A buried truth

Thinkster

Yet again, spot on. Great Britain is, and this refers to a number of issues, living in a huge vaccuum of denial. The is made possible because the pleasing aesthetics of modern consumer products, sugary TV programming and an agenda driven media create a false sense of comfort. This was all predicted so well in the movie Logan's Run. And we all know that any entity that is based on a lie will eventually implode. The solution? Choose who you marry and ensure you apply your values to your children and surround yourself with the same. It's called 'Darwinism' and it appears to work. "The meek shall inherit the Earth."

Rob

My goodness! How many of the Brady Bunch are left?

david skinner

Commentators and those in positions of responsibility and influence who are still capable of discerning that something is going dreadfully wrong with the next generation are beginning to ask questions: Is the solution for our children better education, citizenship lessons, smaller class sizes, more nursery care, compulsory and state directed parenting lessons, better housing, increased welfare, recreational facilities, redistribution of wealth, better apprenticeship schemes and even more state intervention . But what those in positions of power and influence perversely refuse to acknowledge is that children need something that none of the above can supply.
A sense of belonging, identity, affirmation, security, stability, solidarity, cohesion and an ability to relate to and appreciate masculinity and femininity , to be able to achieve manhood and womanhood….. none of these can be legislated for or supplied by any state funded agency; they can only be supplied in the home. .A strong country is not one regulated by legislation that automatically assumes no one can be trusted, or that in order to control its population it needs an oppressive police force. It is one where children are reared in a family made up of mother and father that children learn simple things like courtesy, community , trust, loyalty, self- control and the ability to put the needs of others in front of one’s own- no where else. A heterosexual, monogamous and enduring marriage has always been the prerequisite for raising healthy, sane, balanced , caring , respectful and responsible citizens. Is no one in government willing to see the correlation between the disappearance of such marriages and the present nihilistic behaviour of our children?

T.S. Eliot wrote: “By far the most important channel of transmission of cuture remains the family; and when the family fails to play its part, we must expect our culture to deteriote”

The Family Education Trust ( Family and Youth Concern) Has shed loads of evidence to show that the traditional family defined by the Bible gives children what they need.
http://www.famyouth.org.uk/index.php including this article which will make feminists foam at the mouth :http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/experiments.php

Ray

... meanwhile, that great New Labour band-aid for the problem of disfunctional parenting - the Surestart Project - keeps rolling on regardless.

Michael B

"But in Britain, the government simply stopped collecting statistics that broke down families by type which enabled researchers to compare violence and other ill-effects in different types of household."

Yep, they're not deemed useful stats if they fail to support prevailing ideological outlooks, the zeitgeist, whatever it might be termed. Reminds me of all the statistics from the pre-60's era that are so often elided, occluded, denied, marginalized, rationalized away, mocked, etc. Hence "science" and scientism operating in the social sciences and elsewhere, rather than science, more properly understood.

Alan C

When Mealnie was on a Newnight panel this week discussing child violence Kirsty Walk prefaced a comment with “…family’s do come in all shapes and sizes and there never is a perfect family so we must be careful of that I suppose…”. I just about choked when I heard this. So PC. So typically Newsnight. I was waiting for someone to pick her up on this but no one did. Perhaps you could suggest a follow-up panel on the effect of family structure on a child’s life-chances to counter these woolly liberal views.

Neil Saunders

It needs - in spite of immense difficulties which I shall list below - to be constantly reaffirmed that the only family worthy of being unenclosed in scare quotes is the traditional, monogamous, heterosexual two-parent family. (In other words, the qualifying adjectives ought to be capable of being dispensed with as superfluous.)

Like your other correspondent, Alan C, I am horrified (if sadly unsurprised) that nobody on Newsnight challenged Kirsty Wark's assertion that "families do come in all shapes and sizes". Such a statement is a typical piece of coercive equivocation by a prominent member of the psuedo-liberal elite, since Wark might on the one hand be talking merely of the number of children in a traditional family, but almost certainly wishes in addition to imply (to her fellow "liberals") that, for example, a "family" whose responsible adults consist of three lesbians, a circus midget and a donkey, all promiscuously cohabiting in a sado-masochist commune, is every bit as normal and acceptable.

By the way, although the true family receives its most obvious sanction and support in the Christian Bible it is a mistake to think that only religious people are concerned by its ideologically sponsored destruction by our pseudo-liberal elites. I am an atheist.

However, the vanquishing of the pseudo-liberal elites and their spokespeople in open debate will not be easy. Melanie wrote in her All Must Have Prizes about the way in which the education system has been ideologically captured by sociocultural Marxists. (Incidentally, what is Political Correctness other than sociocultural Marxism?) But they have similarly captured almost every other institution (with the conspicuous exception of economic ones, which remain the fiefdom of the free-market right, with whom they have clearly brokered an ideological truce). Therefore they now set and police the terms of the debate in the mass media (often subliminally, via popular entertainments), and indoctrinate young people in the so-called education system.

Thom

Spot on Mel, but the wrong way round for your arguement.
The state shouldn't collect these figures, furthermore it shouldn't be supporting any type of family unit more than another, whether they be a single parent, a married heterosexual couple, a gay couple or an amorphous commune. The "ideal family" should be the one that is best for the individual, named, child; not some statistical Joe Bloggs, and we should be making efforts to protect children from bad parenting without rose tinted glasses to a bygone age or the politically correct farce we have now.

