Wednesday, October 07, 2015



Study finds that daughters benefit when moms work (?)

A feminist conclusion and an improbable one so I decided to look into it.  I had a pretty good idea of what would be wrong with the finding but I wanted to be sure. I learned that the finding was from a working paper which had an inoperative link to it.  So it certainly has not been peer reviewed and may have already been taken down in response to criticism.  Not encouraging!

If ever it resurfaces, I expect to find social class variables, including IQ, to have been very poorly controlled for, if at all.  So it could be (for instance) that the small effect observed --

"daughters of employed mothers are 4.5% more likely to be employed themselves than are the daughters of stay-at-home mothers"

-- was due to smarter women being more likely to be in the workforce.  And smarter women pass that IQ on to their daughters genetically, who also find workforce access attractive.  The effect could have been an IQ effect only, in other words, with mother's occupation as such being epiphenomenal (irrelevant).

I am used to crap research like that.  It is all too common when Leftist politics are involved.  I have had many critiques published in the academic journals about politically convenient but artifactual findings



Harvard professor Kathleen McGinn believes that many working mothers feel more guilt than necessary. As the leader of a study released this May from Harvard Business School’s new Gender Initiative, she found that daughters of working mothers are more likely to be employed, work more hours, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers stayed home full time. The study, which examined data from 24 countries and 20,000 people, also found that women whose mothers worked are more likely to hold supervisory positions. For men, having a working mother didn’t seem to affect their professional fortunes, the researchers found, but those whose mothers worked do spend more hours each week caring for family members.

McGinn says working moms should feel good about the models they’re setting for their children. “For a long time we’ve been told that being home is the best thing for our kids,” she says. But that may not actually be the case. “Working moms affect their children’s gender attitudes, their beliefs about what is ‘right’ and ‘normal’ for women. They learn that it’s reasonable for women to work and for men to be involved at home.” They also do as well, if not better, at school, both in terms of academic achievement and behavior, as kids whose mothers stay home, McGinn says, citing a 2010 study published in Psychological Bulletin by Rachel G. Lucas-Thompson.

Of course, many parents have no choice but to work — the United States is the only industrialized country that does not mandate paid maternity leave — and for many mothers there is no alternative to earning a living. But to talk to local women in families where one parent could afford to stay home is to see a world where women continue to wrestle with their choices.

Working and raising kids is inevitably a juggling act. “I feel like I’m treading water a lot of the time,” says Megan Pesce, an Acton mother of two boys, ages 8 and 11, and an interior designer. “It can be overwhelming to wear both hats. I sometimes wonder if am I doing well enough in both jobs, or just average.” But Pesce, 41, always knew she wanted to have a career.

Pesce’s mother worked the night shift as a nurse when she and her two younger brothers were growing up. “My mom was a single mother who worked out of necessity. She got her master’s degree and became a forensic nurse,” says Pesce. “She helped me realize how valuable I can be. I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to do this without her example.”

Pesce does billing at night and often has client appointments in the evenings; her husband, an entrepreneur, is instrumental in keeping the household running. “I want to be around my kids as much as possible,” she says. “I go to their sports practices and games. They understand that I work, but they know that family is very important.”

A mother who chooses to stay home can face a different struggle: the challenge of raising a family on one income. Yet for Cambridge mother Kerry McDonald, it’s a sacrifice worth making. McDonald, 38, ran a successful corporate training consulting company. “Throughout my pregnancy, I could not have imagined that I wouldn’t go back to work. My work was my baby,” she recalls. “I thought I’d take a few months off. Then I found myself feeding my daughter on demand, wearing her in a sling, being responsive to her cries, and I realized that I wanted to be there to meet all of her needs.”

McGinn notes that amid all the change in the modern workplace, parents have found ways to remain present. “The number of hours parents spend with their children has remained steady since the 1960s. . . . Back then mothers weren’t sitting around playing blocks with their kids all day. They were doing everything around the house and the kids were off outside,” she says.

That may mean that, despite having parents who may struggle to be everywhere at once, kids themselves are getting just as much attention. “The total number of hours parents spend with kids now includes fathers, who are more involved than ever,” McGinn says. “And when working mothers are with their children, their time together is more focused.”

SOURCE (Some anecdotes omitted)






Obama Justice Department Sues Town for Nixing Rezoning Plan to Build Islamic Temple

In its latest effort to protect Muslim rights in the United States the Obama Justice Department is suing an Illinois town for denying a rezoning application to convert an office building into an Islamic temple.

Failing to approve plans for the Islamic worship center violates a 2000 law known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit filed this week in federal court. The accused are lawmakers in Des Plaines, a Chicago suburb with a population of about 60,000. In 2013 the Des Plaines City Council voted 5-3 to reject a rezoning request made by the American Islamic Center (AIC) to make a vacant office building in a manufacturing zone to an institutional zone that would allow a worship center.

The plan called for 3,661 square feet of worship space that would be used for prayer services on Fridays and Sundays as well as nightly prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast and commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. The new temple would also be used for youth group events and other gatherings, according the rezoning application. In nixing the plan, Des Plaines aldermen expressed concern about the loss of tax revenue since religious institutions are nonprofits that don't pay taxes. They also cited traffic and safety issues for voting against the project.

In its lawsuit the DOJ dismisses those issues and claims that the city's "treatment and denial of AICs rezoning requests constitutes the imposition or implementation of a land use regulation that imposes a substantial burden on AICs religious exercise." Denying a city zoning change to accommodate a Muslim temple also discriminates against the Islamic group on the basis of religion, according to the feds. Attorney General Loretta Lynch wants the court to issue an order forcing Des Plaines to let AIC construct its worship center in the city.

