Why ARE so many midlife women having children alone? In the past five years Britain’s seen a boom in solo motherhood

For a child to grow up with neither a father nor brothers and sisters is bound to be upsetting to the child at some stage and the deprivation is real.  A father and siblings can contribute a lot to a child's mental and emotional development.

So why the solo mothers?  The core reason is that some women fail to find a male partner.  Why that failure? Circumstances will vary but very often there will be a mismatch between what the women want and what is available.

So how come the unrealistic expectations?  A large part of the blame must lie with feminist attacks on men.  Women are likely to see something in whatever is attacked in men and want to avoid it.  That could mean avoiding normal men.

And then on top of that feminists tell women that they can have it all. As many women have found, they cannot. But some women  are nonetheless reinforced in demanding "all".  It is very unwise to expect any approach to "all" but the bombardment of feminist talk from the media and elsewhere about it must have an effect.


Little Olivia Coy loves drawing pictures of her family. There’s Mummy, sister Isobel and her grandparents, all with their stick arms and triangular bodies. There isn’t a daddy in the picture.

Even though she understands what one is, Olivia knows some families, like hers, don’t have one. She knows that ‘a nice man had helped Mummy’ make her, and that’s good enough for her . . . for now. This is her family, and she’s happy with it.

Olivia is a sperm donor baby. Her mother Jennifer wasn’t prepared to let the absence of a partner stand in her way of becoming a mother and decided to go it alone.

Moral or ethical concerns aside, no one can deny such families are a growing trend. According to NHS figures, in 2007, there were only 351 treatment cycles in Britain for single women. The latest statistics show this has risen to 1,290 — accounting for about 3 per cent of all cycles. When the women who were inseminated with donor sperm but did not have full in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are added, 2,279 women tried to start a family on their own in 2017. And this isn’t the full picture, with plenty more procedures being carried out privately.

Last month the singer Cheryl announced she would use a sperm donor to have her next child. The reality TV judge who has a son — Bear, who turns three next month — with former One Direction band member Liam Payne, said she feels she is running out of time to find a partner and plans to have ‘more than one’ child through fertility treatment.

She isn’t the only celebrity to consider going it alone either. In October, singer Natalie Imbruglia, 45, announced the birth of son Max. She had already posted on Instagram in July that she was expecting ‘with the help of IVF and a sperm donor’.

Yet not everyone thinks single women should be pursuing fertility treatment. Indeed, nine years ago documents were leaked revealing health chiefs for South London had created a policy to only fund fertility treatments for couples ‘living in a stable relationship’ because single women having children would ‘place a greater burden on society’.

The statement caused uproar — but it’s a conviction many NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) hold.

According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, all women under 40 should be offered three cycles of IVF treatment. But at a local level, it is individual CCGs who make the final decision about who is eligible for NHS-funded IVF in their local area.

Yet for those single women with enough cash, there is always hope. It has led to the creation of a fertility industry worth £320 million, offering to help single women become mothers — for the right price.

Increasing numbers are freezing their eggs while they pursue careers or look for Mr Right.

Treatment cycles with frozen eggs rose from 410 in 2012 to 1,462 in 2017. Now the Department of Health and Social Care is considering whether to allow them to store eggs for longer; currently, the cut-off point is ten years.

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Moving to a new state and finding a job could soon be a lot easier

Moving homes is stressful enough, but millions of people face another burden when moving to a new state: having to acquire a new, costly license just to keep working in the same job.

Last year, Arizona made it easier to move there by passing legislation to recognize occupational licenses from other states. This means that workers in licensed industries, such as teaching, nursing, and cosmetology, can now move to Arizona and continue their careers without having to go through the burdensome and often expensive process of obtaining a new license. Their old license moves with them.

The Arizona model, known as “universal recognition,” is now catching on like wildfire in state capitals across the country. It could lead to a sweeping wave of occupational licensing reform — all that’s needed is for more lawmakers to embrace this common-sense reform.

Occupational licensing is the practice by which governments, predominantly at the state and local level, require workers to obtain a government license or permit to engage in a certain profession. Licensing laws are often justified on the grounds of protecting public health and safety, with defenders evoking images of unlicensed amateurs conducting brain surgery.

