“Children growing up in lone-parent households, despite all the investment that the Government has made, still face the highest poverty levels in the country.”
It’s the same in every county. This idea of being single, choosing single parenthood and discouraging marriage is, and has always been a bad idea.
It’s time to wake up to the reality of what works with humans. We crave companionship and community.
Read more here: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article1934408.ece
I ran across an interesting essay called “Why Children Must Inherit Their Last Names from Their Father, Not Their Mother” by SATOSHI KANAZAWA. It had some interesting points that many of us never even think about. I’d love to hear your thoughts:
.…men and women – should keep their last names for life. For one thing, it would make it a lot easier for academic women to keep track of all of their publications on their CVs, as they go through marriage, divorce, and remarriage (and divorce and remarriage). However, it is not a good idea for daughters (or sons) to inherit their last names from their mothers. Of course, individuals (like vos Savant) are free to do what they wish with their last names. But such a system as a social institution, if practiced by everyone in society, will be biologically unsustainable in the long run, and girls on average will be worse off than boys in such a society.
Patrilineal inheritance of family names, where children inherit their last names from the father, not from the mother, evolved as a social institution as one of the mechanisms to alleviate paternity uncertainty. Like all mammalian males, human fathers can never be completely certain of their paternity, but, unlike most mammalian males, they are asked to invest very heavily in their offspring. Therein lies the possibility of cuckoldry – unwittingly investing their precious limited resources in the genetic offspring of another man. Males of only a very few species in nature (humans, and many avian species) face the danger of cuckoldry because male parental investment among these species is high. Males of most species in nature don’t care if they are really the genetic fathers of the offspring that their mates produce because their male parental investment is limited to the sperm deposited inside the female during copulation. (These species are known in zoology as the “fuck-and-go” species; the male and the female of such species meet, they copulate, and they go their separate ways, never to see each other again. And, girls, no, he won’t call you the next day.) As a result, males of most species in nature do not experience sexual jealousy, only humans and birds do.
Males of these few species – human fathers in particular – therefore need to be reasonably convinced that they are indeed the genetic fathers of their putative offspring before they would agree to invest heavily in them. Both nature and social institutions aid in such an effort. There is some evidence to suggest that newborn babies are born looking more like the father, not the mother (because maternity is always certain and mothers don’t need to be convinced), and mothers and maternal relatives often allege paternal resemblance of babies in order to assure their fathers that they are indeed their genetic fathers and thus they should invest in them. (Remember, mothers and maternal relatives don’t really care what the genetic truth is, because they are guaranteed to be equally related to the children whoever the genetic father might be.)
Patrilineal inheritance of family names is another social institution that emerged to convince the fathers of their paternity, by saying (if social institutions have a vocal cord) “The baby’s really yours, because it has your last name!” Russians take it one step further, by giving their children – both their sons and daughters –middle and last names after the father.
Fathers are therefore expected to invest more heavily in children who bear their last names than children who bear the mother’s last names, because they are more likely to be convinced of their paternity. As a result, ceteris paribus, children who inherit their last names from their fathers are expected to be more likely to survive and thrive than children who inherit their last names from their mothers. Like polyandry, the social institution of matrilineal inheritance of last names contains the seeds of its own extinction. Societies with such an institution are less likely to survive and thrive, because their children are less likely to survive and thrive, which explains why most known human cultures practice patrilineal inheritance of last names…..
Read more here
British Airways cabin crew told Mirko Fischer to move after he swapped seats with his wife and ended up sitting next to a boy he did not know.
Mr Fischer, 33, accused staff of harassing him and said the policy contravened the Sex Discrimination Act.
BA apologized to the businessman but denied the policy was discriminatory.
A spokesman told the BBC the policy was now under review.
A consent order detailing a settlement between the parties was drawn up at Slough County Court on Wednesday.
Mr Fischer was on a flight from London back to his home in Luxembourg on 20 April 2009 when his pregnant wife Stefanie asked him to swap seats so she could sit next to the window.
He took her middle seat.
He claimed cabin crew told him to return to his original seat as the child next to him was an unaccompanied minor.
The crew said the company’s policy was not to allow adult males to sit next to unaccompanied children.
But Mr Fischer said he felt he was treated as if he was a potential “child molester”.
He said: “I felt humiliated and outraged. They accuse you of being some kind of child molester just because you are sitting next to someone.
Read more here
Marriage is as important to the future of the nation as climate change and poverty, a senior family lawyer said yesterday.
