth," Rowe told the Erie Times-News today.
Davis, who was bishop of the diocese from 1974 to 1991, died in 2007.
In a pastoral letter read today after services in each of the 13-county diocese's 34 churches, Rowe apologized for what Davis did.
Read it all.
The abuse by the Rev. Donald Davis was made public today by the diocese's current bishop, the Right Rev. Sean Rowe, who learned of the abuse earlier this year from one of the victims.
"Our first goal is to tell the truth," Rowe told the Erie Times-News today.
Davis, who was bishop of the diocese from 1974 to 1991, died in 2007.
In a pastoral letter read today after services in each of the 13-county diocese's 34 churches, Rowe apologized for what Davis did.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Children • Sexuality • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.
Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.
But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different group.
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.
Read it all.
Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.
But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different group.
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Books • Children • Education
[ELEANOR] BEARDSLEY: In France, 100 percent of three, four and five-year-olds attend preschool. So everyone starts first grade on an equal footing. While the French do recognize problems with many aspects of their education system, ecole maternelle is held in high regard. It is one of the cherished symbols of the French Republic, embodying both equal treatment for all and the emancipation of women.
Chicago-native Barbara Legron(ph) says she has been able to work full-time with no worries since her daughter Natasha began attending ecole maternelle.
Ms. BARBARA LEGRON: I was very skeptical at first, to send her there for basically all day. But eventually as the year went on, I realized that she was learning so much. I mean, she was teaching me rhymes, French nursery rhymes that I should've been teaching her. So she's having a good time, she's learning and she's with other kids, so she's playing. And I can't really compete with that, even though I'm the mom.
Read or listen to it all.
Chicago-native Barbara Legron(ph) says she has been able to work full-time with no worries since her daughter Natasha began attending ecole maternelle.
Ms. BARBARA LEGRON: I was very skeptical at first, to send her there for basically all day. But eventually as the year went on, I realized that she was learning so much. I mean, she was teaching me rhymes, French nursery rhymes that I should've been teaching her. So she's having a good time, she's learning and she's with other kids, so she's playing. And I can't really compete with that, even though I'm the mom.
Read or listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France
Federal data from 2007 says 40 percent of births in America are to unwed mothers, a trend experts say is especially common in middle-class America. In one St. Louis community, the notion of getting married and having children — in that order — seems quaint.
For most of their relationship, Nathan Garland and Brianne Zimmerman have marked their anniversary by New Year's Eve, 2001. They say that was the day they both knew they had found the one.
"It seemed obvious to me the first time we kissed," Garland says. "Just kind of connected, right then. It really was that obvious."
They moved in together shortly afterward. They decided to have a baby a few years later, but had no interest in getting married.
Read or better yet listen to it all.
For most of their relationship, Nathan Garland and Brianne Zimmerman have marked their anniversary by New Year's Eve, 2001. They say that was the day they both knew they had found the one.
"It seemed obvious to me the first time we kissed," Garland says. "Just kind of connected, right then. It really was that obvious."
They moved in together shortly afterward. They decided to have a baby a few years later, but had no interest in getting married.
Read or better yet listen to it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Young Adults
I am being taken by the family to Toy Story 3--KSH.
Filed under: * By Kendall • Harmon Family • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Movies & Television
Good dads know. Sometimes it doesn’t take much.
Ask Scott Buie, a Kansas City, Kan., father of five: “Nothing glamorous, just doing things with the kids. Everyday things. Talking, biking. Listening to my daughter after she’s read a book.”
For Anthony Barber of Parkville, it’s as simple as asking for a day off to spend at his daughter’s school. For Dustin Boatright of Independence, it’s making hot chocolate and hashing out on the couch a third-grader’s woes.
“We’re not out to make perfect fathers,” said Carey Casey, chief executive officer of the National Center for Fathering, headquartered in Shawnee. “Some of the greatest moments I have with my son are when I say I’m sorry.”
You’ve perhaps never heard of his organization. But the White House has.
Read it all.
Ask Scott Buie, a Kansas City, Kan., father of five: “Nothing glamorous, just doing things with the kids. Everyday things. Talking, biking. Listening to my daughter after she’s read a book.”
For Anthony Barber of Parkville, it’s as simple as asking for a day off to spend at his daughter’s school. For Dustin Boatright of Independence, it’s making hot chocolate and hashing out on the couch a third-grader’s woes.
“We’re not out to make perfect fathers,” said Carey Casey, chief executive officer of the National Center for Fathering, headquartered in Shawnee. “Some of the greatest moments I have with my son are when I say I’m sorry.”
You’ve perhaps never heard of his organization. But the White House has.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Men
Family breakdowns have a huge impact on children.
