It pays to parse out the wheat from the chaff. First the wheat:

Children can reach much greater heights than most parents ask them to achieve. The fault here is not with the children but the parents — who themselves often are not prepared to do the work involved: they don’t realize the potential of their children for they do not realize their own potential.

The Jewish mother and Western and Central European Jews in particular had developed similar cultures of demanding a lot of their children. One of these children wrote a book that had a big effect on my raising my children: Edith Stein, a Jewish philosopher (doctorate under Husserl and worked with Heidegger) who later became a Carmelite nun, death-camped by the Nazi’s for being a Jew and canonized by John Paul II. Volume One of her autobiography (Life in a Jewish Family) taught the lessons of hard work because of high expectations of parents. They rose to it because no one thought otherwise. And see what Jews achieve as a result. Wonderful is the capacity God has placed in man.

The conversation around our Sunday (extended-family) dinner table last week revealed a consensus that our children were the product of a Catholic “Chinese mother” and so were many of the children they knew. Those children were all home-schooled too for a significant portion of their early childhood. Home-schooling mothers had to recognize themselves in Amy Chua’s article — but with one exception.

Home school mothers probably agree with legendary basketball coach John Wooten that not all kids can be #1 but all kids can give of their best — and that is much more important. The dignity of the child and rejoicing in the talents he or she has (not the ones they wish they had) is the main lesson to be learned. And to develop talents to their fullest means lots of effort.

Amy Chua does the country a great service, reminding us of what is possible. Some “Chinese mothers” on the other hand go too far as some of the blog responses have clearly demonstrated: name calling and emotional abuse is the antithesis of being a good parent and it is no wonder some of the children have broken relationships with their “Chinese mothers”: they were treated like a piece of iron to be filed not a wonder of God to be nurtured.

Those who come closest to this golden mean are those who grow up in married families that worship weekly. Their hard work and dignity are most likely to be attained — and graduations from high school and colleget too. Check out Mappping America and you will see US national patterns for these outcomes.

And by the way, the overwhelming majority of home-schooling families fall into this category too. The American “Chinese mother” comes in many forms as Amy Chua indicated.

1: I am Catholic, not Evangelical (though FRC is an Evangelical organization.  It does believe in religious freedom and builds across honest divides rather than keeping them.)

2: I would have gladly put in the religious attendance data but Census NEVER collects such data though I wish they would (other federal surveys do and the American Community Survey would be so much better if it did).  I hope you will push for that.

3: We have covered this anomaly (high worship and low marriage) and brought lots of attention to it.  See our own study which does this — based on the federal National Child Health Survey

4: Bill O’Hare, former editor of the Kids Count from the Annie E Casey Foundation was the first I know of to point out this anomaly. (Mississippi is the highest weekly church attending state but the lowest intact-family state).  This clearly points to a family / marriage crisis within the church.  Probably most within the Black church — but not solely there.  One cannot call oneself a serious Christian (unless one also calls oneself an unreformed one and a sinner) while simultaneously breaking universal Christian doctrine on sex and marriage.  This bears further digging into.

5: All the deep digging into the relationship between religious practice and marital stability points to a very clear and very strong relationship between both.  (We have a review of that literature coming up on our website in the next few months.  This will only heighten the anomaly, not diminish it.

(a) Our Mapping America Project , drawing on federal surveys only, repeatedly illustrates that the intact family that worships weekly is the strongest social unit and the most productive by far.  So weekly religious practice and marriage are very important for the strength of the country. Let’s not pit one against the other.

(b) What one can likely take from the data is that if the Southern states did not have the high levels of worship they do have they would be in an even worse situation.

6: The Mormon states do very well and overall most exemplify (at the state level) this strength of relationship, a relationship which holds across all denominations.  There is clearly grist for the Christian church-leadership mill here.

7: Our data point towards a need for reform within the church.  History teaches two lessons about Christianity: practiced it yields enormous benefits, talked about but not practiced it yields untold suffering and it a great cause for scandal and shame.

10: The history of Christianity is a history of reform upon reform upon reform. Seems like we need it again.. at least that is what I take from the data.

8: As I hope this will make clear (and I hope FaithWorld will notice) MARRI is  interested in the truth, not ideological point-scoring. There is much to unravel in the tension between the macro data (state level marriage vs. worship data) and micro data (the greater the religious attendance/ prayer the stronger and more stable the marriage).  But it is precisely these “contrary” data that are the source of intellectual breakthrough.

9: To add to this dilemma: The social sciences (to date and probably always) cannot measure the heart (the inner workings, desires, cover-ups, prayers — or lack thereof). It is confined to measuring externalities — measurable behaviors and words.  Getting to the hidden interiorities is beyond its competence. Christ excoriated the religious leaders of his time for what was not in their heart even as the externals looked rather devout.  We may be in the same situation.  I know I often am.

Not only is it indefensible as an industry, rather it should be severely contained and suppressed because of its effects on family, children and adults. David Ogden’s connections to the pornography industry preclude his ability to serve in the Department of Justice.

In the name of “choice” CRR is asking people to oppose the rights of conscience of those in health care who do not want to have anything to do with abortion or any other procedure or technology which the professional deems immoral. 

Rather than being sensitive to the differing conscientious stands that citizens and professionals will be taking on divisive issues, CRR and its allies are pushing to ride roughshod over the consciences of professionals. 

This tendency is on the increase in advocacy organizations and needs to be labeled for what it really is … the American form of totalitarianism. In this they join the ranks of those who followed Lenin, Hitler and Mao. 

It is time for all, no matter where they stand on the public issues of morality, to at minimum not violate the conscience of anyone. If we lose that we lose one of the foundations of a humane society, and we can forget democracy.

To have the federal government expand its reach into virtually every corner of life (family, school, health, the economy) and simultaneously to push for a radical “wall of separation of church and state” is to ban religion from life. It is the perfect scenario for a slow but Sherman-like “march through the institutions” as Gramsci envisioned.

As Mapping America shows, the practice of religion is integral to superior outcomes in most dimensions of life, and medicine is no exception as reviews of the literature make clear.

The plaintiff in a case against Veterans Affairs for their support of chaplains’ work with ill patients, The Freedom From Religion Foundation, clearly falls among the ranks of those dedicated to a Gramsciite deconstruction of American society, not a building up of her strengths nor even of the care of her sick soldiers.

However, if one looks at the Australian Government’s own charts it is clear that Australia is heading into a big demographic problem with way too few children to support an aging population.

The Commission’s suggestion is very shortsighted and parochial: loss of taxes for the government.

The reality view: The longer the fertility increase is delayed the greater the crisis eventually faced. Babies that are not born in a particular year cannot be made up in future years. Australia may later decide to import other countries’ people (but these people will likely be poorer and less well-educated than the children that could be born in Australia).

Furthermore, while the government may lose some taxes short term the average Australian household will likely not be much affected, except those where the mother brings in a very large salary (say over $110,000 per year). U.S. research shows that for married mothers with children who go out to work the income is virtually a wash when all the extra expenses and taxes are factored in (Aguirre M.S. 2006). And this without adding another loss: the loss of household productivity through which the wife adds value to her husbands income (it really is their income, but you get the point) by her own labor value added.

This is a case of an alliance between socialist and capitalist interests. Feed the market for the time being, bring in the taxes and forget the long term common good and definitely forget what women might want.

Update (4/8): Here’s another good commentary on Harvard’s student-run True Love Revolution.