Sunday, June 24, 2012


Children of lesbian couples are NOT affected by lack of male role models, claims controversial new study

This pro-Lesbian study is ludicrous.  The authors have obviously never heard of the Rosenthal (experimenter expectation) effect.  Their close involvement with the people involved over no less than 26 YEARS could only have provided ENORMOUS opportunities to inculcate experimenter expectations into their subjects.  I don't believe it is going too far to say that  the experimenters BRAINWASHED their subjects into giving the "right" answers.  The whole thing is a joke scientifically. 

I can't believe that any of the researchers were psychologists.  That they were feminists would however provide an excellent fit.  Feminist respect for science or indeed evidence of any kind is negligible 


A new paper contradicts claims that children of same-sex parents are prone to experience psychological problems as adults.

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) examined how the lack of a male role model affects the children of lesbian couples.

Using the testimonies of 78 teenagers, researchers in Amsterdam and California determined that neither the presence nor lack of a father figure affected their gender development or their psychological well being.

The findings shed light on a highly debated subject and follow hot on the heels of the University of Texas' widely criticised study published last week.

Led by Henny Bos of the University of Amsterdam and Nanette Gartrell of UCLA's Williams Institute, the NLLFS is the first and only study to have recorded the progress of children from same sex couples since conception.

Dr Gartrell explained to MailOnline: 'Our [study] is an in-depth, longitudinal, prospective (meaning it is happening in real time, not asking questions about events that occurred 30 years ago) study of PLANNED lesbian families (meaning that the mothers were OUT, IDENTIFIED AS LESBIAN before the children we have been studying were born) that began 26 years ago.'

The investigation kicked off in 1986 and has spawned many sub-papers, the most recent of which looked at the 39 girls and 39 boys as they turned 17.

The teenagers were asked whether they had grown up with male role models and if so whether that person was a biological father, a grandfather, a cousin, teacher or even friend.

Of the 78 participants, 38 indicated that they had indeed enjoyed the influence of an important male role model in their lives and of these, roughly half were boys and half were girls.

Given ten adjectives that described typically feminine traits and ten that reflected those we've come to understand as masculine, the teens were asked to rate each word as it pertained to their own personality and character.

The results showed that the presence of a male role model did affect the way a child developed its own gender traits.

Another exercise asked the subjects to rate buzzwords that described feelings such as anxiety, depressed, angry or curious and found again, that whether or not they had a male role model did affect their mental health.

As Dr Gartrell put it to Buzzfeed: 'The adolescents are doing very well.'

Dr Mark Regerus of the University of Texas, however, was sceptical about the Dr Bos and Dr Gartrell's findings and based his criticism on their study candidates' backgrounds, 87 per cent of which are white and about 57 percent middle-class.

He told Buzzfeed that he doubted whether such a small sampling of 'of largely well-educated, mostly-white women' could truthfully represent lesbian families nationwide.

Though the NFFLS team were reluctant to compare the two they did point out the importance of the length of their study and how closely they had managed to follow the parents and children by visiting them at home and recording development with 'with paper, pencil, and tape recorders.'

Dr Regerus' report on the other hand looked at 3,000 children whose parents had at one time or another been involved in a same-sex relationship but who were not necessarily in one now or even identified themselves as gay or lesbian.

In contrast, though half of the parents in the NFFLS study who had started families together in 1986 had since divorced or split up, they were all still co-parenting and providing as stable an environment for the children as possible in such circumstances.

SOURCE





At last, a British politician who's brave enough to tell the truth

There is a vacuum at the heart of British public life where truth and bravery should be. On almost every subject there is a shortage of honesty and courage.

Before the last election no political party thought that voters could be trusted with the truth about the dire state of the public finances and the profound sacrifices necessary to put them right. None of the three party leaders is currently telling the truth about the European Union.

If we want to control immigration or cut red tape we need much more independence from Brussels.

No politician is prepared to say unpopular things about the need for considerably more airport capacity, nuclear energy or toll roads.

None thinks we are ready for tough choices about the kind of investment in infrastructure that is necessary for our economy to flourish once again.

One of the explanations for this is that we live in an age when our leading MPs are all quite young.  During their years on planet Earth they’ve spent little time beyond planet politics.  Few have run businesses, commanded men in uniform or worked with the real people in the real world.

