I think it’s weird and disgusting for people to criticize how other people mourn the loss of a life. Santorum is right about social issues. They are the building blocks to a functionable society. I think if his wife would have aborted the baby they would have found that perfectly acceptable. As a matter of fact the hospitals recommend this grieving process. These abortion lovers would find it weird to grieve over a dead baby. Allahpundit has a great piece on this.

Go figure that, knowing they’ll have only a precious few hours to share with a lost child, some people want to do what they can to capture the moment. I wonder what Robinson thinks Santorum and his wife should have done instead. Is it a simple matter of venue, i.e. he should have brought his kids to the hospital to see the baby there instead of bringing it to them at home? He did that, I assume, only because he wanted the family to have time together in a normal setting, not an antiseptic obstetrics ward. And yet this personal story, which has zero policy implications but does vividly illustrate Santorum’s belief that dead babies are family members too, somehow has unnerved not one but two pro-choicers to the point where they feel obliged to remark about its “weirdness” on TV.

I’ve always kept Santorum as an option to support and the more I hear about him the more I like him. I will probably be rooting for him and defending him for a while now. I also like several things about Newt, but several things I don’t. Anyway, attacks like these on Santorum are of the lowest.

◼ Student privacy at risk from Feds – NY Post

Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent?

Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality.

The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer.

How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009 stimulus bill were provisions encouraging states to develop data systems for collecting copious information on public-school kids. To qualify for stimulus money, states had to agree to build such systems according to federally dictated standards. So all 50 states either now maintain or are capable of maintaining extensive databases on public-school students.

Get it?

Remember last week – ◼ California ‘qualified’ for “Race To The Top” monies. Not a dime of which is going to educate your kids, but is instead being used for the creation of ‘cradle to career data systems.’

Watch the terms. Language is being used to obscure the true meaning and intent. Most people only hear the easy rhetoric… “raise academic standards, improve teacher and principal quality, build cradle to career data systems and turn around persistently low-performing schools.”

Ask yourself. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? You already know what happens when they try to fire teachers, or go for merit pay. What school doesn’t already work to “raise academic standards”? Why is all this money, which the schools, we are told, are in desperate need of, being wasted on another bureaucratic program? Does privacy matter? Now, what does the Federal Government need with all that personal information? Does your elected representative know about this? can he/she explain it?

Note further that the study had NO data on whether breastfeeding children cuts the risk of obesity and diabetes in later life. That is just their theory. As the article below says, it is what the authors “believe”

Breastfeeding could help to prevent children developing diabetes and becoming obese later in life, scientists believe. New research shows that breastfed babies follow a different growth pattern to those who drink formula milk, which is likely to have future health benefits.

Breast milk lowers levels of the growth hormone IGF-1 and insulin in the blood, which slows the rate of growth even after the child has started on solid foods. Slower weight gain is known to encourage healthier eating patterns. By contrast, formula milk may increase the production of fat cells, which encourages weight gain throughout childhood.

The findings from LIFE – the Faculty of Life Sciences at Copenhagen University in Denmark – also suggest that the longer the period of breastfeeding, the lower a child’s weight at the age of 18 months.

The results come from analysis of a wider study of diet and wellbeing following 330 children at nine, 18 and 36 months. Anja Lykke Madsen, a member of the research team, said: ‘We can see that breastfeeding has a significant, measurable effect on the important growth regulators in the blood, IGF-I and insulin. The more times the child was breastfed, the lower the hormone levels.

‘This suggests that the child has a slightly lower risk of becoming overweight later in childhood.’ Research shows that breast milk protects babies against stomach bugs, chest infections, asthma, eczema, and allergies, and appears to bring general health advantages in later life. ‘The longer the children were breastfed, the lower their weight at 18 months. It’s as simple as that’

More here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(The Politico) Was there science, and not just politics, behind the Obama administration’s decision to stop young teens from getting the morning-after pill without a prescription? Probably not.

Will it work as a political decision? That’s trickier — because for every independent voter who is reassured that President Barack Obama doesn’t want 12-year-old girls buying emergency contraception, there may be another one who thinks he ignores science for political gain.

It wasn’t just Democrats and abortion rights groups that howled when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA on Wednesday and declared that Plan B shouldn’t be available over the counter to girls under age 17. It was medical groups, too — because in their view, the evidence is already settled that the emergency contraception is safe and effective, regardless of age.

“This was a poster child of an issue of science being trumped,” said Wood, now the executive director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at the George Washington University. “It’s very distressing.”