"The ability to establish a place for collective worship is a fundamental protection of the First Amendment and our civil rights laws," said Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ's bloated civil rights division, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "The Justice Department will remain vigilant in its mission to ensure that all religious groups enjoy the right to practice their faiths freely." The federal prosecutor handling the case in Illinois said "the freedom to practice the religion of one's choosing is a precious right in our country" and the DOJ will continue to "enforce the laws that protect this important right."

The DOJ's enthusiasm for protecting Muslim rights is in a class of its own, however. Back in 2010 Obama's first Attorney General, Eric Holder, personally reassured Muslims of DOJ protection during an address at a San Francisco-based organization (Muslim Advocates) that urges members not to cooperate in federal terrorism investigations. It was a first for the nation's top federal prosecutor to publicly condone illegal behavior. A few years later the DOJ warnedagainst using social media to spread information considered inflammatory against Muslims and threatened that it could constitute a violation of civil rights.

One of the biggest and most unbelievable moves by the DOJ came in 2012 when it issued a broad order changing the way the U.S. government trains federal agents to combat terrorism and violent extremism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) actually destroyed instructional material that characterized Muslims as prone to violence or terrorism and hundreds of pages from the 9/11 attacks were purged because they were considered offensive to Muslims under the new initiative. In 2013 Judicial Watch published an in-depth report documenting and analyzing Islamist active measures and influence operations targeting anti-terrorism training in the U.S.

SOURCE






Obama at LGBT Fundraiser: Ban ‘Conversion Therapy’ for Transgender Minors

Speaking Sunday at the Democratic National Committee’s “LGBT Gala,” a fundraiser held in New York City, President Barack Obama called for legally prohibiting “conversion therapy” that aims to steer minors away from being transgender.

“We’ve come a long way in changing hearts and minds so that trans men and women can be who they are--not just on magazine covers, but in workplaces and schools and communities,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to a transcript posted by the White House.

“And to build on that progress, we should support efforts to ban so-called ‘conversion therapy’ for minors,” Obama said. "So, we've got to keep striving every day to treat each other the way I believe God sees us, as equal in His eyes."

Obama was introduced at the gala by James Obergefell. Obergefell was one of the plaintiffs who sued the state of Ohio because it did not permit two people of the same-sex to “marry.” His name is now on the Supreme Court opinion—Obergefell v. Hodges—in which five members of the court declared that a right to same-sex marriage was guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868.

SOURCE





Theresa May: Mass immigration making 'cohesive society' impossible

Mass immigration is forcing thousands of British people out of jobs and is making it “impossible” to build a “cohesive society”, Theresa May will say.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the Home Secretary will say that there is “is no case in the national interest for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade”.

Mrs May, considered a potential successor to David Cameron as Tory leader, will warn that current levels of migration into the UK are unsustainable as she calls for a system “that allows us to control who comes to our country”.

Managing the consequences of immigration “comes at a high price” and means building new homes and creating school places for foreigners, Mrs May will say.

And she will attack the “open-borders liberal left” as she reaffirms the Government’s bid to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

Net migration – the difference between those arriving and those emigrating – rose by 94,000 last year to 330,000, breaking the record set under the last Labour government.

The Government has faced heavy criticism for failing to reach the Government’s target of getting net migration down below 100,000.

“Even if we could manage all the consequences of mass immigration, Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year. Of course, immigrants fill skills shortages and it’s right that we should try to attract the best talent in the world, but not every person coming to Britain right now is a skilled electrician, engineer or doctor"
Theresa May

Mr Cameron wants to use his renegotiation with the European Union ahead of the in-out referendum to reduce the “pull factors” to migrants.

Already the Governent has announced that new migrants from the EU will be banned from claiming benefits in the UK for four years.

Mrs May's intervention will be seen as a sign that the government is preparing further policy aimed at addressing public concern over rising migration.

In a significant hardening of the Government’s rhetoric, Mrs May will warns that “not all of the consequences” of mass migration “can be managed”.

“When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society,” Mrs May will say. “It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether.”

The Home Secretary will add: “Now I know there are some people who say, yes there are costs of immigration, but the answer is to manage the consequences not reduce the numbers. But not all of the consequences can be managed, and doing so for many of them comes at a high price.

“We need to build 210,000 new homes every year to deal with rising demand. We need to find 900,000 new school places by 2024. And there are thousands of people who have been forced out of the labour market, still unable to find a job.”

She will cite the migrant crisis engulfing continental Europe and will say that people “conflate refugees in desperate need of help with economic migrants who simply want to live in a more prosperous society”.

“Their desire for a better life is perfectly understandable, but their circumstances are not nearly the same as those of the people fleeing their homelands in fear of their lives,” she will say.

“There are millions of people in poorer countries who would love to live in Britain, and there is a limit to the amount of immigration any country can and should take. While we must fulfil our moral duty to help people in desperate need, we must also have an immigration system that allows us to control who comes to our country.”

In a controversial move, the Home Secretary will say that the “net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero”.

She will say: “Even if we could manage all the consequences of mass immigration, Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year. Of course, immigrants fill skills shortages and it’s right that we should try to attract the best talent in the world, but not every person coming to Britain right now is a skilled electrician, engineer or doctor.

“The evidence – from the OECD, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and many academics – shows that while there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero. So there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade.”

Map: Where are the immigrants in Britain?

The Office for National Statistics in August said that 636,000 migrants came to live in Britain in the 12 months to the end of March, a year-on-year rise of 84,000, while 307,000 emigrated.

The surge was driven by EU citizens attracted by Britain’s stronger economic recovery, as many other European economies flounder.

A record 269,000 EU citizens arriving in Britain, a rise of a 56,000, or a quarter, on the previous 12 months.

Separate figures showed the number of foreign-born people in Britain has topped eight million for the first time.

SOURCE

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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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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