Thursday, March 02, 2006

HEY! FATHERS MATTER AFTER ALL

The study reported below must have the feminists grinding their teeth. Fancy fathers being good even for DAUGHTERS! I myself have always said (I've said it here) that "Daddy's Girl" is one of the most beautiful human relationships so I am glad to see that the facts bear out that judgment. I have always greatly regretted that I did not have a daughter but I had a very good relationship with a beautiful little stepdaughter so I do not feel totally deprived. She is now a radiant and happily married young woman

Girls who have good relationships with their fathers tend to wait longer to have their first sexual intercourse experience, according to a new study by a University of Texas at Austin sociologist. In a study published in this month's Journal of Family Issues, Dr. Mark Regnerus reports that girls who claimed to have very low quality relationships with their fathers were nearly twice as likely to lose their virginity over the course of a year than girls who reported very high quality father-daughter relationships. No similar correlation was found between girls and their mothers, or between boys and either parent.

"This shows us that it is not enough for dads to be merely present," says Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. "They need to be active in their daughters' lives. There are hints here that girls who have poor relationships with their dads tend to seek attention from other males at earlier ages and often this will involve a sexual relationship."

Regnerus reviewed data gathered from about 10,000 seventh through 12th grade students living in two-parent households. The data came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a study designed to analyze the causes of health-related behaviors in teenagers. While the parent-child relationship did not have a strong effect on boys, the number of an adolescent's romantic partners did affect the probability of both sexes having intercourse for the first time. "For each additional partner reported, the odds of a boy losing his virginity increase by 88 percent," notes Regnerus.

The biggest shift for girls was between those who weren't actively dating and those who had one dating partner. "For girls, it's not dating around that adds much risk, but whether they date at all," says Regnerus.

The study also showed that anticipation of guilt curbed the likelihood of both boys and girls having sex for the first time. Two other factors that delayed girls' sexual activity were religious service attendance and their mothers' education level. Girls whose mothers had college degrees were 64 percent less likely to lose their virginity compared to girls whose mothers did not. Researchers have previously studied the sexual behavior of adolescents who come from broken homes or live with stepparents, but this study is unique in that it examines teenagers whose biological parents are still together.



AWKWARD ABORTION FINDINGS

Attempts made to suppress politically incorrect findings

A study in New Zealand that tracked approximately 500 women from birth to 25 years of age has confirmed that young women who have abortions subsequently experience elevated rates of suicidal behaviors, depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and other mental problems. Most significantly, the researchers--led by Professor David M. Fergusson, who is the director of the longitudinal Christchurch Health and Development Study--found that the higher rate of subsequent mental problems could not be explained by any pre-pregnancy differences in mental health, which had been regularly evaluated over the course of the 25- year study.

According to Fergusson, the researchers had undertaken the study anticipating that they would be able to confirm the view that any problems found after abortion would be traceable to mental health problems that had existed before the abortion. At first glance, it appeared that their data would confirm this hypothesis. The data showed that women who became pregnant before age 25 were more likely to have experienced family dysfunction and adjustment problems, were more likely to have left home at a young age, and were more likely to have entered a cohabiting relationship. However, when these and many other factors were taken into account, the findings showed that women who had abortions were still significantly more likely to experience mental health problems. Thus, the data contradicted the hypothesis that prior mental illness or other "pre-disposing" factors could explain the differences. "We know what people were like before they became pregnant," Fergusson told The New Zealand Herald. "We take into account their social background, education, ethnicity, previous mental health, exposure to sexual abuse, and a whole mass of factors."

The data persistently pointed toward the politically unwelcome conclusion that abortion may itself be the cause of subsequent mental health problems. So Fergusson presented his results to New Zealand's Abortion Supervisory Committee, which is charged with ensuring that abortions in that country are conducted in accordance with all the legal requirements. According to The New Zealand Herald, the committee told Fergusson that it would be "undesirable to publish the results in their 'unclarified' state."

Despite his own pro-choice political beliefs, Fergusson responded to the committee with a letter stating that it would be "scientifically irresponsible" to suppress the findings simply because they touched on an explosive political issue. In an interview about the findings with an Australian radio host, Fergusson stated: "I remain pro-choice. I am not religious. I am an atheist and a rationalist. The findings did surprise me, but the results appear to be very robust because they persist across a series of disorders and a series of ages. . . . Abortion is a traumatic life event; that is, it involves loss, it involves grief, it involves difficulties. And the trauma may, in fact, predispose people to having mental illness."

The research team of the Christchurch Health and Development Study is used to having its studies on health and human development accepted by the top medical journals on first submission. After all, the collection of data from birth to adulthood of 1,265 children born in Christchurch is one of the most long-running and valuable longitudinal studies in the world. But this study was the first from the experienced research team that touched on the contentious issue of abortion. Ferguson said the team "went to four journals, which is very unusual for us -- we normally get accepted the first time." Finally, the fourth journal accepted the study for publication.