So, how is this related to “science”?

In her letter Wednesday to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Sebelius said she blocked the FDA’s recommendation for over-the-counter sales to young teens because the studies submitted to the agency “do not include data on all ages” and because “it is commonly understood that there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age.”

Ah. Because there isn’t enough data. But, the liberals who are slamming Sebelius and Obama think it is anti-science to restrict the use of the morning after pill for kids under 17 without parental consent. Is it science? Is it politics? No, it’s neither, it’s simply basic common sense, the same way that parents should be notified when their underage daughter wants to get an abortion, a measure that freaks out liberals. Unless the child in question is their own. Then THEY want notification. In Liberal World, it’s always about Someone Else. And, give Sebelius some credit, she did say that “that allowing girls under 17 to purchase this hormonal drug over the counter without the supervision of an adult or doctor is” a bad idea.

Abortion on demand is the holy grail of Democrat issues, and you know that any interference means that the legislation/measure and the people who propose them are “anti-women” or something.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Earlier this year the State of Illinois moved to force religious-based children’s services to break their religious principles and give children in their charge to homosexual couples. Organizations such as Catholic Charities have been told by the state that they either break their religious principles or face being shut down by the state. So, pursuant to that agenda, the state has determined that all children currently in the hands of religious adoption agencies need to be removed immediately.

Representing Catholic Charities of three Illinois Roman Catholic Dioceses, the Thomas Moore Society filed an emergency motion to prevent the state from removing all the children in its care. Unfortunately, an Illinois appellate court refused to overturn the trial court’s decision to remove the children during the appeal process in which lawyers are now engaged. (Filings here and here.)

Still, other motions made in the emergency motion were granted. Thomas Moore informs that the matter “is now on an expedited schedule for briefing in the Appellate Court.” The fate of the children remains unknown at this point.

So what was so bad that the State of Illinois felt it necessary to take all children away from religious-based organizations? Have there been cases of abuse? Perhaps children’s services from religious-based groups have been rated lowly? Have adopting parents complained?

None of the above. In fact, there is no substantive reason at all for this attack on religious-based children’s services in the Land of Lincoln. Well, no reason except for a left-wing, pro-homosexual political agenda, that is.

You see, the state received precisely one complaint about Catholic Charities. It was from an activist homosexual who complained that the religious-based adoption agencies in the state would not willingly give children up to homosexual couples.

If there has been before such draconian actions taken by government based on a single, hazy, non-substantive complaint — one that did not entail any abuse of children — I’ve never heard tell of it. But here we have such a case. The complaint of one activist pushing the homosexual agenda was enough for the state to decide to force all religious children’s services to either break religious principles and give children to homosexual couples, or face being shut down by the iron fist of the state.

This overt attack on religious-based children’s services hits with interesting timing, too. This month the Illinois Dept. of Children and Family Services gave Catholic Charities its highest rating for children’s services. Catholic Charities received a Level 1 compliance score and was ranked as one of the best foster care providers in the state.

So on one hand, one state agency says that the services Catholic Charities provided to the State’s most vulnerable children is top notch, yet on the other hand another state agency (the Attorney General’s office) says that Catholic Charities is so bad it must be shut down.

It just goes to show that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (a Chicago Democrat) has a political agenda and doesn’t really care what’s good for the homeless children of Illinois.

A middle school in Smyrna, Georgia included in an assignment material that essentially shows 7th grade children that Islamic polygamy is a perfectly legitimate concept and that there is nothing wrong with the strict dress codes used to oppress Muslim women the world over.

The material was presented to the 7th graders at Campbell Middle School as part of a discussion of the school’s dress codes, apparently meant to use the ideas of Islamic culture for women’s clothing as some sort of example to compare how the school regulates clothing for its students in Georgia.

The concepts were presented in the lesson as a letter from a fictional 20-year-old Muslim woman named “Ahlima.” In this letter “Ahlima” tells readers that she wouldn’t mind if her husband took a second wife and also extolled the virtues of the burkha. She claims that American women are “horribly immodest” in the way they dress.

As to polygamy, the fictional Ahlima says, “I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong.”

A father of one of the students was not very happy with the assignment. He complained that the lesson is “promoting or positively depicting their belief that polygamy” is acceptable. He also felt that there should have been some sort of disclaimer that we Americans don’t accept these concepts and he worried that the Muslim ideas were presented as completely acceptable.

Another page of the assignment explained the “seven conditions for women’s dress in Islam,” presenting all of them without discussion and, in essence, endorsing them as acceptable or normal.

