Free Republic

RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) — As Father’s Day approaches, children are reminded to appreciate their dads and the impact on their lives. Today dads around the city were honored a week in advance of Father’s Day. Celebrate Fatherhood 2013 was held this afternoon at the Collegiate School Aquatics Center. While these dads and their children enjoyed the moon bounce and competed in contests, an alarming amount of children in the area won’t have fathers around to celebrate the holiday. First Things First, an organization dedicated to keeping dads involved in kids’ lives, reports that 60 percent of all families in the...

(article photo) Stephanie Pappas, writing for LiveScience.com, recently penned an article titled, “Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents” (2012). In that article she attempted to make the case that same-sex couples provide an environment that is better for raising children than the environment provided by heterosexual couples. To bolster her case, she cited various studies, quoted numerous “experts,” and fleshed out the details with copious statistics. Her thinly veiled attempt to appear unbiased about the issue is extremely transparent, and her clear agenda to advance tolerance for homosexuality, in spite of its real impact on society, was...

A new group is emerging that may finally change the way Family Courts treat mothers and fathers. Currently, the default in most states is to award the lion's share of the time with the children to mothers, and require the father to pay child support. This is unfair to fathers, and has resulted in massive abuses within the system, leading to fathers committing suicide and being imprisoned. A new organization I am a part of, Leading Women for Shared Parenting, seeks to remedy this inequality by having women and mothers speak up in favor of shared parenting. When legislators realize...

PANAMA CITY, Fla. —Police arrested an Oxford couple accused of drinking in a Florida bar while their children waited outside in a car. Employees of Coyote Ugly Saloon said they found two small children inside an unattended vehicle early Friday morning in the bar's parking lot. Police said they found an 11-month-old boy and 3-year-old boy inside the vehicle. Officers said 35-year-old Michael Webb and 29-year-old Staci Hall were inside the bar drinking alcohol. Police said they had been inside the bar for more than an hour while the children waited outside. Bar employees told police that the couple had...

The news has sucked this week. From the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, to poison ricin discovered in the President's mail, and the explosion of a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, has any stretch of five days better epitomized life in post 9/11 America? Fear, violence, explosions, and chemicals. As I write this, my Twitter feed buzzes in the background; the city of Boston remains on lockdown as police engage the surviving suspect of the bombing. Yet as Dennis Lehane wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Times on Tuesday, we'll recover from acts of terror like...

The other day, the father of a classmate of my son’s called to ask if he could join a group of fourth-grade boys practicing a comedy sketch for their school’s talent show. Like any parent coordinating a child’s schedule, I asked the basics: What time? Where do you live? When should I pick him up? Then I stammered out a final question, apologizing in advance for its personal nature: Do you keep guns in your home? Long pause. “No,” he replied, “but it’s a valid question.” The events of the past few days only reinforce the need to ask these...

In case you missed it, MSNBC doesn't think the children you feed, clothe, discipline, educate, and raise belong to you.This is a play off of "all your base are belong to us." It's a meme that has been around for a long time, but I suspect many may not know it.

This undated photo provided by Shawn Moore shows his son Josh, 10, holding a rifle his father gave him for his 11th birthday, at their home in Carneys Point, N.J. (Shawn Moore) TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is asking the attorney general to probe the state's visit to the home of a man who uploaded a photo on Facebook of his 10-year-old son holding a military-style rifle.

A new study that finds children of a gay or lesbian parent may be more likely to have social and emotional problems has sparked controversy on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate. The study, from Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, surveyed more than 15,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39, asking them questions about their upbringings. Its findings are published in the July issue of Social Science Research. One survey question asked whether a parent had been in a same-sex relationship during a child's upbringing; Regnerus wanted to...

<p>New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.</p> <p>“Someone called family services about the photo,” said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. “It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids.” Moore was not arrested or charged.</p>

What happens when a local police department and a state child protective services agency overreact and abuse their authority? In one such case, Walmart ended-up being sued. The story began in 2008. Lisa and Anthony Demaree of Peoria, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) visited a vacation destination that’s popular among Arizonans – San Diego – and took their three young daughters with them. When they returned home, they brought photos of their then 5, 4, and 1 ½ year old girls to a nearby Walmart store to obtain prints. It all seemed pretty innocent productive. But some of the...

