A British study reportedly showing that babies and young children under five are better off psychologically if their mothers are employed received widespread attention last week in the British press. Meanwhile an American report reviewing 30 years of research on the effects of day care came up with very different conclusions and was virtually ignored when it was released by the Heritage Foundation last month.

In her report, “The Effects of Day Care on the Social-Emotional Development of Children,” Jenet Jacob Erickson focused on the findings of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care Research Network from the early 1990s. This study of more than 1,300 children from 10 American communities evaluated both the home and child-care contexts from infancy through age 15 years and included videotaped interactions between children and mothers, as well as interviews with mothers, teachers and adolescents. Children were also observed in child-care settings.

Here are the key findings of Erikson’s review of the National Institute study and other research conducted during the past 30 years:

•Children who spend more hours per week in non-maternal child care are more likely to exhibit problematic social–behavioral adjustment, including less social competence and cooperation and more problem behaviors, negative moods, aggression, and conflict. In teachers’ reports of kindergartners’ social adjustment, the effect of hours spent in non-maternal care prior to kindergarten is comparable to the effect of poverty in predicting behavioral problems. (more…)

NO ONE who committs mass murder of innocents could reasonably be called a Christian. Yet the press has widely reported that Anders Breivik is Christian or a Christian “fundamentalist.”

Breivik himself denied it in his manifesto. Lawrence Auster writes, “Breivik makes it clear that he is what is known as a ‘cultural Christian.’ This is a very common stance today among conservative-leaning Europeans. Cultural Christians value and want to preserve certain aspects of Europe’s historic Christian culture, even as they plainly admit that that they are NOT believers in God, NOT believers in Christ, and NOT Christians. Which means that it is a gargantuan lie for the media to describe Breivik as a Christian, let alone as a fundamentalist Christian.”

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A NEW STUDY by British social researchers contends maternal employment in early childhood is psychologically beneficial for children. The study, which received prominent attention in the British press last week, is a dream come true for the liberal press and policy analysts, supposedly disproving the common sense belief – a belief held for all of human history – that maternal care of very young children is primary and important. The head researcher said children of mothers who do not work were more likely to suffer from social problems and “depression.”

According to The Guardian,

Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute charity, welcomed the research paper. “This study shows what mothers know intuitively. If you are able to get the balance right, your child and your career can both flourish.”

But this is not what mothers know intuitively. They know they cannot be in two places at the same time. As for those not able “to get the balance right?” Those who place toddlers and infants of necessity in the care of poorly-paid daycare workers? Tough luck. 

The fanfare surrounding the study was noticeably absent of critical thought. In truth, this new study cannot be taken seriously and may actually demonstrate the opposite of what it is believed to prove.

Researchers at University College London, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, tracked 19,000 white children born in 2000 and 2001 who were being followed as part of a larger study. The team looked at the children up until age five, making their sweeping claims even though psychologists and other observers of the human condition widely believe that the psychological effects of early childhood care do not always manifest themselves right away. (more…)

A READER writes:

I’m surprised that you have not commented on the July 14th airing of the show The Talk. The show features an all female panel, like The View, and after discussing the story of the Catherine Kieu, the woman who sexually mutilated her husband, they sit around and joke about it and say how fabulous and hysterical it is. (more…)

THE PHOTOGRAPHS now in wide circulation of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik show a man of immense grandiosity. Posing in uniforms or with weapons, looking straight at the camera and smiling with self-satisfaction, Breivik displays heroic pretensions that are in stark contrast to his actual life. According to this profile, Breivik spent much of his time playing video games, a world of risk-free, contained aggression. He does not appear to have done anything more heroic on the political scene than commenting at blogs. He did not run for office or even set up his own website. His crimes were against the defenseless: unarmed young people in bathing suits and office workers sitting at their desks.

Assuming he did act alone, here was a man with an overblown fantasy life revolving around the virtual world of video games and Internet websites. He now has the renown that matches the glorious self-image he cultivated there. That is one of the most disturbing aspects of his horrific crimes. He wanted to be famous and he is. (more…)

  THE FATHER of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behrig Breivik divorced the mother of Breivik when the boy was one and has been estranged from him for 16 years. Breivik's crimes, while extraordinary in every way, show the rage characteristic of a significant minority of men raised without fathers.  Anders, who was the center of a custody battle between his parents, became a discipline problem in his teen years. According to The Telegraph, the father, Jens Breivik, is a retired Norwegian diplomat and has been married three times. Anders Breivik's mother was his second wife. Presumably Jens Breivik did not try to intervene in his problem son's life after he was 16 years old.

FOR YEARS, New York Times writer Lisa Belkin has been an industrious purveyor of the view that whatever feminism says is good for women must be good for children too. Since feminism and its denial of innate sex differences has led with inexorable logic to the idea of same-sex “marriage,” it is no suprise that this weekend, when same-sex “marriage” becomes legal in New York, Mrs. Belkin weighs in with her views in a piece predictably titled, “For the Sake of the Children.” (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

Same-sex “marriage” is legal in New York State tomorrow. On the eve of this grand experiment, it is interesting to look at how family life is faring in the Empire State. In certain areas, it is not doing well at all, especially in upstate New York. New York’s lawmakers apparently did not notice the social problems that literally surround them before launching an attack on marital traditions. 

Like much of America, New York is a two-tier society, with marriage holding up among the higher functioning segments and in extreme disrepair among the lower functioning.