The school told the WSB TV, Channel 2 News that it did not create the lesson plan and that it came from the state. The school pledged to review the material to see if it was appropriate.

But, it is not appropriate. Not at all.

First of all, this lesson plan is built on lies. The burkha, for instance, is not a requirement of Islam. It is a cultural practice that only some Muslim cultures observe. The burkha has nothing at all to do with Islam directly. Not all Muslims practice polygamy, either, so even that isn’t necessarily a strict Islamic idea, either.

But, worse, the idea that burkhas should at all be acceptable to an American is a slap against our own ideals and promotes the oppressive ideas of enemies to our culture as perfectly acceptable.

The culturally strict proscriptions against freedom forced on Islamic women are a crime against humanity, yet here we have our own schools presenting to our own children the idea that the oppression of women is a perfectly acceptable cultural choice.

It would be exactly the same if they had a letter from a female slave saying that she was OK with being a slave. That it was perfectly acceptable for her to be owned by someone.

We are teaching our children that our own principles are not the optimal principles. We are teaching our children that our own culture, our own ideals are not supreme. We are teaching our children that the oppressive ideas of Islam are just as good as American ideals.

This is a result of liberals trying to make sure Muslims know that we “like” them in a post 9/11 world. With this weak, kow towing we are also making of ourselves a bigger target because there is another cultural ideal in Islam. Muslims feel that such bending over backwards as this is a weakness to be despised. Such kow towing is looked upon as pitiful. Muslims feel that such groveling is not “nice” or “neighborly” but spurs them to imagine that they can easily attack and dominate such a weak-willed culture.

But, even that aside, it shows how the liberals that wrote these lesson plans despise America. It shows that they do not value our own culture. It shows that these liberals are always in search of ways to further tear down the United States and make of her just another nation with just another set of cultural ideas.

If we want to bring America back from the brink of the destruction liberals have led us to we need to take back our educational system and get back to a time where we are teaching our kids why the United States is the best nation on earth.

Unfortunately, today our schools are filled with lessons like this, lessons that teach our own children that the US is nothing special.

I spent most of the day on Aug 30 sort of embedded with Congressman Peter Roskam, Republican of the Illinois 6th District and Chief Deputy Whip in Washington, as he toured his district talking to local businesses. The whirlwind tour of businesses in Roskam’s district — topped with a presser in downtown Chicago — was the precursor of Roskam’s next focus. Roskam wants to begin an assessment of the regulatory edifice in Washington D.C. with any eye toward making Washington more business friendly in this moribund, recessionary economy.

My chauffeur was Roskam communication director, the genial Dan Conston. He told me he was born and bred in Philly, but I assured him that I would not hold that against him. No matter that he is an Eagles fan, he knew his way around the area. Still I promised not to tattle on his driving… but I guess even saying that much is saying something!

Our first stop was Federal Signal Corporation located in Oak Brook. The folks at Federal Signal told Congressman Roskam that they were worried that new EPA rules on the engines they use in their street sweeper machines were threatening to shut down production lines and put workers out of work. And not just for them but the engines of similar styles in every industry that uses them are facing the same jobs-killing requirements.

The problem was all the “uncertainty” which is casting a pall over what Fed Sig’s Dennis Martin, President and CEO, was happy to say is a recent uptick in orders for their machines. Orders have been down for years, said Martin, but now older street sweepers are not only wearing out but are themselves long out of compliance with new EPA rules and new orders are now rolling in.

New EPA rules for the engines that Fed Sig’s street sweepers use have been passed down from Washington without much regard for reality. New engines will be in what is being called “tier four” category, requiring stricter emissions and energy use. But the problem is, and it is an industry wide one, that the new engines have yet to make it out of the prototype stage and Fed Sig — as well as companies like Caterpillar — have no way to engineer their new machines to fit engines that don’t exist yet. Worse, these new rules, the EPA has decreed, will go into effect early next year. There is not enough time to both get the new engines and re-engineer the machines they will power to satisfy an early 2012 deadline.

Chief Administrative Officer, Jennifer Sherman, told Roskam that they have no logical way to plan their upcoming manufacturing lines because these new engines do not yet exist. Martin chimed in adding that if they can’t get the EPA to bend a little on the rules implementation dates they will simply have to stop production until the new engines are ready meaning “we’ll have no work for our workers.”