A report by the Centre for Social Justice entitled 'Every Family Matters' called upon Parliament and parties across the political spectrum to recognise that healthy marriages build healthy families, and healthy families build a healthy society.
There is a measurable financial cost to family breakdown, but there is a greater cost in the impact on young people which is incalculable.
Many who would argue that individual lifestyle choice must be taken into account in any discussion of marriage. But my own view is that the exclusive emphasis on individual choice ignores the cost of that choice to society as a whole.
There are of course inhibiting factors in getting married, whether it be the cost of a wedding or the fear of commitment. But the danger is that Society at large loses out.
There are other basic commitments needed for a healthy society. Honesty is one. Who is setting an example?
A recent study suggests that among adults there is no longer a universal standard of what honesty means, and the academic researchers concluded that attitudes to honesty are so variable that the legal standard needs to be revised.
Read the whole thing.
A report by the Centre for Social Justice entitled 'Every Family Matters' called upon Parliament and parties across the political spectrum to recognise that healthy marriages build healthy families, and healthy families build a healthy society.
There is a measurable financial cost to family breakdown, but there is a greater cost in the impact on young people which is incalculable.
Many who would argue that individual lifestyle choice must be taken into account in any discussion of marriage. But my own view is that the exclusive emphasis on individual choice ignores the cost of that choice to society as a whole.
There are of course inhibiting factors in getting married, whether it be the cost of a wedding or the fear of commitment. But the danger is that Society at large loses out.
There are other basic commitments needed for a healthy society. Honesty is one. Who is setting an example?
A recent study suggests that among adults there is no longer a universal standard of what honesty means, and the academic researchers concluded that attitudes to honesty are so variable that the legal standard needs to be revised.
Read the whole thing.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology
We used to talk about children learning from their elders and betters.
How do we explain it when the situation is getting worse? Whose fault is it?
Recently statistics in N.S.W. emerged to show that physical attacks between girls have risen by 15 per cent each year since 2005. Most of this violence takes place outside schools, but the Bureau of Crime Statistics demonstrate the increase of 70 per cent over this period.
By and large young people go where they are led by the society that surrounds them. It is too easy to blame the young and absolve ourselves, but more difficult to identify causes accurately and more difficult again to put strategies into place that will help.
Read the whole article.
How do we explain it when the situation is getting worse? Whose fault is it?
Recently statistics in N.S.W. emerged to show that physical attacks between girls have risen by 15 per cent each year since 2005. Most of this violence takes place outside schools, but the Bureau of Crime Statistics demonstrate the increase of 70 per cent over this period.
By and large young people go where they are led by the society that surrounds them. It is too easy to blame the young and absolve ourselves, but more difficult to identify causes accurately and more difficult again to put strategies into place that will help.
Read the whole article.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Violence • Women • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic
Another difficulty sperm donor offspring suffer is the secrecy about their origins. In most cases, parents let the child believe that he or she is biologically related to both of them in the beginning. Then, when the child finally discovers the truth, the child feels lied to and the parent-child relationship is strained. This leaves a legacy of distrust, with 47% of them declaring that their mother might have lied about important matters when they were growing up. This compares with 27% for those who were adopted and 18% for those who were raised by their biological parents. Similar results were given for worrying that their father might have lied.
Not surprisingly, a substantial majority of adults conceived through sperm donation expressed support for their right to know everything. This included the identity of the donor and the right to have some kind of relationship with him. They also said they wanted to know about the existence and number of their half-siblings. As it now stands, the law in the United States does not give them any of these rights. In fact, it protects the donors and fertility clinics at the cost of the children conceived.
Not surprisingly, a substantial majority of adults conceived through sperm donation expressed support for their right to know everything. This included the identity of the donor and the right to have some kind of relationship with him. They also said they wanted to know about the existence and number of their half-siblings. As it now stands, the law in the United States does not give them any of these rights. In fact, it protects the donors and fertility clinics at the cost of the children conceived.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology
For the moment, there is only one Sunday school pupil in Room 120 at State Street Baptist Church, in Columbia, S.C., a 19-year-old young man who loves puzzles and songs and has painstakingly memorized the books of the Bible.
John Stack's autism and halted mental development set him apart. But his parents, Tim and Ann Stack, don't believe that should limit their son's access to Sunday school and the spiritual lessons that have been so important to him through his life.
The Stacks have developed a class for teenagers and young adults like John, people with special needs who require routine and repetition but who have "aged out" of traditional Sunday school classes.
Read it all.
John Stack's autism and halted mental development set him apart. But his parents, Tim and Ann Stack, don't believe that should limit their son's access to Sunday school and the spiritual lessons that have been so important to him through his life.
