Tag Archives | Parenting

Some Atheist Scientists With Children Embrace Religious Traditions

By on December 6, 2011 in News 17

Flying Spaghetti MonsterVia ScienceDaily:

Some atheist scientists with children embrace religious traditions for social and personal reasons, according to research from Rice University and the University at Buffalo — The State University of New York (SUNY).

The study also found that some atheist scientists want their children to know about different religions so their children can make informed decisions about their own religious preferences.

“Our research shows just how tightly linked religion and family are in U.S. society — so much so that even some of society’s least religious people find religion to be important in their private lives,” said Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, the study’s principal investigator and co-author of a paper in the December issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The researchers found that 17 percent of atheists with children attended a religious service more than once in the past year. The research was conducted through interviews with a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U.S.

… Read the rest

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Parents Using Facebook to Trade Viruses In the Mail to Infect Their Children

By on November 5, 2011 in News 17

Chicken Pox PartyRight, because you’re “afraid” of vaccines, let’s deliberately put pathogens in the mail. Reports KPHO CBS 5 News:

PHOENIX — Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook.

Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children. The Facebook group is called “Find a Pox Party in Your Area.” According to the group’s page, it is geared toward “parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox.”

On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail. Parents also use the page to set up play dates with children who currently have chicken pox. Medical experts say the most troubling part of this is parents are taking pathogens from complete strangers and deliberately infecting their children.

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Mother Bear Kills Cub and Itself to Escape ‘Crush Cage’ Torture for ‘Bear Bile’

By on August 20, 2011 in News 55
Bear Crush Cage

Photo: SlimVirgin (CC)

AsiaOne reports:

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself. The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed. The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis. The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

… Read the rest

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Should Parents Lose Custody Of Fat Children?

By on July 13, 2011 in News 28

overweight child-resized-600If your twelve-year-old is a 300-pound diabetic, have you failed as a parent to the point that your child should be taken away for his or her own safety? Health experts at Harvard say yes, it’s time to get tough and start removing fat children from their homes. It boggles the mind that we live in an age in which this is a pressing issue. The Atlantic Wire reports:

As the Western world gets fatter and fatter, the solutions to slimming it down get ever more draconian. Today, a pair of Harvard scholars writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association advocate stripping away the custody rights of parents of super obese children.

“Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child,” said Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The study’s co-author, David Ludwig, says taking away peoples’ children “ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible.” Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital, said his eureka moment was when a 90-pound, 3-year-old girl entered his obesity clinic a number of years ago”:

Her parents had physical disabilities, little money and difficulty controlling her weight.

… Read the rest

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Restaurant Bans Children Under Six

By on July 13, 2011 in News 48

Starting July 16, McDain’s, a Pittsburgh-area restaurant, will ban children under the age of 6 from its dining area. Restaurant owner Mike Vuick said the policy came in response to complaints he’d received from older customers about kids causing a ruckus. In an email to his clientele, Vuick wrote, “We feel that McDain’s is a not a place for young children … and many, many times they have disturbed other customers.” Via ABC News:

[Story continues at ABC News]

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Nearly One in Three American Children Live Without A Father

By on June 19, 2011 in News 13

Via the Huffington Post:

The number of children living apart from their fathers has more than doubled in the last fifty years, from 11 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 2010.

That’s one of the key findings from a new report on fatherhood in the United the States that was released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project — just in time for Father’s Day.

The findings paint a grim picture of many fathers’ lack of involvement in their children’s lives, using data from over 10,000 people to determine the percentage of “absent” or “non-resident” fathers in America, which the report defines as those who do not live with their children.

A decline in marriage rates may be partially to blame. In 1960, 72 percent of the adult population was married; that share had dropped to 52 percent by 2008. Eighty seven percent of children ages 17 and younger were living with two married parents in 1960 compared with 64 percent in 2008.

According to the report’s co-author Gretchen Livingston, an increase in divorce rates over the last half-century may also play a role.

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Two Idiots Name Their Baby Girl ‘Like’ After the Facebook Button

By on May 26, 2011 in News 39

Facebook LikeJesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:

Lior and Vardit Adler just had a baby girl. She’s probably all cute and wrinkly! But they hate her soo much that they named her Like, in honor of the Like button in Facebook. Of course, they explain it differently:

To me it is important to give my children names that are not used anywhere else, at least not in Israel. If once people gave Biblical names and that was the icon, then today this is one of the most famous icons in the world, he said, joking that the name could be seen as a modern version of the traditional Jewish name Ahuva, which means “beloved.”

I believe there will be people who will lift a eyebrow, but it is my girl and that’s what’s fun about it.

Yes, dear readers, you are totally right: These parents — who live in Hod Hasharon, a town north-east of Tel Aviv, Israel — are idiots. Idiots, idiots, idiots. Idiots. Idiots who named their first two children Dvash — Hebrew for honey — and Pie. Compared to Like, those names seem as normal as John and Jane.

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