This is all evidence of how inflexible the Environmental Protection Agency is. It demands changes, sets a timetable, but takes no care to ascertain if that timetable is realistic. Congressman Roskam shook his head at these facts. “The irony is,” he told the businessmen, “the whole industry hasn’t caught a break in three years and now that orders are finally coming in the federal government is slamming down with these regulations.”

The next stop in this breakneck day was the Greater O’Hare Association of Chambers of Commerce, a group of chamber of commerce organizations of the nearby suburbs. *13 groups gathered to put on this luncheon giving the congressman a platform to speak about the coming focus on regulations that the GOP led House is going to begin in the fall session.

Roskam mounted the rostrum and began with a story of one of the businessmen he met in his district who warned that regulations were causing him real trouble with his business plans. The businessman Roskam met said that with the heavy handedness of federal regulations constantly coming down on him, with taxes threatening to go up wildly on businesses, not to mention the costs of energy soaring created such uncertainty that he just could not invest in the future of his business. The safe bet, he told Roskam, was to just tread water until he could be sure enough of the future to make concrete plans. No upgrades, no expansion, and no new employees was the result.
Roskam said that this wasn’t just this one local man’s problem but one that he saw as endemic across the country. “Regulations have a massive impact on business,” Roskam told us.

The congressman presented four slides that showed just how bad things are getting with spending on unfunded entitlements of Social Security and Medicare that by 2020 will take the entire budget of the federal government leaving not a penny for administration, even defense. In but a few years, Roskam warned, we’ll have $99.4 trillion in promised but unfunded spending and it will truly hurt this nation’s solvency.

Roskam also noted that we “cannot cut our way” to a solution for this mess. “We have to grow our way out,” he said. “We need to maintain discipline on the spending side but also help the growth side by holding regulations” to sensible measures so that we can create jobs and grow the economy.

“The whole question of regulations is if they add value to business, if the rules for safety and oversight make common sense,” Roskam said. “This all may seem esoteric,” he averred, “it may all sound like inside baseball, but it all has real life affects on real jobs.”

“This economy can be great. But right now the heavy hand of government is holding down this great economy. Regulations need to be rational to facilitate growth. You cannot program the U.S. economy. It is a thing of beauty but it can’t be programed,” the congressman told us.

After the luncheon we sped off the Bensenville to a company called Chicago White Metal Casting spearheaded by President and CEO Eric Treiber.

Mr. Treiber also worried that the regulations that were coming down on his metal casting business were so absurd that he couldn’t possibly cope with them. In one case, for instance, new EPA rules for the workplace air quality are so stringent that the air outside the shop would be filled with more particulates than that inside the shop if the EPA had its way. These are onerous, absurd requirements that have nothing to do with reality.

Roskam took a tour of the shop and got to see how the work was done.

… and then we jumped in the cars once again and sped off to WTTW, Chicago’s Public Television so that Rep. Roskam could make a short appearance on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. Much of what went on there was a reflection of what was going on all day for us in the Roskam caravan. But one question asked of the congressman was interesting.

The host asked Roskam what he felt about the Tea Party movement. Peter said that he felt the Tea Party was mostly a force for good. Roskam said that an element of the Tea Party that is beneficial is the “civic involvement” that Tea Partiers have engaged in. Roskam said that this is how democracy works when people are engaged and informed.

The congressman’s full appearance will air Thursday, Sept. 1st.

Finally, we were off to downtown Chicago to a presser with Roskam and representatives of Sarah Lee Corp. Once again the subject was oppressive regulations.

C.J. Fraleigh, CEO for Sarah Lee’s North American region, was on hand with Roskam to shed light on the absurd regulations they are facing. Sarah Lee, for instance, is being prohibited from advertising to any body of people that might have children anywhere near said advertising. This means that Sarah Lee cannot advertise their Ball Park Franks hotdogs at stadiums, concerts, or movie theaters — the very venues that buy the product for their own customers — merely because a kid might see the advertising. Additionally, Sarah Lee is being told that it can no longer advertise Halloween or Easter candy because the cartoon characters are somehow too enticing to kids. Even more ridiculous, the company is being told that it cannot even advertise its most healthy products like low fat turkey sandwich meats because of sodium content.

Roskam really warmed to his day-long theme at the presser and impressed upon the newsies gathered downtown that regulations were killing any hope that this faltering economy could grow.

“It’s gotten too easy,” Roskam said, “to move these regulation changes. We need to make it harder.”

During the day Roskam pushed a steady theme about the “absurdity” of out of control regulations. He felt that the EPA trying to “chase zero” on many of its environmental regulations was a flight of fantasy that was harming business. He felt that these oppressive regulations were creating so much uncertainty that business could not grow and jobs could not be created.

