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Children better off with married parents [Click Here to read the study by Penelope Leach] The furore surrounding the publication of research on parental versus institutional child care raises some interesting points other the ones that hit the headlines. Everyone is acutely aware of the scandals of historical child abuse of children placed in institutional care by the state and that is partly why there exists today the LEGAL PRESUMPTION that a child's optimal welfare is to be found in the care of its MARRIED PARENTS acting jointly. The presumption is based on the fact that these parents have subjected themselves to the regulation of marriage in the interests of the child and the good of society and concurs with the established social science evidence (which the authorities are now trying to conceal) which shows that, amongst all the different family permutations, significantly optimal outcomes for children can be predicted, in terms of health, educational achievement and social development, when they are brought up by their two married parents working together. A recent WHO report on children's health clearly showed this. However, in the study by Penelope Leach, which can be downloaded for inspection from our website at www.family-men.com, there is no mention whatsoever of the marital status of the mothers of the children. I must ask how any person who wants to be considered a reputable researcher can conduct and publish a report if their study does not acknowledge that marital status is THE major variable in the outcomes for children. Because the effect of marital status is SO SIGNIFICANT it is not difficult to suppose that regardless of type of child caring arrangements employed children who are lucky enough to be born into a stable married family would fare significantly better. This must make a complete nonsense of the study? Why is the variable of marital status not considered when it patently masks all other variables. The answer is that the motive of feminist-state-funded research is to demonise and eradicate marriage by whatever lies and misrepresentation of the facts it can. During an interview with Professor Belsky on the BBC we were told a listener phoned in with a question about the position regarding fathers as carers for children. Prof Belsky did everything possible rather than answer the simple question. He twisted one way and then the other alluding to some difficulty in finding a representative sample of fathers and claiming men who looked after their children were in some way "strange". What a load of twaddle. Obviously the good professor's own sympathies are being shown here rather than any academic prowess. The answer to the listeners question is simply answered by Warren Farrell in his excellent book, "Father and Child Reunion". In his book Farrell provides ample evidence that fathers are every bit as good as mothers at looking after children if obliged to. The research in fact shows that the outcomes for children, in terms of health, educational achievement and social development, are actually very slightly better when brought up by their fathers on their own rather than by the mother and father acting together and both these arrangements are statistically better than mothers acting on their own. Non-parental care is shown to be a total disaster. Perhaps an important aspect of this that the professor could not quite utter is that the only class of fathers who are allowed to raise children on their own are husbands - either widowers or married men who do not want to be on their own but who have been deserted by their wives or where their wives have been shown to be unfit parents. The point is that the question as to whether the father or mother is the better parent is a red herring - a typical ruse used by the feminist state for the past thirty years to foment a phoney war between men and women with the intention of dividing and ruling. Obviously the ideal arrangement for children - and the one that the state is trying to eradicate, although it is obliged to support through every branch of government - is for them to be brought up in a stable married family with two parents exercising their complementary positions as husband and wife. In this arrangement as long as there is one full-time parent caring at home, it is irrelevant which parent actually does it, or even if the child is looked after by someone else for a few hours whilst some pressing or part-time work is done. However, if parents believe money is so important that they can't look after their own children themselves and voluntarily place them into full-time institutional child care, it is hard to see any difference between that situation and the state TAKING the children into care. Roger Eldridge, |