But the reality is that licensing requirements have spread far beyond occupations where they can make sense, such as licenses for doctors and engineers, and now apply in fields as innocuous as floristry and blow-drying hair. Today, 1 in 4 jobs requires a license, up from 1 in 20 in the 1950s.

Even when licensing serves to protect public health or safety, it has become harder for the most economically disadvantaged among us to acquire a license due to the time, fees, and education necessary to acquire one. The result is that millions of would-be workers are locked out of the workforce because they lack the means to obtain a license. Consumers also suffer, because restricting the number of workers in an occupation limits competition, which in turn raises prices.

Worse yet, licensing often doesn’t even improve safety standards as supporters claim.

For example, just consider the rampant health problems in nail salons, a heavily licensed industry whose professionals have to complete hundreds of hours of training. This may be due in part to the fact that much of the mandatory training required to obtain a license in many fields is rarely even related to health or safety issues.

Licensing laws also restrict mobility.

Research has shown that interstate migration rates for individuals to states with licensing exams are more than 30% lower than states without such a requirement. Impinging on mobility is particularly harmful, as the ability to move for work has traditionally been associated with higher levels of income growth.

Given the growing political consensus against excessive occupational licensing (both the Trump and Obama administrations have voiced concerns over the practice), policymakers nationwide have started to ramp up efforts to overhaul licensing regimes. At first, much of the focus was on repealing or reducing individual licensing burdens in specific industries. Recently, additional attention has been given to the plight of military spouses who often must cross state lines, and therefore apply for a new license, as a result of their significant other’s military career requiring frequent moves.

While these discrete reforms are vital, Arizona’s universal recognition reform is the most comprehensive occupational licensing reciprocity model to date.

The idea has caught on: Pennsylvania followed suit with similar legislation last year, and so far in 2020, universal recognition bills are being pursued in Virginia, West Virginia, California, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, New Hampshire, Indiana, and New Jersey. If these are enacted and similar laws continue popping up around the country, as is likely, movement between states could become a lot easier for millions of people.

To be sure, there is plenty of room for reforming and ridding ourselves of unnecessary licensing regulations beyond just granting universal recognition. The ideal fix for most licensing laws is to get rid of them altogether, or to use less-burdensome regulatory alternatives such as private certification or inspection regimes.

But in the meantime, laws that streamline the ability to move beyond state lines without dropping out of the workforce should be embraced by policymakers across the ideological spectrum. Greater workforce freedom is knocking at the door — politicians just need to heed the call.

SOURCE 





‘We’ve been branded “hateful” for defending women’s rights’

Lucy Masoud on the British Labour party’s dangerous capitulation to trans ideology

Three of the four candidates for the Labour leadership have signed a controversial pledge card drawn up by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights (LCTR). Some of the 12 pledges include ‘accepting’ that ‘that trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary’ and that ‘there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights’. The pledge card also calls on Labour to expel ‘transphobic’ members from the party and for candidates to ‘fight against’ what it calls ‘hate groups’ such as Woman’s Place UK and LGB Alliance – groups which were established to defend women’s and lesbians’ rights against an increasingly authoritarian transgender movement. Lucy Masoud is a former firefighter and trade unionist, who has spoken at Woman’s Place UK meetings. spiked caught up with her to find out more.

spiked: What did you make of the LCTR pledge?

Lucy Masoud: When I first saw it, I assumed it had been put together by overactive teenagers. But then Angela Rayner signed it and Rebecca Long-Bailey signed it, and more and more started to sign it. I am utterly astounded. Firstly with the tone and the aggression of the statements. It shows no attempt to understand the view of females in this debate and where we are coming from.

Secondly, I was astounded that it name-checked Woman’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance as ‘hate groups’. To suggest that those involved in those groups should be expelled is nothing short of ludicrous. We are talking about people like Kiri Tunks and Ruth Serwotka. These are giants of the trade-union movement. These are people who have been fighting for the socialist cause their whole adult lives. They have dedicated their lives to fighting for LGBT rights, for people of colour, for women, and for the working class. And for them to be threatened with expulsion! The people making those threats are not fit to lick their boots.

