Kids poorly served by trans 'science'

Andrew Sullivan has been a leader in intellectual circles in the United States and was the principal proponent of same-sex marriage before it took off as a mainstream issue. He is a homosexual and is a victim of the HIV epidemic. He writes often about the experience of the gay community and has increasingly expressed concern that the ideology of transgenderism, which has been readily absorbed by Western elites, is bent on doing harm to gay people and all young people.

In his latest weekly column on his Substack The Weekly Dish newsletter (behind a paywall), Sullivan presses the question of who is looking out for kids since American schools are generally surreptitiously rolling out instruction in critical queer and gender theory in the kindergarten through primary school years. When children reflect the confusion that critical queer theory necessarily generates, the schools keep it all secret from parents, and this at the crucial time of puberty. 

When Sullivan examines some of the reading texts in use at public schools he finds a definite pattern throughout all the materials:

The words “boy” and “girl” are never used to refer to biological sex; and they are never used as a binary. You can be neither, both or something else. And this is taught to all kids.

[...] these words, “boy” and “girl,” used by most people to refer to someone’s sex, are re-made in a child’s mind to refer only to gender. “I’m not a girl. I’m a boy in my heart and brain.” When Calvin’s parents accept him, we get the mantra: “We love you if you are a boy or a girl or both or neither.” Sex is gone; gender is everything; gender can be anything, even non-human. In this [Human Rights Campaign]-recommended book, the baby “can’t decide what to be. Boy or girl? Bird or fish?” Yes: fish.

Before long, as you peruse the material, you see a consistent message being sent to children: that being a boy or a girl has nothing to do with your body; and that you can “become” either, both or “something else entirely”.

That is why Sullivan starts his column by stating, "Getting a grip on reality is not so easy these days..." because in the "approved" texts:

“Sex” [...] becomes a “pronoun assigned at birth.” Yes, you read that right. Biological sex is merely “what the doctors or midwives said when you were born.” It’s a word without meaning. And you will note that in the “snowperson” lesson, the human body has no part to play at all.  

Parents are beginning to hear their kids talk about “women with penises,” as more teenage girls suddenly announce they’re transitioning, and the White House doubles down on affirming puberty blockers for children, even as European countries begin to realize they overstepped. (In the U.K., Sweden, Finland, and France, medical authorities are sounding the alarm. But the Biden administration regards these drugs as essential.)

The key argument that Sullivan supports with evidence in this column is this:

It seems to me that any books that teach kids to be compassionate and accepting, and aware of different ways of being human, are a positive thing. I don’t doubt the good intentions behind them. Having some materials for a genuinely trans child is a good thing. But teaching all public school kids under the age of eight that their body has no reference to their sex is a huge development — and news to most American parents. And encouraging toddlers to pick pronouns like “ze” and “tree” is not exactly what parents send their kids to public school for. 

Implications of gender theory

He graphically exposes the horrendous implications of this kind of critical queer and gender theory:

These teaching materials aim to be inclusive of the tiny minority of trans children — but they do this by essentially universalizing the very rare experience of being transgender, and suggesting that everyone’s gender is completely independent of biological sex, and trumps it in any conflict. The only way to help trans kids feel better about themselves, this argument goes, is to tell the lie that their experience is everybody’s experience. We are all varieties of trans people now, choosing our sex and performing our gender.

But, of course, we’re not all varieties of trans; the overwhelming majority of humans, including gay humans, experience sex and gender as completely compatible — when they think about them at all. And our species is sexually dimorphic. When pushed to defend the idea that humans are not a binary sexual species, critical theorists lean on the “univariate fallacy.” That argues that any single exception to a rule completely demolishes the rule. If there are any exceptions to every human being male or female, even if they are a tiny percentage of the whole, then there is no sex binary.

But that’s bizarre. That a small percentage of people are attracted to the same sex, for example, does not invalidate the rule that humans are overwhelmingly heterosexual — and if this were not the case, humans wouldn’t exist at all. Gay people are the exception that proves the heterosexual rule. The much smaller number of trans people, likewise, does not disprove that the overwhelming majority of people are completely at ease with their biological sex. It actually proves it, by showing the terrible psychic cost of being otherwise. (Trans kids and adults deal with huge mental health challenges, and commit suicide at staggering rates.) Intersex and [Differences in sex development] people are not a separate species, or some kind of third sex, no more than people with Down Syndrome are anything but fully human. They are a variation in the sex binary. 

Activist trans groups like HRC or the ACLU may thereby be unwittingly putting gay children at risk, misleading them about their sex and their bodies, putting ideas in their head that in the current heated atmosphere could easily lead to irreversible life-long decisions before puberty. And none of this is necessary. It is perfectly possible to look out for the very few genuinely trans children, without revolutionizing everything we know about the human body and biology. It’s possible to be welcoming to gay kids without insinuating that their real problem could be being “in the wrong body”.

The revelations that Disney productions have been feeding children over many years with the mindset that reality does not matter, that you can be anything you feel, tells us how woke degeneracy can have a severe impact on whole generations. This would be part of the explanation as to why there has been, in many WEIRD countries, an eruption in the number of children expressing confusion about sexual identity, girls especially.  

The capture of social elites by ideological pressure groups linked to transgenderism, always under the guise of Christian "human rights", continues as academia bows to what is fashionable (usuing the term "acceptable") and "morally superior".

Scientific paper distorts the facts

Investigatory journalist and author Jesse Singal has just produced in-depth scrutiny of another case of the stupid deceit that this gender ideology engenders in those wishing to stay professionally virtuous.

This is Singal's finding, stated as a headline: Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite.

