The Popeye Moment On Single Parent Families - Road to the Middle Class

AND WHILE WE are at it, let’s get serious about single-parent families. As the climate enthusiasts like to say, the science is in. Single-parent families are a very bad idea. So why don’t CNN and Fox News run single-parent horror stories 24-7? They could, you know, without breaking a sweat. And I’ll bet there are enough single-parent horror stories out there that they could change the story every hour if they had the budget for it.

Now that would be something.

Janice Shaw, director and senior fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the policy institute of Concerned Women for America, thinks that, when it comes to single parents, it is time we had a Popeye Moment,” the point in a Popeye cartoon where Popeye says: "I've had all I can stand. I can't stands no more."

Are we there yet on single-parent families? Why not? It’s not just a moral question, or, if you prefer a question of rational ethics. It’s a safety question.

Children are much safer living with their married biological parents than any other arrangement.

Sorry, that’s not quite true. Adopted children living with their married adoptive parents are even safer than children living with their natural married parents.

Which is an argument, if we needed one, for getting tough on non-performing single parents. If you can’t get your act together, fast, Ms. Single Mom, then we are going to put your kid up for adoption. Fast.

That’s another subject on which the science is in. The worst thing you can do to a child is to have her hanging around in foster families while her single parent leisurely gets her life together.

A kid needs a permanent home. Fast.

You see, when a single mom doesn’t get her act together, fast, it shows that she just doesn’t care about kids.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

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