But he wasn’t saying, he reminded us several times, that because he was against some regulations that he must, therefore, be against all of them. That was also an “absurd” position to ascribe to him and the GOP leadership similarly striving for a level of common sense, logic and real effectiveness for the federal government’s various regulatory schemes.

“We need a bureaucracy that is nimble, one that can react sensibly” Roskam said several times that day.

Before I end this little report of my day with Congressman Roskam, I need to report one side subject, his answer to a question asked at the end of the Sarah Lee presser.

Congressman Eric Cantor (R, Vir.), House Majority Leader, made some news recently about requiring congress to offset spending on natural disasters with cuts in other areas. But with hurricane Irene bearing down on Virginia and after the recent earthquake hit the area, members of the Old Media and the Democrat Party are wondering if Cantor is going to back down and request disaster aid for his own native state without requiring cuts to offset the spending.

The question was put to Rep. Roskam by one reporter if the idea of offsetting spending on natural disasters was a problem politically for Republicans.

Think about it another way, I would say it’s not an ideological motivation, it’s an economic reality. When the rating agencies have literally for the first time taken us to a downgrade position which is completely new ground. We’re in a new season of our public life. So that means that there’s a consequence now to saying “yes” to things. And there’s no one that would argue with you that that is not an appropriate role of government. So, that’s a common ground where both left and right are able to come together and my hunch is that a lot of folks in the middle are saying, “OK, yeah, I get that, I understand that that’s an obligation of government but where are you gonna come up with it?” Because we’re not going to be able to borrow it. And in a three point six trillion dollar budget we can do this. We can come up with the resources internally to make it a priority to move some folks to the front of the line. But there’s a consequence to it.

So when Eric Cantor the majority leader says, “look… revenues have to meet expenses in that sort of sense, that’s the reality of where we are,” and I think that’s where the S & P has driven that and made it crystal clear that we really don’t have a choice.

With that, I bid the congressmen and his staff a good day and off I went back to my little bungalow in the suburbs! Any of you left-wingers reading this will be happy to know I trundled back home via public transportation, too. I feel greener already.

Thanks to Congressman Roskam for allowing me to tag along all day and thanks to Dan Conston and the rest of the staffers for shuttling me around for the day.

*The 13 groups that came together to put on the luncheon were the chamber of commerce groups from Addison, Arlington Heights, Bloomingdale, Carol Stream, Elmhurst, Elk Grove, Hoffman Estates, Itasca, Hanover Park, Mt. Prospect, Rolling Meadows, Roselle, and Wheaton.

It is a sad truth that from coast to coast our departments of children and family service (DCFS) agencies are in disarray. All too often they ill serve the children they are supposed to be helping and they almost always step on the rights of parents without much bothering to give a good reading of the situation before action is taken. The travails of 13-year-old Chloe Faulkner is another such story. Taken from her parents, isolated in a world of faceless bureaucrats, used as a cash cow for state aide, abused, repeatedly raped, and eventually impregnated without her loving parents being given a chance to be heard, this tale is another DCFS/State intervention horror story.

In 2009 Chloe was a 13-year-old, home schooled, bright-eyed girl who had been diagnosed with the serious medical condition of Type 1 diabetes. Like many 13-year-olds she was in a rebellious stage, pushing back at a world of parental rules and the constrictions that her medical condition unfairly imposed upon her. And, like many rebelling teens, Chloe ran away one day, refusing to return home.

Her worried, loving parents involved the police because they feared that young Chloe’s medical condition would make her running away far more dangerous than it might for the average teen. The police found Chloe and brought her home with no incident.

But soon things began to go terribly awry. Because the police were involved the DCFS came knocking at Chloe’s parent’s home. After some interaction between Chloe and the state, DCFS took Chloe away from her home and into state custody under the auspices of a law called MRAI, Minor Requiring Authoritative Intervention (In Illinois it is ILCS705, 405, 3-3-1(a)).

Part of the MRAI laws, give teenagers the right to decide if they want to go home to their parents. In her rebellion, Chloe decided that she didn’t. This gave the state the right to take Chloe away from her parents, exclude parents from the decisions about any treatment given their daughter, and to fully control the girl’s life.

Even though there was no history with Chloe, her parents and DCFS, even though there was no evidence of abuse, no medical emergencies while in the care of her parents, and no evidence that her schooling was lacking, the state allowed a rebellious, naive 13-year-old girl to make the sort of decision that could seriously harm her and send her down a path of abuse. And the worst happened.