Rod Munch

Er... If we won't see it in the British media why do you not use your massively read and respected newspaper column?

david skinner

The immediate context of Melanie’s article surely has to be the present debate in the House of Commons over Human Fertilisation and Embryology, where animal/ human hybrids will not be allowed to develop as foetuses, beyond 14 days, presumably for humanitarian/ ethical reasons, whereas, foetuses that in reality are patently 100% human are classed as lumps of meat until 24weeks when they miraculously turn into human beings. Why this concern for the hybrids and not for the lumps of meat? Isn’t this unfair discrimination?

I agree with Neil concerning the way the present zeitgeist defines everything according to, as he puts it, “qualifying adjectives” that carry a heavy evolutionary humanist moral value and
not according to objective categories such as parent, marriage sex, speech etc.
Sexual behaviour is no longer defined as that small but vital component of marriage. Instead it is now either safe or unprotected . Truth is now no longer true but temperate or hateful . Parents are now no longer defined as man and wife but by relativistic values of good and bad. In so doing we render such categories as meaningless and thus can dispense with them altogether.

Though Neil cannot as yet supply us with any examples of families made up of three lesbians, a circus midget and a donkey, all promiscuously cohabiting in a sado-masochist communes, the following examples are certainly on the nursery slopes of that evolutionary development.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=500438&in_page_id=1879 ( He is the actual father but he is not the legal father)

.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=408666&in_page_id=1879 (Barrie Drewitt and Tony Barlow on Gaydar)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=563303&in_page_id=1770 (Transsexual husband annuls marriage and enters into civil partnership with wife to keep pension benefits)

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2356730,00.html (incest )

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/585/print (Man marries two lesbians)

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4581943
(Transgender man pregnant and the implications of the embryology bill)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/im-not-gay-but-my-four-mums-are/2007/06/15/1181414542339.html
(I'm not gay, but my four mums are.)

Thom, describing any organisation such as the Family Education Trust, Care, as Joe Bloggs, speaks of prejudice, discrimination and gross ignorance. These organisations have worked for years in this field and have shed loads of evidence to show that the traditional family is by far, many times over, the most stable and secure environment in which to bring up children.

Verity

Thom, have you ever been diagnosed as being ... um ... a little off-centre regarding human beings?

"Spot on Mel, but the wrong way round for your arguement." Doubtless, given your convincing logic and knowledge of anthropology, Ms Phillips will be consulting you regarding the "right way" (i.e., your way) round "arguements". (I.e., your spelling.)

"The state shouldn't collect these figures, furthermore it shouldn't be supporting any type of family unit more than another, whether they be a single parent, a married heterosexual couple, a gay couple or an amorphous commune."

Care to share your definition of your phrase, a "family unit"? Can you understand that the family is a unit, and a very close, committed one at that?

In Thom's considered opinion "... The "ideal family" should be the one that is best for the individual, named, child;".

And this will be determined by who? Socialist council workers? Does "the chlid" get a vote? What if the child wants a mummy and daddy and doesn't want to enter the New Socialist One World Order? Does the child have a voice?

"we should be making efforts to protect children from bad parenting without rose tinted glasses" ...

D'acuerdo. Especially those of the vicious, destructive left.

Tony Allwright, Dublin

Many people regularly dispute the claim (self-evident truism) that "kids have a better chance in life if reared by their married biological parents".

So I collated a number of pieces of evidence for this here, which others might find useful.

david skinner

Tony Allwight from Dublin . Many,many, many thanks

David B

"The truth is that natural parents provide the greatest safety for children, and it is the reconstituted family which poses the greatest danger."

So what are you proposing Melanie? Make it illegal for divorced people to re-marry? Or ban divorce altogether? As for those poor unfortunate children currently living in less than perfect heterosexual families, are you suggesting they should all be taken into care?

Please clarify

Mariner

DavidB wrote;

So what are you proposing Melanie? Make it illegal for divorced people to re-marry? Or ban divorce altogether? As for those poor unfortunate children currently living in less than perfect heterosexual families, are you suggesting they should all be taken into care?

I doubt if it would be possible to take all children into care (though this is what some of the feminist labourites would seem to want). But one solution could be to make divorce less advantageous to women. Why should women be given sole custody automatically? Surely it would be better to encourage joint custody over any children. This would give a child safety in the event of one parent (or partner) becoming abusive toward them. The more people involved in a child's welfare makes it less likely they would become victims of abuse. Also, isn't what women want - the right to work etc? Joint custody puts them on an equal footing with men allowing them to work to - which should bring in a higher income giving the child a higher standard of living without the standard of living dropping for either parent.

I don't think there is a perfect solution. But I do think the no-fault divorce was the the biggest mistake ever made so maybe divorce should be made harder and the offending party made more accountable. It may make couples stop and think a little more deeply of why they are divorcing other than " I fell out of love and got bored.

Rick Dennstedt

Hey, the photo is of my family and we are all related by genetic heritage. I guess that is why we are smiling (no early death in our future).