Baroness Deech said the growing numbers of families without fathers was doing more harm to the next generation than other factors such as smoking, alcohol, poor diet and lack of exercise.
And she warned that a conspiracy of silence surrounded the issue because political leaders were afraid to say married families were better for children than cohabiting families or single parent families.
Lady Deech, who is head of the Bar Standards Board, made her remarks at a conference organised by the Marriage Foundation, a pressure group led by High Court family judge Sir Paul Coleridge. She said marriage was based on a public promise and evidence showed married parents were twice as likely to stay together through a child’s early years as cohabiting parents.
Children of single mothers have greater problems than those of cohabitee parents, and children of cohabitees have greater problems than those of married parents.
‘Since this is so incontrovertible, why is it so brave, as Sir Humphrey would put it, to tackle the desirability of marriage over cohabitation, both for adults and children?’ Lady Deech asked.
‘The topic has become a no-go area.
‘We live in a world where we are encouraged to take care of our own and our children’s health: we are constantly admonished to take exercise, eat healthily, wear a cycle helmet, study the side of the package, stop smoking, recycle, combat global warming, brush our teeth, control our drinking habits and have health checks.
But when it comes to the one issue that does more harm to the next generation than any of these – the absence of a father in the family – there is a conspiracy of silence.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279326/Decline-marriage-children-growing-fathers-doing-harm-smoking-global-warming-poor-diets-says-Baroness.html#ixzz2Le60Ns00
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I read a great article by Christina Hoff Sommers recently. I think it points out many things we choose to ignore. Read the full article HERE
As one critic told me recently, the classroom is no more rigged against boys than workplaces are rigged against lazy and unfocused workers. But unproductive workers are adults — not 5-year-olds. If boys are restless and unfocused, why not look for ways to help them do better? As a nation, can we afford not to?
A few decades ago, when we realized that girls languished behind boys in math and science, we mounted a concerted effort to give them more support, with significant success. Shouldn’t we do the same for boys?
…..I can sympathize with those who roll their eyes at the relatively recent alarm over boys’ achievement. Where was the indignation when men dominated higher education, decade after decade? Isn’t it time for women and girls to enjoy the advantages? The impulse is understandable but misguided. I became a feminist in the 1970s because I did not appreciate male chauvinism. I still don’t. But the proper corrective to chauvinism is not to reverse it and practice it against males, but rather basic fairness. And fairness today requires us to address the serious educational deficits of boys and young men. The rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men.
Host Michel Martin continues the conversation about why boys fall behind in school.
She speaks with a group of parents and experts: author Christina Hoff Sommers, New York University education professor Pedro Noguera, University of Virginia Dean Bob Pianta, and Glenn Ivey, father of five boys.
CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: Well, I think we first have to admit that on average girls and boys are different and to pretend that they’re identical and to structure the classroom around an ideal child, which for many teachers would be a girl, is going to fail our male students terribly. And there are some wonderful innovations, including single-sex classrooms, trying to get more male teachers and more male mentors in our school, to bring back sort of high-level vocational education where kids get college preparatory courses, but they also can spend half the day preparing for careers. These boys are thriving in schools like Aviation High – and girls are too, but more boys in aviation and technology schools in Massachusetts. This is an excellent model and it’s being used throughout Europe and we should be doing that. And ultimately, I think just acknowledging that we are doing a better job educating our daughters than our sons.
PEDRO NOGUERA: I think that single-sex education is an option that we should make available and that there is some evidence that, in the right settings, that boys can be quite successful when teachers are aware of their biases and allow the classroom to be more interactive and active learning to be a part of the learning experience. I would say girls benefit from that too. And so we should avoid the tendency to think boys and girls are so different that girls benefit from being able to be physically active and develop their voice in the classroom as well.
However, boys especially need to develop social and emotional intelligence. They need to learn how to work cooperatively. They need to learn how to listen. They need to know how to develop and articulate themselves. If boys don’t develop these skills early, they find that they are at a huge disadvantage.
I would also remind us that boys are much more likely than girls to engage in violence. And that violence as a problem in our society is a male problem. And it concerns me a bit that we frame this as boys as victims and not understand the ways in which masculinity also results in women being victimized and boys victimizing each other. And I think that if we don’t understand how masculinity contributes to this problem that we will I think simplify it and just call it a war on boys and not recognize the way in which men perpetuate this problem in many ways.
