Posted on 12/07/2006 7:16:54 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.
Mary Cheney is among that burgeoning group of adult women over age 20 that are driving the trend of women who don’t want a man in the picture, but want to have a baby. These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).
Well-educated, professional Mary Cheney is flying in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the top experts who agree that the very best family structure for a child’s well-being is a married mom and dad family. Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers.
One Georgia high school principal reported, “We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don’t have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They’ve seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves.”
When fatherless children get to be teens, the girls tend to start looking for love in all the wrong places and the boys tend to find as their role model the bad-boy celebrities of MTV, NFL and NBA.
As they grow older, fatherless children tend to have trouble dealing with male authority figures. Too often children in single-mother households end up angry at their absent fathers and resentful of the mother who has had to be a father figure, too. Typically, the boys who have a love-hate relationship with their mother end up hating all women. Numerous of them look for vulnerable women where they can act out their anger and be in control.
Mary Cheney’s action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational –– children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life. Experts from both the left and the right cite a disastrous litany of negative outcomes that are predictable when a child grows up in a fatherless family. Such children tend to get involved in drugs, alcohol abuse, and delinquency; they tend to drop out of school and have teen pregnancies. An assistant principal in a Junior High School said that many of the behavioral problems that teachers face in the classroom stem from households without a father’s influence.
Mary’s pregnancy is an “in-your-face” action countering the Bush Administration’s pro-family, pro-marriage and pro-life policies. She continues to repudiate the work to which her father has devoted his life. Mary has repeatedly said that “studies” show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.
All those people who talk about doing what is best “for our children” need to get back to the basics: children need a married mom and dad. Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.
"Resentment of parents for whatever reason (absentee-ism prevalent among them) seems to be a common thread. That and abuse at the hands of the trusted men in their lives..."
Would that be why she's so close to her father? She and Dick really seem to have a strong relationship. I never saw it as something sinister.
I'm right around that age myself. Ahhh nostalgia.
That's just it. What they are doing is so selfish. I can only imagine the pain and ridicule that child will go through being raised in that lifestyle. As a society, we should condemn these acts. We don't condemn the children, of course, but when the child is old enough they should get exposure to better morals than they're being raised with. Unfortunately, society being what it is and only getting worse, I don't see how this will happen.
Laughing......yeah, probably Antoninus.
Funny isn't it, that so many fail to see the fact that all laws are based on what is or is not considered moral.
You know you are getting older when you scoop your music out of the $3.99 bin at the record store (grin)
I think Tommy (Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie) pretty much was your proof right there.
Rough boys, under the sheets, want to bite and kiss you nailed it down as far as Townsend was concerned.
And even libertarianism would allow people the right to express disapproval.
Everybody has a set of moral codes, even those that think they don't.
This does not affect me at all. She seems to have a very stable relationship, wants a child and everyone in the family is ok with her decision from what I have heard. More important things to fret about these days.
Merry Christmas everyone :)
A related thread, and important read
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1750093/posts
So what should we do? In my view there are three options:And for those who say Mary's choice does not affect them... Shame on you for not standing on principle.1) LIBERAL OPTION: embrace the lie, throw away common sense and centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition, and support homosexuality and gender confusion as civil rights. Watch and cheer as Americans’ First Amendment rights to live out their faith and disagree with homosexuality get superseded by “gays” demanding “sexual freedom” in its various manifestations;
2) “FEEL GOOD” COMPROMISE: support the “middle ground” of civil unions/domestic partnership. (We won’t call it “marriage,” but the media will.) This actually rewards homosexual activism by legitimizing “gay” relationships — thus creating a faulty paradigm of “acceptable, responsible” homosexuality. This option will confuse youth and help all homosexuals rationalize their immoral relationships. It also will embolden “gay” advocates in their struggle to legalize “same-sex marriage”;
3) STAND ON PRINCIPLE: recognize that homosexual behavior and homosexual relationships are always wrong and must not be rewarded by our government or by our laws. Resist all attempts to confirm youth in counterfeit homosexual, bisexual or “transgender” identities. Extend the hope of the life-changing Gospel to homosexual strugglers while fighting the “gay” political/cultural agenda with everything you’ve got.
We at Americans For Truth hope that you will join us in pursuing Option Three. God bless. — Peter LaBarbera
sir ... I bow to you ... BEST RESPONSE EVER!!!!
No, Mary Cheney’s action doesn't set an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational. Young, poor women were having children out of wedlock long before Mary's mother was even born. It isn't Mary's action that sets an example, but our morally bankrupt society as a whole sets the tone which creates a fertile ground for actions like this to flourish.
To point out one individual as the cause celebre for dysfunctional families in America reaches a new low in the arena of melodramatics.
Would Mary's marriage to a financially successful man ensure the wellbeing of her child? Isn't it a fact that Mary's sexual orientation is an impediment to such a relationship, and no marriage to a man would change this fact?
The writer's position is that women shouldn't have children out of wedlock – and I agree with that. However, abortion isn't the solution to remedy such pregnancies.
It is true that a fatherless child might tend to derail, but so are the children of married heterosexual couples. There is more danger to our children's wellbeing from exposure to the sexual escapades and drug filled orgies of our pop culture icons and politicians, as well as the sexually immature antics of pop artists like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, than exposure to a woman choosing to NOT aborting her child.
As I see it, the problem isn't having a child, but the environment in which this child will grow up. Mary is a successful woman, I'm sure she doesn't need welfare or government handouts to raise her child, but it is her sexual orientation that will deprive her child of a a father figure, and he or she will grow up with a distorted sense of what family means.
Is she selfish for doing this? Yes, I believe so, and I might add that she is also wrong, but under such circumstances – being that Mary is a lesbian – marrying a man to have a child wouldn't have changed the view point of the child. As he/she got older, he/she would've realized that his/her mother didn't love nor even like his father, and that she preferred women, resulting in a child's distorted sense of traditional family values.
I agree with your sentiments entirely. Giving Mary Cheney too much credit or heat is misplaced. I don't know why some folks would be unusually fixated by her case.
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