IN THE past thirty years, we have witnessed a huge increase in the amount of time young children spend away from mothers in institutional daycare or in the care of relatives or hired babysitters. Studies have shown that this non-maternal care affects childhood behavior. But very little has been written about how non-maternal care affects the individual over the long term. 

The Rev. James Jackson, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Littleton, Colorado, wrote this fascinating essay about the possible links between daycare and anti-social behavior by college students. He included the essay in his pastoral bulletin yesterday.  I have never heard a priest or preacher speak out against the scourge of daycare. Judging from what churches have said on the growth of institutional care for children, one would think it was a non-issue, rather than a pressing threat to the individual and society.

Here is Rev. Jackson’s essay: Read More »

I HAVE been living in the ninth circle of computer hell the last couple of days, which is why I have been slow in posting and responding to comments. My main machine contracted a malicious virus and my alternatives are not as efficient.

By the way, do not open e-mails without a subject line, even if they are from people you know and trust.

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A PREVIOUS essay by Alan Roebuck on the need for conservatives to “evangelize” sparked interesting debate here, with some readers objecting to Mr. Roebuck’s fundamental optimism. The conversation became heated when one commenter argued that the traditionalist movement must find him a wife.

Mr. Roebuck now has a second essay on conservative apologetics at the Intellectual Conservative. He writes:

Liberals don’t just hold false beliefs. They’re also lost souls, participants in a false and destructive way of life. They need to hear the good news that liberalism is false and there’s a better way for them and for America. And we conservatives need liberals to hear the good news so we can have hope of igniting a counterrevolution that will restore a properly-ordered (or at least tolerably-ordered) American society.

Mr. Roebuck, who uses religious language to describe a secular movement, urges the modern conservative to see himself as a metaphysical missionary.

BRISTOL PALIN has become a walking – and dancing – advertisement for the joys and freedoms of single motherhood. See her “dancing with the stars” here.

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JESSE POWELL writes:

A multi-page article called “Housewives of God” on the teachings of wifely submission in several Evangelical churches has appeared in the New York Times Magazine. As far as I know this is the most mainstream news coverage the patriarchal movement has ever received. Molly Worthen, a writer on religious issues, profiles Priscilla Shirer as a typical example of an empowered woman who really leads a feminist lifestyle preaching that “Satan will do everything in his power to get us (women) to take the lead in our homes. He wants to make us resent our husband’s position of authority so that we will begin to usurp it. . . . Women need to pray for God to renew a spirit of submission in their hearts.” Read More »

KAREN I. writes:

I thought you might like to know that if their favorite toy of the moment is any indication, American boys have somehow successfully resisted the never-ending attempts to make them more feminine.

The hottest toys for boys this Christmas are Nerf guns. These are not little pistols, but big (sometimes huge), colorful guns that fire multiple soft Nerf bullets. Read More »

JILL F. writes:

I find it interesting that the article by Erica Jong refers to the first “wave” of feminism, as if there were huge crowds of feminists early on. Get real.

The kitchen is an appropriate symbol of motherhood and it stands to reason that those who want to destroy the nurturing woman would attack her hearth. It is from the kitchen that the nourishment of the family flows. Yes, those of us who were raised by working mothers and ate ravioli out of a can often struggle to embrace the necessary mess that being “kitchen centered” entails but a family is really not being nourished unless they spend regular time together, in their home and around their table. Read More »

ELIZABETH WRIGHT, of Issues and Views, writes:

If the Liberty University logo wasn’t everywhere, I would never believe such a thing as this video exists. What is there to say? Popular culture, which is totally reinforced by academia from kindergarten upwards, will inevitably win over young minds. And with no strong adults to fight its assault, the kids don’t stand a chance.

It makes me wonder about the state of Bob Jones University. When Jones gave in to the squealing over the ban on interracial dating, I was aghast that there could be not one, not ONE academic institution to which parents could send their children with the knowledge that miscegenation would not be promoted or given a blessing. I wrote to Jones at the time, identifying myself as a black, encouraging him not to give in. But, of course, the administration did give in.

The poison of PC wins on every score. White adults soon become too afraid even to criticize the low-grade garbage called rap and hip hop, even though there have been movements among blacks themselves to eliminate this detritus. Read More »

THEIR universities heavily-subsidized for many years, British students now consider a cheap degree an entitlement. In London yesterday, 50,000 students rioted over proposals to raise the current cap on tuition of $5,624 (in US dollars) per year to a range of $9,600 to $14,400. Some shattered windows and threw bottles. These photos of the devolving British people are from The Daily Mail.  Read More »

CLARK COLEMAN writes:

Your entry on names struck a nerve. I have been keeping a file of girl names that are not particularly feminine for a few years. When I encounter a new one (sometimes in person, often in local newspaper articles), I add it to the list. Some might doubt that I got the list right, but I am 100 percent certain that these are all girl names I have encountered:

Alex, Ashlan, Ashley, Austin, Biffy, Blair, Coty, Douglas, Hampton, Hayden, Jordan, Kendall, Kevin, Kirby, Kyle, Madison, Marlow, Mickey, River, Rory, Schafer, Spencer, Sutton, Taylor, Turner, Tyler, Whitaker. Read More »

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY is the world’s largest Evangelical Christian university. This shocking promotional video illustrates how white Christians are in the thrall of the worst of crotch-grabbing, anarchic black culture. Check out the anti-mugging at the end of the video, and the white youth uplifted and enlightened by his exposure to a rap hymn.