Readers — The story below makes me so sad and so angry, and you will see why. If anyone at Child Protective Services or the police department would pick up a single book written before predator panic swept the country, they’d see that 6-year-olds were always part of the neighborhood scene, scampering, playing, or even — in many eras and areas — working! The idea that a 6-year-old can’t be outside without constant supervision is new and warped. It also seriously underestimates kids. Is there a law requiring parents to stunt their children’s curiosity, competence, maturity and independence? I fear...

According to CBS, St. Louis, Pastor Rodney Francis, of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church, wants to keep kiddos away from guns, so this summer his church is planning a “toy gun buy back” program. How quaint. I kid you not: A. Toy. Gun. Buy. Back. Sounds like he’s setting up the next generation to be victimized slaves to bad people and policies. Yep, Reverend Rodney “feels” he needs to do “everything (he) can to not allow our kids to get exposed to (guns) too early.” Aww ... ain’t that sweet? Hey, maybe he could also hand out during that...

a b s t r a c t The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian...

Shortly after her move from New Hampshire to Newtown in 1998, Nancy Lanza had good news about her troubled son. "Adam is doing well here, and seems to be enjoying the new school," Lanza wrote to a friend back in Kingston, N.H., in a Feb. 9, 1999, email. But Adam, 6, then diagnosed with a condition that made it difficult for him to manage and respond to sights, touch and smell, eventually struggled in the first grade at his new school — Sandy Hook Elementary. His mother would respond, touching off a 10-year educational shuffle with moves in and out...

FULL TITLE: Company president, 60, 'slaps 19-month-old toddler in the face on a plane and tells his mother to ''shut that n****r baby up''' A man has been accused of racially abusing then physically assaulting a 19-month-old child on a flight to Atlanta last Friday. Joe Rickey Hundley, 60, allegedly demanded that the mother of the crying toddler 'shut that n****r baby up' before slapping the infant in the face on the Delta flight on February 8. According to The Smoking Gun, Hundley has been charged with simple assault after the incident with Jessica Bennett, 33, and her son Jonah....

As I walked through the Supermarket today, I passed through the isle that was full of children's toys of all kinds. Little racing cars, coloring books, transformers, Barbie dolls and baby dolls, stuffed bears, plastic airplanes, little ponies, bouncing balls, basketballs and something called slime. There were several children there, taking full advantage of the bounty as if it were provided for free. One opened a package of baubles that I could not identify while the other drooled on a basketball before throwing it in the general direction of the other child. And my old mind could not help but...

Giving more benefits to poor families will not address child poverty because too many irresponsible parents will spend it on alcohol or drugs, Iain Duncan Smith has warned. The Work and Pensions Secretary said parental addiction—not family income—had emerged as the main factor in determining a child’s life chances. He insisted that the last government’s strategy of spending more than £170 billion ($269 billion) in additional welfare payments had failed comprehensively. … Duncan Smith said Labour’s approach was a “vicious trap” and had left a “disturbing number” of people trapped in poverty. “There are around 100,000 people claiming sickness benefits...

COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, OH (FOX19) - Police have arrested a Colerain man after he posted a photo of himself on Facebook holding his 1-year-old daughter and a BB gun. Domonic Gaines, 22, was arrested after the incident which occurred at his home on Suliner Drive Sunday. According to reports, police initially believed that Gaines was holding a handgun in the photo. However, police say the gun in question turned out to be a BB gun. The photo depicted Gaines holding his daughter, Paradise Gaines, along with the BB gun. Police say that the close proximity of the gun to the child...

Am I the only one who thinks it is immoral to bring children into the world if you don't have the means to support them? I must be one of the few. I rarely see anyone else make the point. Before anyone objects, let me concede up front that a lot of things in life are unpredictable. Women become pregnant despite their best efforts to avoid it. Women can lose their husbands from accidents, war and even homicide. Few of us have a tenured job. Few of us are safe from the economic reversal that would attend the loss of...