Once Chloe was taken away and her parents shut out from being able to help their own daughter, the girl’s life began to get worse by the day.

As the year during which Chloe was forced into the state DCFS system wore on, she was placed in mental health wards –where state money naturally followed her internment — even though there was never any determination that she had mental problems, she was given birth control pills by planned parenthood against her religious parent’s desires, she was sexually exploited by the 20-year-old male friend of a “foster parent” — and was raped three times by this man who lived in the same apartment complex as the foster family — and finally, after getting out of the system, left state custody pregnant.

Chloe’s mother, Shelley, fought long and hard to get her daughter out of this abusive system and is now trying to get people to understand just how dangerous and ill-advised the MRAI laws are.

The state seriously failed young Chloe and fails all too many others. Chloe’s experiences must serve as a warning to us all that we need to seriously overhaul the misdirected DCFS regulations and laws regarding troubled children.

For more information and for ways to contact the Faulkers, see http://standup4chloe.org/index.htm or their facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118257284892107.

NO conclusions would seem warranted by this study

David Cameron’s promised tax-break for couples has been dealt a blow after an influential think tank found that marriage actually provides few benefits to children.

Instead, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that parents’ qualifications are more likely to help or hinder the educational and emotional development of a child. It found there was ‘little or no evidence’ to support the idea that marital status affects children in the commonly held belief, pouring cold water on Mr Cameron’s plans to fix ‘Broken Britain.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies concedes that there is a difference but says this is down to the education attainment of a child’s mother and father.

The report from the IFS concluded: ‘We can find no strong evidence that marriage leads to better cognitive or social outcomes for children than cohabitation. ‘Policies aimed at encouraging parents to get married before they bear children thus require a rationale other than one based on the impact of marriage on child development.’

Ellen Greaves, research economist at the IFS, said: ‘It is true that children born to married couples are on average more cognitively and emotionally successful than children born to cohabiting couples.

‘But careful analysis shows that this largely reflects the differences between the types of people who decide to get married and those who don’t. ‘On average those who marry tend to come from more advantaged families, and are more cognitively and emotionally successful themselves, than those who cohabit.

‘This explains the differences in outcomes for children. Marriage itself appears to confer little, if any, benefit in terms of child development.’

The children were broken up into three different age groups and then asked to carry out tasks. The three-year-olds had their vocabulary tested by being asked to identify pictures.

Five-year-olds had to recognise patterns and also had their vocabulary tested while the seven-year-olds were given basic maths problems and had to answer word recognition.

The second part of the study, sponsored by the Nuffield Institute, involved the questioning of parents to find out how they believed their child was developing through a series of 40 questions.

For their study the IFS used information from the Millennium Cohort Study, a sample of children born in the UK in the early 2000s; and the British Cohort Study, a census of individuals born in a particular week in 1970, whose children were surveyed in 2004.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Contraception has long been the province of women. Isn’t it about time for men to get in on the game?

Ever heard of a condom, Lisa?

It’s obvious why women have historically been the main consumers of birth control — we’re the ones who get pregnant, give birth, and in many cases take primary responsibility for raising kids.

But these days men have a lot more at stake than they used to. Gone is the era when fathers could toss a few baseballs, dole out a few spankings, and call it good. Dads are now expected to be fully engaged in childrearing (and thankfully, many are embracing the role). Also gone is the era when it was easy to support a family on one income, or even two. While the recession rages on and earning power shrinks, the cost of raising children just keeps going up; a middle-income American family can expect to spend about $227,000 [PDF] on a kid over their first 17 years.

And then there are those men who have unprotected sex with women they do not want to marry and raise children with, who become pregnant, and are then on the hook for child support.

Given the high expectations and high stakes, why aren’t more men demanding better contraceptive options? Women’s options aren’t great, but men’s are paltry and pathetic by comparison. Guys basically have two methods they can control themselves: use a condom or get snipped. And, oh yeah, the old standbys of abstinence and withdrawal.

“Our options suck,” said one unhappy man quoted in Wired. Why aren’t more men saying the same thing?

Here’s an idea: act like an adult and take responsibility when you are going to have sex. If you can’t trust that the woman is on birth control, use a condom. Why is the word “responsibility” so damned hard to explain to liberals? Well, actually, what is really hard is getting them to act on the definition of “responsibility.”

Of course, Lisa is not pushing this because she is worried about anything other than the growing population of evil babies, known in her world as “little carbon footprints and destroyers of the biosphere.”