The Stacks have developed a class for teenagers and young adults like John, people with special needs who require routine and repetition but who have "aged out" of traditional Sunday school classes.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • * Theology • Theology: Scripture
Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection.
But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.
“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.
“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”
The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.
Read the whole article.
But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States.
“You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.
“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”
The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old.
Read the whole article.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Somalia
Authorities are banding together ever more closely with the financial sector and Internet providers in hopes of disrupting the multibillion-dollar global child-pornography trade.
These concerted efforts come as the child-porn industry has shifted in the last five years to a more anonymous, web-based system for moving funds, according to law-enforcement officials, technology specialists and money-laundering experts.
To root out the companies that supply an estimated $20 billion annual global child-porn market, the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography -- comprised of Internet service providers, financial heavyweights and technology companies -- is working closely with law-enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world.
Read it all.
These concerted efforts come as the child-porn industry has shifted in the last five years to a more anonymous, web-based system for moving funds, according to law-enforcement officials, technology specialists and money-laundering experts.
To root out the companies that supply an estimated $20 billion annual global child-porn market, the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography -- comprised of Internet service providers, financial heavyweights and technology companies -- is working closely with law-enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Children • Pornography • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Caught this on the morning run--really inspiring. Watch it all-KSH.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Iraq War • War in Afghanistan
Baby boomers have long been considered the generation that did not want to grow up, perpetual adolescents even as they become eligible for Social Security. Now, a growing body of research shows that the real Peter Pans are not the boomers, but the generations that have followed. For many, by choice or circumstance, independence no longer begins at 21.
From the Obama administration’s new rule that allows children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance to the large increase in the number of women older than 35 who have become first-time mothers, social scientists say young adulthood has undergone a profound shift.
People between 20 and 34 are taking longer to finish their educations, establish themselves in careers, marry, have children and become financially independent, said Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a team of scholars who have been studying this transformation.
“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults,” Mr. Furstenberg said.
Read it carefully and read it all.
From the Obama administration’s new rule that allows children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance to the large increase in the number of women older than 35 who have become first-time mothers, social scientists say young adulthood has undergone a profound shift.
People between 20 and 34 are taking longer to finish their educations, establish themselves in careers, marry, have children and become financially independent, said Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a team of scholars who have been studying this transformation.
“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults,” Mr. Furstenberg said.
Read it carefully and read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Young Adults
While discussing the subject of ''vice and virtue'', the students in the Leichhardt Primary ethics class compiled a list of things 10-year-olds consider wicked - stealing pencil cases, telling secrets and lying to secure the last piece of birthday cake.
The litany of sins, carefully devoid of any reference to religious morality, was unintentionally sweet because while children furrow their brows over these issues, adults are clashing over their right to do so.
The trial in 10 NSW schools of secular ethics classes, held as an alternative to special religious education (SRE), has sparked a culture war. It has pitted the faithful against the secular, church against state, and parent against parent. The debate has sparked allegations of lying and scare-mongering from both sides, and feeds into wider anxiety about the forces of militant atheism and the power of church lobby groups.
Read it all.
The litany of sins, carefully devoid of any reference to religious morality, was unintentionally sweet because while children furrow their brows over these issues, adults are clashing over their right to do so.
The trial in 10 NSW schools of secular ethics classes, held as an alternative to special religious education (SRE), has sparked a culture war. It has pitted the faithful against the secular, church against state, and parent against parent. The debate has sparked allegations of lying and scare-mongering from both sides, and feeds into wider anxiety about the forces of militant atheism and the power of church lobby groups.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology
According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed-faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 percent by 2006, and the increase shows no signs of slowing. The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 reported that 27 percent of Jews, 23 percent of Catholics, 39 percent of Buddhists, 18 percent of Baptists, 21 percent of Muslims and 12 percent of Mormons were then married to a spouse with a different religious identification. If you want to see what the future holds, note this: Less than a quarter of the 18- to 23-year-old respondents in the National Study of Youth and Religion think it's important to marry someone of the same faith.
In some ways, more interfaith marriage is good for civic life. Such unions bring extended families from diverse backgrounds into close contact. There is nothing like marriage between different groups to make society more integrated and more tolerant. As recent research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam has shown, the more Americans get to know people of other faiths, the more they seem to like them.
But the effects on the marriages themselves can be tragic -- it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grandmothers may be right. According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.
Read it all.
In some ways, more interfaith marriage is good for civic life. Such unions bring extended families from diverse backgrounds into close contact. There is nothing like marriage between different groups to make society more integrated and more tolerant. As recent research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam has shown, the more Americans get to know people of other faiths, the more they seem to like them.
But the effects on the marriages themselves can be tragic -- it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grandmothers may be right. According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.
Read it all.
Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations
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