Read More »

JAMES P. writes:

I am fascinated at how many women in this article want to emasculate their sons.

“We liked it that the name carried no image of masculinity” — Gee, why would you want that in a boy?

Levy said, “I wanted to imbue my sons with feminist values” — Why, oh why, do you want to emasculate him??? He’s your son! Don’t you want him to grow up to be a man? 

“Naming your kid Robert after your grandfather who invented the flyswatter and bought the house in Newport is a very different kind of holding onto an outmoded form of masculinity.” — Apparently being a man is outmoded.

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HOW DOES one leap from the observation that women sometimes use their children as status symbols and indulge grandiose expectations of their own nurturing abilities to the conclusion that mothering is unnecessary? Leave it to a feminist warhorse like Erica Jong  to make this connection, assuring us that communal child-rearing, the sort of thing found in primitive African villages or Stalinist daycare centers, is superior to the atmosphere of the Western nuclear family. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, she says:

The first wave of feminists, in the 19th century, dreamed of communal kitchens and nurseries. A hundred years later, the closest we have come to those amenities are fast-food franchises that make our children obese and impoverished immigrant nannies who help to raise our kids while their own kids are left at home with grandparents. Our foremothers might be appalled by how little we have transformed the world of motherhood.

Dreamed of communal kitchens and nurseries? The number of women who have dreamed of such atrocities is infinitesimally small. No one who experienced a communal kitchen in Soviet Russia would have dared to call it an “amenity” except in contrast to no kichen at all. Read More »

CHRISTIANITY is said to be a great force for social justice. But one of the most important ways in which Christianity has promoted justice is rarely acknowledged. Christianity historically protected men from various forms of exploitation. It is in some senses the ultimate men’s movement.

By this, I do not mean modern-day pseudo-Christianity with its worship of the feminine divine or its aggressive denial of Christian events and revelation. I do not mean those who “honoreth with the lips” while their hearts remain stone-cold. I refer to the Christian creed, scriptures and traditions. The good man, or the man trying to be good, has always been ripe for oppression, even more so than the good woman. It is for him, not the brute or the thug or the despot or the libertine, that Christianity once secured important protections.

This is an important subject and there’s a great deal to say about it.  At the risk of useless simplification, here is a very brief look at the ways in which Christian civilization historically protected men. Read More »

IT MAY BE impossible to fully articulate how the denial of sex differences has altered our world. It is a phenomenon that is sometimes too big for us to see. However, this brilliant excerpt from Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology by the Jungian analyst Irene Claremont de Castillejo gets at the ineffable nature of this sweeping change:

There can be little doubt that with rare exceptions the masculine of woman is inferior in quality to that of a man. It is apt to be less original and less flexible. She tends to be impressed by organisation and theories which she frequently carries to excess because her masculine power to focus runs away with her. She then becomes hidebound by regulations and obsessed by detail. She is much less likely to be willing to make exceptions than a man, as the masculine side which runs away with her is wholly impersonal and disregards the human need of any particular man or woman.

But the same sort of thing applies to the feminine within man. It is less vital and dynamic than that of a woman. The feminine in women is not solely passive and receptive. It is also ruthless in its service of life, or rather those particular lives which personally concern her. Read More »

A BOSTON UNIVERSITY religion scholar finds little sympathy for the feminist theologian and misanthrope Mary Daly among his students. Given that Daly called for the virtual elimination of the male sex, this is not necessarily heartening news. One would hope they would be angry and outraged at the mere mention of her name and that he would be exiled academically for giving her serious consideration. Stephen Prothero says very few of his students are willing to call themselves feminists. That’s not because feminism has died, as he speculates, but because it has won. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I thought that your readers might like to see a bit of the beginning of “The Bell” in Hans Christian Andersen’s Danish.  The Scandinavian languages are the Germanic languages closest to English; they are quite easy for English speakers to learn.  I studied Andersen thirty years ago and more in Danish with Niels Ingwersen, an affable Dane, and a translator of Andersen, who spent a year at UCLA as a visiting professor.  In those days, Scandinavian was an independent “section” of the Department of Germanic Languages, but it has since almost disappeared.  This is true throughout American higher education, where, with the exception of Spanish, language studies nowadays recruit too few students to justify their departmental existence.  Read More »

Matt H. writes:

I stumbled across this picture which I felt admirably captured the tragedy of our era: it is a self-loathing man taking directions from a woman doing a man’s job. It is from this year’s ‘Glasgay’ festival, which you can learn about here, if you really want to.