Belonging and Rejection

This report by the Family Research Council of Washington DC has developed a measure of our current Social Health that it calls the Index of Belonging and Rejection. The Index of Belonging (45%) and Rejection (55%) gives an instant read on the social health of America by measuring the proportion of American children who have grown up in an intact married family and the rate by which family's disintegrate.

• Only 45% of U.S. teenagers have spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager s birth.
• 55% of teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. The families with a history of rejection include single-parent families, stepfamilies, and children who no longer live with either birth parent but with adoptive or foster parents.

When one thinks of the negative impacts of family breakdown on children's development - I was struck by the stunning simplicity of this interpretation using facts readily available to us for some time.  I recommend it.

Feminists rail against the machine

Reminds me of the local feminists blogs. [I can't link to them as it would lead to attacks - just go to search for "The F Word" Blog to see what I mean.  Here is a pdf printout of the article I was thinking about.]

Eminem - When I'm Gone

Dads in Distress - Australia

I found this a good overview of why men have found men's support groups of value.



The best line - "This stuff eats up men from the inside. It's like getting a glass of poison for your enemy and then drinking it yourself."

Also, some of their other video's here.

Girls with good relationships with their Dad's - marry men like them

Ok, this will not shock people - but I found it very interesting that this (female) psychologist is studying the positive benefits of Fathers to their children emotional, mental and physical development - girls or boys. It is a good start of rebuilding Dad's image in the popular press.