Calling us ‘transphobic’ or a ‘hate group’ completely misses the point of the debate and fails to recognise what our argument is. We are not anti-trans. We fight for the rights of trans people. But we are also fighting for the rights of females. And the whole reason Woman’s Place UK was founded was to protect the single-sex exemption in the Equalities Act. We are called a ‘hate group’ simply for trying to protect female-only spaces, for saying that we want domestic violence centres, refugee centres and centres for the victims of sexual violence to remain female-only. It shows those people’s political naivety and downright dishonesty.

The labour movement has a long and proud history of people with different ideas, different opinions, being able to hash those ideas out and come to some kind of an agreement. And if you don’t come to an agreement, that’s fine, we carry on. But for us to be singled out in this way is unbelievable.

spiked: One of the pledges calls for Labour leadership candidates to accept that there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights. Is there a conflict?

Masoud: There is absolutely a conflict when you have this mantra of ‘trans women are women’ being forced down your throat. We should be having a conversation. I do not believe trans women are women because I believe in biology. Some people do believe that and we should be able to have that conversation. To say there is no conflict between trans rights and female rights, is basically saying that trans women and females are the same. And they are not.

Being trans doesn’t mean what it used to mean five years ago. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation because back then being trans meant ‘transsexual’. Now trans is an umbrella term. It basically covers anyone who feels that they are a woman. They could even present as a man and make no attempt to be a female. They could have all the benefits of being male, but if they feel like a woman, that apparently makes them a woman.

The LCTR pledge calls for such people to be accepted legally as women and to be allowed into female-only spaces, which is of course is very concerning for women like myself. I don’t want to have to go into certain areas that are female-only and be faced with a male-bodied individual.

From my own personal experience of working on a fire station for 12 years, females fought tooth and nail to get female living facilities on fire stations. For decades we didn’t have them. We had to share our dormitories and showers with men. Many women left the job because they didn’t feel comfortable getting changed with men or sleeping in the dormitories with men. There was also a culture there where women felt ostracised, even bullied sometimes. Female firefighters would often end up sleeping in their cars or getting changed in offices, and ultimately leaving the job.

Eventually, we managed to secure female-only facilities on every fire station in London. And that’s essential. They need this when they’ve been out on a big job and they come back and they need a shower, or it’s a night shift and they are sleeping in dormitories. Women need to have their own space. And now that’s being threatened because anyone who self-identifies as a female would be able to have access to those spaces.

Now we’re also allowing male-bodied individuals to use the female-only changing space at the Hampstead Heath swimming ponds. Women are using the shower at six o’clock in the morning, and they’re having to stand next to people with penises. Muslim women who have joined a female-only gym are not going to use those gyms anymore because they can’t be sure that at any given time someone male isn’t going to walk into the changing room. People can no longer be sure that their children, when they are getting changed or in a shower area, aren’t going to be presented with a male-bodied individual.

So there is a massive conflict. A frank, honest and open discussion needs to be had because there has to be a compromise out there. But Labour is not even allowing us to have that discussion. It is saying that if you even step out of the echo-chamber view that trans women are women, or if you think that female rights need to be protected and not include men, then we will be expelled from the party that we have campaigned for our whole adult lives.

spiked: Is there a misogynistic element in the attacks on trans-critical feminists?

Masoud: For sure. This argument isn’t coming from trans men, it is mostly from trans women and their supporters, though many trans women agree with us too, like Debbie Hayton and Kristina Harrison.

It is generally not transsexuals but usually people under this ridiculous umbrella term of trans who are attacking us. It is those who think anyone who is non-binary, genderfluid, pansexual or whatever could be deemed to be a woman even if they are clearly a male, present as male and have male genitalia. They are quite a small minority but they have a lot of supporters. And they are the ones hijacking this agenda.

And it is very misogynistic. Women are going to be impacted by this. But we are being completely shouted down. We are being told that they know better than us and that our rights aren’t as important. If you listen to us, we can tell you why trans rights and women’s rights conflict. We can tell you that a female who’s been the victim of sexual abuse and rape may not want to share a centre for sexual violence with someone who is male-bodied, and that little children or teenagers may not want to share shower space with a full-bodied male.