This report looks at five cities: New York City, America’s largest city; Rochester, a troubled city just south of Lake Ontario; Albany, the state’s capital; and Schenectady and Troy, small cities not far from Albany. All five of these cities share one thing in common, and that is a major decline in their white populations in absolute numbers since 1970. The declines in white populations, from 1970 to 2010, are as follows: New York, 55%; Rochester, 68%; Albany, 48%; Schenectady, 49%; and Troy, 41%.  (more…)

I CONTINUE to be persecuted for my stance against American pizza. Another reader, whose comment I will not include here because it is so critical it may precipitate a more widespread loss of confidence in this site, has said that I am unfair and petty. There is plenty of very good pizza, he said. Besides, how could I possibly consider pizza a serious cultural issue? (more…)

IN TWO articles posted at Tradition in Action last year (here and here), Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, now deceased, reflected on the decay of gravitas in the modern Catholic clergy. He illustrated his points with numerous images, including the photo above and a painting of St. Dominic by Fra Angelico.

Of the priests above, he wrote:

Note the optimism of these priests. For these poor men nothing is elevated any more. Should someone try to speak to them about the sublimity of God, he would be looked at askew. For them life is a cloudless horizon. Their main concern is to joke, which is the lowest level of amiability: to make others laugh. They do not want to see that the Church is going through the most apocalyptic time of her existence.

Do these poor men have an idea of what it means for us laymen to persevere in the Catholic faith and morals? Do they have any notion of the fights, persecutions and adversities we have to face in order to remain faithful? Do they think that they will guide people to practice virtue with this attitude? They imagine that this is what they are doing and that everyone is following them; they believe they are conquering the world. But they are not. They are helping the Church to lose her credibility. (more…)

IN most of the forlorn cities of upstate New York, less than 50 percent of the children born in 2010 were born to married parents. In Rochester, almost 70 percent of children are illegitimate at birth. But just south of Rochester, there is a scattered community where such things are virtually unheard of.

As this article in The New York Times about a crash that killed five Amish reports, the Amish population in upstate New York has grown by 13 percent in two years, with many migrating from nearby Ohio and Pennsylvania. Illegitimacy is not a problem for the Amish.

The Amish are an island of social stability in the region, evidence that it is not the economy that determines whether traditional sex roles survive, but the metaphysics of a people.

An Amish woman’s life revolves around her children and her home, and the idea of her being ashamed to live this way is ludicrous. She  may easily leave behind enough children and grandchildren to populate a small village before she dies. Many decades from now, her legacy will live and breathe while today’s female graduates of, say, Columbia Law School, supposedly so much smarter than the frumpy, apron-clad Amish housewives, have a good chance of vanishing without a trace.

Not only will the Amish woman leave raw numbers behind, she will leave behind functioning human beings, who are able to take part in civil society, to marry and have children of their own, to work hard and build upon what she did. And, yet by the values of modern leftist society, she has wasted her life.

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JEFF W. writes:

Here is a statement that I believe is true. It’s something that Vitalist women should think about.

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

– George Jean Nathan

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THIS nineteenth century portrait by James Charles of Mrs. Alfred Illingworth might seem to modern sensibilities to be a portrait of luxury and its unearned privileges. But this interpretation cannot survive an honest appraisal of Mrs. Illingworth’s face. Every thing in the picture is a prop to the magnificent, communicative face. She is serene and self-effacing. Her gaze is steady, not defiant. Like Stoic Roman matrons immortalized in busts, or a weathered cliff on a lovely shore, she is a bulwark of receptivity. She is not beautiful, but she is highly feminine.

Feminists have often scared women with the idea that when their children are raised they will have nothing to do. What can I say, but how stupid this idea is? Nothing to do?  Does the cliff have nothing to do? Does a work of art have nothing to do?

What can a woman do after her children are raised? She need not do. But she must be.

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IN THIS AD, Republican women in the House of Representatives show off how pro-woman they are, as if we needed to know. They give the impression that the universe is female and never mention that jobs and businesses for men should be a far greater priority than jobs and businesses for women.

Can women in a modern democracy move beyond the politics of narcissism?

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ROBIN writes:

Carla writes: 

…And most important, if feminism is making women so unhappy why are women not embracing traditional role more?…

I would add to your excellent commentary only by suggesting that men are also not embracing traditional role more. When Betty Friedan and Margaret Sanger, et al, began their wicked, Marxist campaign, I believe they were well aware that they would influence men as well as women, eventually altering an entire society. 

As a reformed (and continually reforming, thanks be to God) feminist myself, I can confidently say that I have the utmost respect for men. I am far from a man-hating feminazi, so to speak. However, I will say that there exists a sea of men in America who are quite comfortable with their feminist wives. Not happy, mind you, but quite comfortable – some even encourage feminist qualities in their wives!  (more…)

AT HER blog Camera Lucida, Kidist Paulos Asrat recently posted photos of Niagara Falls.

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  A READER writes: I was persuing the IKEA catalogue on this very hot summer day when I came up with my own additions to the merchandiser's Swedish names for sofas, bookcases, cabinets and tables: Rïppoff Häardtoassembel Faallapåart Päartikalbørd Lostscrü Missingpåart Kollapsprøn Wherdidwepäark Løstyœngestchild

    SAMSON writes: Since you've had a few recent posts on the changing face of medicine, may I recommend a painting? It dates from 1887, by a British painter named Luke Fildes. It's called "The Doctor." To me, it conveys gravitas, dedication and the sanctity of the profession.