They know how to listen to a focus group or interpret an opinion poll, but then today’s politicians are not leaders but followers —afraid of bold decisions or taking risks.

This didn’t matter when the economy was strong. Now things are going wrong we need a different kind of politician.

One Cabinet minister is increasingly standing apart from the crowd. Yesterday, this newspaper revealed that Education Secretary Michael Gove wants to bring back O-level-style exams.

Although this brave proposal is popular with parents across England, it is not uncontroversial. It takes us back to a system that separated academically gifted children from those with different aptitudes.

But I would argue that the abolition of O-levels in the Eighties was actually an early sign of the culture of dishonesty in our national life.

Britain fell into the grip of a dishonest kindness. We started to hand out good exam results like sweeties — regardless of whether pupils had really learnt anything at school.

We told ourselves that it didn’t matter whether parents spent their time working with their children or just letting them lounge in front of the TV.

We allowed school-leavers to think that a life on benefits was socially acceptable when it’s actually a place where they would easily rot and never fulfil their potential.

The statistics that poured out of the schools system suggested that all was well, however.

Like tractor production data from the old Soviet Union the latest exam grades were always better than last summer’s.

We were told to rejoice but employers and universities saw through the big lie. They complained that the children graduating from Britain’s schools lacked basic literacy and numeracy skills. Britain started sliding down the international league tables that compared the abilities of children in China, Germany, Korea and Britain.

Michael Gove is the first Education Secretary to say that enough is enough. He has said he’s not afraid to preside over a drop in exam grades. They’ll look less good, he concedes, but they’ll be more honest.

The teaching unions that have presided over the ‘All Must Have Prizes’ system will fight him tooth and nail. They want to protect their jobs-for-life regime where bad teachers are rarely sacked but are instead allowed to damage countless pupils’ life chances, year after year.

Gove is undeterred. He’s ready to close down a system where children who can’t manage their times tables are studying for exactly the same exams as those who are on track to study physics at Oxbridge. Meanwhile, the questions in exams have become preposterously silly.

In one science exam 16-year-olds were asked if they should look at the stars through a telescope or a microscope.

Another test asked: ‘What part of a rider’s body does a riding hat protect?’

Like Labour, the Liberal Democrats are said to be worried about the return of a two-tier educational system, where some children get O-levels while others study allegedly inferior CSEs — or whatever the less onerous exams system envisaged by Gove might be called.

This is nonsense. Britain already has an education system that is getting more unequal by the day.

Those children who are doing best have parents who spend hours with them at home, helping them to study and learn.

If they can’t afford a private education these same parents will often move homes or jobs in order to get their children into schools that use honest exam and traditional teaching systems. We all know the stories.

Meanwhile, children who are floundering fall further behind.

The compassionate politician who cares about equality of opportunity won’t accept this status quo, and will point out that the current system is dishonest. It puts children with very different abilities through the same sausage machine and then pretends that those who get ‘F’ or ‘G’ grades have still passed.

Michael Gove wants academically gifted children to be stretched by studying O-levels.

He wants other children to have a more appropriate educational experience, albeit an equally rigorous and demanding one.

This Government’s investment in high-quality apprenticeships and a new generation of technical colleges is early proof that it is serious about restoring the standing of vocational education.

This is a big moment for David Cameron. It is rumoured that he hasn’t yet approved Gove’s plan.

Nick Clegg has already reacted angrily to the plan to restore O-levels. But the truth is that, technically, he has no powers to prevent it. No new laws are needed for Michael Gove to restore honesty to the exam system.

The Prime Minister should tell the Liberal Democrat leader that the Education Secretary will get his full support — and that unless he wants to destroy the Coalition, he should let Mr Gove get on with the great task of rebuilding our education system.

Michael Gove’s performance is leading some Conservatives to ask whether he could be a future party leader.

That talk may be premature but there are still good reasons to take it seriously.

My hunch is that the British people are ready for a principled politician who stands more in the mould of Margaret Thatcher than of Tony Blair.

They may not always agree with truth-telling politicians like Thatcher and Gove but, in challenging times, they respect their conviction — and their authenticity.

If Michael Gove can succeed in the education portfolio, a bigger role awaits him.

For many people he can appear a bit bookish and sometimes a bit confrontational. But as well as an accomplished minister he has a powerful life story. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his Scottish mouth, but was adopted at an early age into a middle-class family.  His father ran a fish processing business in Aberdeen.