As a lesbian, I do not want to include trans women in my dating circle because I am attracted to females. That’s what makes me a lesbian. And I should not have to be bullied and forced to accept trans women into my dating circle. But if I don’t, I’m cast as transphobic.

It’s funny because it is also homophobia. We are basically being told that there’s no such thing as same-sex attraction. We are being told that gender identity is what matters and we shouldn’t discriminate based on sex. But that is what makes me a lesbian. I discriminate against men. I do not have sex with them. But now I’m being told that is not okay anymore and my sexual preferences should not be based on sex. To me, that is pure homophobia.

spiked: Can Labour survive if it antagonises women in this way?

Masoud: It hasn’t got a future if it carries on down its current path. It has learned no lessons from the General Election. It had a disastrous policy on Brexit. It ignored the working-class voter and trumpeted the second-referendum nonsense and we saw where that got them. What Labour is doing now is alienating 51 per cent of the population and they don’t care.

I keep thinking about why the hell any Labour leadership candidate would want to sign this pledge. They know there will be a backlash. They have seen the #ExpelMe hashtag sweep Twitter. So why do they do it?

Most likely it is because they know they’re not likely to win the next election in five years’ time, or the one after that, either. So they’re not thinking about winning elections or winning over the general public. All they are thinking about is appealing to the Labour membership who they think will gobble this up.

Each candidate wants to be the most woke. They are appealing to this tiny, tiny minority of the electorate that is obsessed with identity politics. But they do not realise the damage they are doing. I didn’t even vote Labour at the last election and I’ve been a Labour member my whole life. And for someone like me not to vote Labour means it has a massive problem.

SOURCE 






Australian veterans' organization bans Aboriginal flag and welcome to country ceremony

ANZAC day is when Australians remember family members who have died in war.  Intruding other concerns into that solemn occasion is offensive

A state branch of the RSL has taken the extraordinary step of banning the Aboriginal flag and traditional indigenous ceremonies on Anzac Day.

The Western Australian branch of the RSL has taken the extraordinary step of banning the Aboriginal flag and performance of welcome to country at its ceremonies honouring war heroes.

A report by the ABC today claimed that some RSL members last year were upset after an Aboriginal professor read the Ode of Remembrance, traditionally recited on Remembrance Day ceremonies, in an indigenous language last year.

The reading on last year’s Anzac Day ceremony by Professor Len Collard in the Noongar language reportedly sparked the change in rules. Professor Collard had translated the Ode himself. Members told John McCourt, the chief executive of the RSLWA, that reading poem in another language wasn’t appropriate.

After receiving complaints the RSLWA board developed new policies to control Anzac and Remembrance Day ceremonies held in the state.

“While having utmost respect for the traditional owners of land upon which such sites and memorials are located, RSLWA does not view it appropriate that a Welcome to Country is used at sites that were specifically established to pay homage to those who died and who came from a wide range of cultural backgrounds,” the new policy reads.

The new policy includes guidelines that all content be delivered in English (except the New Zealand National Anthem); only flying the Australian, New Zealand and WA flags and; having no welcome to country ceremonies.

The policy, which outlines rules for the RSL’s commemorations regarding “culture”, recognises Australia as a diverse and multicultural nation, before going on to acknowledge a “trend among sectors of the Australian community to seek to include specific cultural and ethnic elements into major commemorative events” including Anzac and Remembrance Day.

“While it is important to recognise cultural and ethnic contributions to the defence of Australia, it is also important to maintain Anzac Day and Remembrance Day as occasions to express unity, a time when all Australians – irrespective of race, culture or religion – come together to remember and reflect.”

A welcome to country is performed at the beginning of events in Australia to bring awareness about the traditional history and cultural owners of an area. A welcome to country is usually performed by an indigenous elder.

Mr McCourt said these ceremonies are only banned on Anzac and Remembrance Day. “All the RSL is asking for is two days,” he told the ABC.

He said the RSLWA “remains appalled” at the discriminatory treatment of indigenous Australians who returned after serving in World War I.

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

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