Although he still holds a pro-choice view, Fergusson believes women and doctors should not blindly accept the unsupported claim that abortion is generally harmless or beneficial to women. He appears particularly upset by the false assurances of abortion's safety given by the American Psychological Association (APA). In a 2005 statement, the APA claimed that "well-designed studies" have found that "the risk of psychological harm is low." In the discussion of their results, Fergusson and his team note that the APA's position paper ignored many key studies showing evidence of abortion's harm and looked only at a selective sample of studies that have serious methodological flaws.

Fergusson told reporters that "it verges on scandalous that a surgical procedure that is performed on over one in 10 women has been so poorly researched and evaluated, given the debates about the psychological consequences of abortion." Following Fergusson's complaints about the selective and misleading nature of the 2005 APA statement, the APA removed the page from their Internet site. The statement can still be found through a web archive service, however.

The reaction to the publication of the Christchurch study is heating up the political debate in the United States. The study was introduced into the official record at the senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Also, a U.S. congressional subcommittee chaired by Representative Mark Souder (R-IN) has asked the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to report on what efforts the NIH is undertaking to confirm or refute Fergusson's findings.

The impact of the study in other countries may be even more profound. According to The New Zealand Herald, the Christchurch study may require doctors in New Zealand to certify far fewer abortions. Approximately 98 percent of abortions in New Zealand are done under a provision in the law that only allows abortion when "the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the life, or to the physical or mental health, of the woman or girl."

Doctors performing abortions in Great Britain face a similar legal problem. Indeed, the requirement to justify an abortion is even higher in British law. Doctors there are only supposed to perform abortions when the risks of physical or psychological injury from allowing the pregnancy to continue are "greater than if the pregnancy was terminated."

According to researcher Dr. David Reardon, who has published more than a dozen studies investigating abortion's impact on women, Fergusson's study reinforces a growing body of literature showing that doctors in New Zealand, Britain and elsewhere face legal and ethical obligations to discourage or refuse contraindicated abortions....

Fergusson also believes that the same rules that apply to other medical treatments should apply to abortion. "If we were talking about an antibiotic or an asthma risk, and someone reported adverse reactions, people would be advocating further research to evaluate risk," he said in the New Zealand Herald. "I can see no good reason why the same rules don't apply to abortion."

More here



When Wives Cheat, It's OK (??)

According to the an article You Won't Believe How Many Wives Cheat, "The modern American or European woman is just as likely to cheat on her husband as he is to cheat on her." Excerpt:

"Those are the eyebrow-raising findings of a team of German researchers from the Hamburg-based GEWIS Institute for Social Research. Reuters reports that in a survey of 1,427 men and women between the ages of 25 and 35, fully 53 percent of women said they had been unfaithful to their partner, compared with 59 percent of men.

"Unlike most men, the reason women have affairs is primarily non-sexual. While sex is no doubt the outcome, what women are seeking when they first stray from their husbands is reassurance and understanding. In other words, they are looking for emotional intimacy...

"Some women are serial cheaters. Seventeen percent of women surveyed said they had cheated two or three times, compared with 22 percent of men. And get this: Eight percent of the women said they had cheated four or five times in the course of their marriage, but only 4 percent of men admitted to this."


Note the excuse for bad female behavior-- "the reason women have affairs is primarily non-sexual...women [seek] reassurance and understanding. In other words, they are looking for emotional intimacy..." Why is that particular need or motivation sufficient to excuse anything? All behaviour is motivated. Why is one motive better than another? In such cases, shouldn't it be the behaviour that counts rather than the motive? It is VERY easy to lie about motives. And women are NEVER motivated by sexual attaction, of course (If you believe that you would believe anything).

Update:

A good comment from a reader:

"You mentioned the use of the 'non-sexual' argument to explain female infidelity versus the explanation applied to male infidelity. It sounds very similar to the 'reasons' applied to men and women who have foreign partners: If a white Australian male has an Asian partner, or (worse) if he seeks one from overseas, it is common for him to be portrayed as a sleaze and her as a 'mail order bride'. Yet if a white Australian female has a foreign partner or is seeking one, she is seen as having an exotic affair as she is 'above' the boring fare offered at home!!

Also, it is never noted that if men are really such lotharios as they are often portrayed to be (and whether it is biologically or socially driven is irrelevant to the argument), then those men who do remain faithful must be making a bigger sacrifice and a bigger commitment to keeping their relationship than their apparently and comparatively less tempted partners. I suspect this would be a politically incorrect argument!"

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