Michael Gove recently spoke movingly about the love that his adoptive parents have given him.  ‘I’d never want to search for my natural parents,’ he said, ‘as I would never want to give my mum the impression that her love for me was not enough or not complete.’

He has become a crusader for adoption reform so that children do not languish in care homes but get the same opportunities he enjoyed.

He is also a crusader for Press freedom. He wants to pull back powers from Europe. He supports lower taxes and a tough approach to crime.

One day, some time in the future, this brave politician might well be the kind of leader that the Conservative Party chooses and the nation craves.

SOURCE







Cutting the experts’ apron strings

Jennie Bristow answers your questions on how to be a subversive parent and stand up to ‘supernanny’

"You’ve said that to raise children, we have to see ourselves as adults first. In an age when many adults don’t do that – remaining ‘kidults’ - does this mean they are not raising their children properly?"

There is a genuine problem with the extent to which adult authority can become weakened through successive generations, and I do think we saw a bit of that in last year’s riots. Parents feel de-authorised by a culture that dictates how they should use persuasion rather than discipline to attempt to control their children, and makes them doubt every spontaneous action. In addition, the message that parents aren’t up to the job is transmitted directly to children via schools and popular culture, so this just fuels the sense of infantilisation.

However, growing up and rising to the occasion aren’t rocket science; people have been doing this throughout history. So it’s a real mistake to say that society should deal with the problem of the ‘kidult’ by adapting to it, through treating parents even more like children (and thus infantilising them further). Far better to recognise the role that official intervention has played in creating this problem, and to start to cut the apron strings…

SOURCE






More of that wonderful British multiculturalism

Violent refugee was jailed for at least 26 years today for stabbing his girlfriend 57 times

Somalian Zakaria Mohamed, 29, was on probation when he killed television recruitment consultant Amina Adan, 32.

He had assaulted her twice before during their year-long relationship, but magistrates put off sentencing him so he could take part in a domestic abuse programme.  But she took him back and he killed her with three knives and shards of glass from a broken mirror before the counselling sessions were implemented, the Old Bailey heard.

Judge Anthony Morris said he did not know why the sessions were not prioritised before Mohamed served an unpaid work element of a community order.  Mohamed pleaded guilty to murdering Miss Adan on November 6, last year, at the home they shared in Walworth, south London.

After a row, drunken Mohamed went home, dragged her down the stairs by the hair, beat her unconscious, kicked and stamped on her and began to stab her.

After police arrived, Mohamed threatened to kill them and had to be subdued with a Taser gun.

Miss Adan, who was brought up in Kenya, was described as being hard working and popular at the Al Jazeera news network where she worked in human resources.

Judge Morris told Mohamed: 'You are a controlling and domineering man and Amina was frightened of you and you sought to control her with violence.  'I am satisfied this was a punishment for her standing up to you.  'This was a savage, brutal, sustained and premeditated attack in which you clearly intended to kill.  'It was clearly a totally senseless killing in which you deprived a hardworking young woman of her life.'

Mohamed had been in breach of a community order and a deferred sentence at the time.

He came to the UK in 2002 on a forged Dutch passport. His request for asylum was turned down but he was given indefinite leave to remain in 2007 under an amnesty.

In April 2011, he pleaded guilty to battery on Miss Adan and was placed on a community order which included a domestic abuse programme.  In May, 2011, he punched Miss Adan in the stomach and went on the run before being arrested in July.  In September, he was convicted of the assault and on October 20, of breaching the order.

On October 20, Camberwell Green magistrates deferred a likely prison sentence until January 20 this year, so he could take part in the programme.

Judge Morris said he was surprised the programme had not been implemented first.  He said: 'It would be more important that they should have prioritised the domestic violence programme.

'This was not something the probation service were not aware of because he committed another offence, and it became even more urgent he should embark on this programme.  'Unfortunately, for reasons I do not fully understand, that programme had not been started fully.'

Prosecutor Timothy Carey told the judge the Ministry of Justice would be holding a review into the case because the murder took place while Mohamed was subject to probation.

Miss Adan's sister, Hanan, said in a statement: 'We will probably never know why he could possibly act in this way to another human being. It is something we will never forgive or forget.'

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCHAUSTRALIAN POLITICSDISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site  here.

***************************




No comments: