There's a lot of chirping going on while they wait for the next worm.
Mom
Dad
Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Backyard guests
For several years we have had a family of house sparrows nest in the barn bird house in the backyard. This year there are at least 2 babies. Mom and dad spend most of their day flying back and forth with food for the ever open mouths of the hungry young ones.
There's a lot of chirping going on while they wait for the next worm.
Mom
Dad
There's a lot of chirping going on while they wait for the next worm.
Mom
Dad
Friday, January 27, 2012
Represent'n
I am always amazed that 3 "occupy" wherever protesters can make the top news story by sitting on a park bench speaking nonsense, but a group over 100,000 strong barely gets a mention on the nightly news or more than 5 lines in the paper. Sad.
Tomorrow, Lincoln NE will hold our own annual March for Life. Bede and I will be there for the 8th year in a row. Catholics, all people of faith and everyone who respects life, from birth til natural death needs to represent! The time has come for us to speak up, to be present, to make our voices heard. We will not quit. We will never change our minds. Life is sacred, always has been, always will be, no matter who is making policy. Life is not POLICY.
Wherever you are, in whatever way you can, be a part of the Pro-Life voice.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Sad news, but not surprising.
I work with young, single mothers every day.
This is the truth. I have been aware of this for a long time now.
Seeing it in print makes it very difficult to get up and go to work in the morning...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Teen Pregnancy: Bogus Problem, Bogus Solution [Robert Rector]
The Guttmacher Institute recently released a report raising alarm over a one-year increase in teen pregnancy. “Safe sex” experts quickly pinned the blame on abstinence education.
This is a bit hypocritical. In the decade after the federal government began its meager funding of abstinence education, teen pregnancy fell steadily. Safe-sex experts never linked that decline to abstinence education. But when the news went bad, they swiftly identified abstinence programs as the culprit.
But did teen pregnancy actually rise in 2006, as Guttmacher claims? It depends on what you mean by “teen.” For most people, “teen pregnancy” implies pregnancy among high-schoolers, girls under age 18. According to Guttmacher’s own data, the pregnancy rate for 15- to 17-year-old girls barely changed, and the rate for girls 14 and under (the group most affected by abstinence programs) actually dropped.
By contrast, the pregnancy and birth rates for young adult women aged 18 and 19 rose sharply.
The rise in pregnancies and births in this age range is part of a much larger story: the collapse of marriage and explosive growth of out-of-wedlock births in lower income communities.
Between 1997 and 2007, the percentage of births outside of marriage rose from 32.4 percent to 39.7 percent of all births in the U.S. Very few of these non-marital births occurred to minor girls; most were to less-educated young adult women aged 18 to 26. Since non-married moms are less likely to postpone childbearing than those who patiently wait for marriage, it should be no surprise that the ongoing collapse of marriage in low-income communities would lead to a bump in the birth rate among 18- and 19-year-olds.
In the grand scheme of things, the issue of “teen” pregnancy is dwarfed by its much larger cousin, the disintegration of marriage. Marital collapse is a catastrophe for taxpayers and society; the welfare costs alone exceed $250 billion per year. As noted, little of this problem results from teenagers getting pregnant in high school. Of the 1.7 million children born out of wedlock in 2007 only 136,000 (or 7 percent) had mothers under age 18.
“Teen pregnancy” is largely a red herring, hyped by the Left because it supports their agenda of condom promotion and permissive sex ed in the schools. Of course, condom proselytizing is a bogus answer to real social problems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, lack of access to birth control is not a significant factor contributing to non-marital pregnancy among teens or non-teens.
Harvard sociologist Kathryn Edin recently conducted a survey of lower income men and women who had experienced (or, in the case of men, caused) one or more non-marital pregnancies. The survey asked whether the individuals had, ever in their lives, been in a situation where they wanted to use birth control, but could not afford it or could not obtain it. All answered no.
Many laughed at the suggestion that their pregnancies had been caused by a lack of access to contraceptives, noting that contraceptives are abundant and aggressively promoted by schools and clinics in their communities. Of all the non-marital pregnancies reported in the study, not one was caused by lack of availability of contraceptives.
The explosive rise in out-of-wedlock births is due not to a lack of contraceptives, but to a crisis in the relationships of young adult men and women in lower income communities. Couples no longer see the need to be married before having children, and they lack the skills to form stable relationships. Ironically, young non-married parents yearn for eventual stable marriages and healthy families, but they utterly lack the skills and understanding to fulfill their aspirations.
Another irony: One of the greatest sins of abstinence-education programs (in the Left’s view) has been their effort to teach low-income youth that it is best to marry before having children. This affront to political correctness has outraged the Left and has been a principal motivator behind the drive to remove abstinence education from the classroom.
Next year we can expect the out-of-wedlock childbearing rate to top 40 percent. A chilling number, but one which won’t affect the Left’s campaign to promote bogus issues and bogus solutions.
— Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
01/27 11:10 AMShare
This is the truth. I have been aware of this for a long time now.
Seeing it in print makes it very difficult to get up and go to work in the morning...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Teen Pregnancy: Bogus Problem, Bogus Solution [Robert Rector]
The Guttmacher Institute recently released a report raising alarm over a one-year increase in teen pregnancy. “Safe sex” experts quickly pinned the blame on abstinence education.
This is a bit hypocritical. In the decade after the federal government began its meager funding of abstinence education, teen pregnancy fell steadily. Safe-sex experts never linked that decline to abstinence education. But when the news went bad, they swiftly identified abstinence programs as the culprit.
But did teen pregnancy actually rise in 2006, as Guttmacher claims? It depends on what you mean by “teen.” For most people, “teen pregnancy” implies pregnancy among high-schoolers, girls under age 18. According to Guttmacher’s own data, the pregnancy rate for 15- to 17-year-old girls barely changed, and the rate for girls 14 and under (the group most affected by abstinence programs) actually dropped.
By contrast, the pregnancy and birth rates for young adult women aged 18 and 19 rose sharply.
The rise in pregnancies and births in this age range is part of a much larger story: the collapse of marriage and explosive growth of out-of-wedlock births in lower income communities.
Between 1997 and 2007, the percentage of births outside of marriage rose from 32.4 percent to 39.7 percent of all births in the U.S. Very few of these non-marital births occurred to minor girls; most were to less-educated young adult women aged 18 to 26. Since non-married moms are less likely to postpone childbearing than those who patiently wait for marriage, it should be no surprise that the ongoing collapse of marriage in low-income communities would lead to a bump in the birth rate among 18- and 19-year-olds.
In the grand scheme of things, the issue of “teen” pregnancy is dwarfed by its much larger cousin, the disintegration of marriage. Marital collapse is a catastrophe for taxpayers and society; the welfare costs alone exceed $250 billion per year. As noted, little of this problem results from teenagers getting pregnant in high school. Of the 1.7 million children born out of wedlock in 2007 only 136,000 (or 7 percent) had mothers under age 18.
“Teen pregnancy” is largely a red herring, hyped by the Left because it supports their agenda of condom promotion and permissive sex ed in the schools. Of course, condom proselytizing is a bogus answer to real social problems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, lack of access to birth control is not a significant factor contributing to non-marital pregnancy among teens or non-teens.
Harvard sociologist Kathryn Edin recently conducted a survey of lower income men and women who had experienced (or, in the case of men, caused) one or more non-marital pregnancies. The survey asked whether the individuals had, ever in their lives, been in a situation where they wanted to use birth control, but could not afford it or could not obtain it. All answered no.
Many laughed at the suggestion that their pregnancies had been caused by a lack of access to contraceptives, noting that contraceptives are abundant and aggressively promoted by schools and clinics in their communities. Of all the non-marital pregnancies reported in the study, not one was caused by lack of availability of contraceptives.
The explosive rise in out-of-wedlock births is due not to a lack of contraceptives, but to a crisis in the relationships of young adult men and women in lower income communities. Couples no longer see the need to be married before having children, and they lack the skills to form stable relationships. Ironically, young non-married parents yearn for eventual stable marriages and healthy families, but they utterly lack the skills and understanding to fulfill their aspirations.
Another irony: One of the greatest sins of abstinence-education programs (in the Left’s view) has been their effort to teach low-income youth that it is best to marry before having children. This affront to political correctness has outraged the Left and has been a principal motivator behind the drive to remove abstinence education from the classroom.
Next year we can expect the out-of-wedlock childbearing rate to top 40 percent. A chilling number, but one which won’t affect the Left’s campaign to promote bogus issues and bogus solutions.
— Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
01/27 11:10 AMShare
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)