The authors are mostly based at the University of Washington–Seattle or Seattle Children’s Hospital. The publication of their article was backed by a PR campaign by the university, leading to national interest in the findings. Singal writes:

All the publicity materials the university released tell a very straightforward, exciting story: The kids in this study who accessed puberty blockers or hormones (henceforth GAM, for “gender-affirming medicine”) had better mental health outcomes at the end of the study than they did at its beginning. 

He adds:

It isn’t just the publicity materials; the paper itself tells a similar story, at least a few times.

However, - and it's a big however - Singal discovers that the dramatic findings claimed are nonsense:

What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false. [My emphasis]

The kids in the study arrived with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems, many of them went on blockers or hormones, and they exited the study with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems.

If there were improvement, the researchers would have touted it in a clear, specific way by explaining exactly how much the kids on GAM improved. After all, this is exactly what they were looking into — they list their study’s “Question” as “Is gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary (TNB) youths associated with changes in depression, anxiety, and suicidality?” But they don’t claim this anywhere — not specifically. They reference “improvements” twice (see above) but offer no statistical demonstration anywhere in the paper or the supplemental material.

I wanted to double-check this to be sure, so I reached out to one of the study authors. They wanted to stay on background, but they confirmed to me that there was no improvement over time among the kids who went on hormones or blockers.

That’s why I think the University of Washington–Seattle, JAMA Network Open, and the authors of this study are simply misrepresenting it.  

The researchers used a model that allowed for certain conditions relating to their research, but Singal finds that this cannot be the reason for the claimed findings. He finds the authors, so caught up in the ideological hot-house that this issue has become, pushed their findings to the limit and beyond:

It’s frequently argued that if kids don’t have access to this medicine, they will be at a high risk of killing themselves. I don’t know what this claim could possibly mean if it doesn’t mean that upon starting blockers or hormones, a trans kid with elevated levels of depression or suicidal ideation will experience relief. These researchers, firmly enmeshed in this debate, found that kids who went on these medications did not experience relief — and yet they don’t mention this worrisome fact anywhere in their paper.

Singal offers a thorough methodological critique of the research and calls in an research expert to check his areas of disagreement with the authors. 

His evidence builds to confirm that "the science has become completely intertwined with the politics". He fears that research efforts are now part of a race to prove just how wrong politicians are in introducing legislation that would limit the use of medical treatments for young sexually confused children, and that researchers may want to produce evidence showing the treatments work to win kudos from issue activists as well as professional colleagues.

A serious tone given the implications of failure can be discerned in Singal's conclusion: 

[W]e should maintain vigilance and call out half-baked science when it comes to the literature on youth gender medicine. Adolescent mental health and suicide research, in particular, is a vitally crucial area of science, and we should hold it to high standards. If we can’t agree that it’s wrong and potentially harmful to distort research on these subjects, what can we agree on?

In short, we must stick with reality, whether it's the common sense of the sex binary that sustains much of the natural world that Andrew Sullivan is defending, or the findings of scientific practitioners, where evidence is discovered that enables us to know reality, rather than having the character of our existence obfuscated in an ultimately useless effort to distort reality for civilisation-changing political or ideological ends.  

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Surgery on 24-week baby

This is amazing. Dr. Darrell Cass and his team at the Cleveland Clinic performed fetal lung surgery on 24-week old baby girl. She was born without complications 12 weeks later. It's so inspiring to see work like this that saves valuable lives! #prolife https://t.co/kIjhSM0bO1 pic.twitter.com/aJn0PzGCAS

— Oregon Right to Life (@OR_RTL) April 7, 2022

Science forgets respect for truth

Searching for the truth. Photo Pavel Danilyuk

Good scientists know the provisional nature of their work. Long-held conclusions are superseded by later findings. As well, good scientists don't try to overrule the knowledge we have from sources other than the scientific method.

My previous post on this blog, Scientists's theories thrown into confusion, describes how the Standard Model of quantum mechanics is in being chipped away at as new findings raise doubts about it. 

Such misgivings about the solidity of established models must sear from the broad scientific community any conceit held as to certainty concerning findings, eliciting an attitude in social discourse of humble service.  

There is conceit but also corruption within the scientific community:

In their [2010] book, Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. In seven compelling chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era. [Source]

Corruption in science is not only for monetary advantage, but also for ideological ends, as we can see with the civilization-ending transgender ideology sweeping through the "science-based" professions. These capitulate if not through simple cowardice at bucking the professional fashion, then because members do not care enough about the truth. 

Naomi Oreskes, saw her work Merchants of Doubt, referred to above, make a valuable impact, particularly through a film sequel, in establishing the forces at play over the climate crisis. She is professor of the History of Science and affiliated professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. A world-renowned geologist, historian and public speaker, she is a leading voice on the role of science in society and the reality of anthropogenic climate change. 

In our context of the role of science in social discourse, her 2019 text Why Trust Science?  warrants fresh attention. 

As Nick Spencer notes in a piece this month, Oreskes offers many examples in the history of science where science was not worthy of our trust. Neither the "absurdities" of phrenology (taking the skull as indicative of mental faculties and traits of character) nor the "horrors" of eugenics did not prevent both being "considered serious and established disciplines in their own time".

He reports on further areas where scientists' mindset got in the way of good science:

Limited Energy Theory, from the late [1800s], argued that women were not suited to higher education on the grounds that it would adversely affect their fertility. Building on the ideas of thermodynamics, medics argued that the female of the species had only a limited supply of physical energy, much of which was needed for reproduction. Higher education would shrivel their ovaries and uteri. The medics who propounded the theory were all men.

Continental Drift, the idea that Earth’s continents had drifted over its surface in geological history, was well established in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century, but American geologists had methodological objections to it:[...] too much theory, not enough observation. By why was this an issue in America and not in Europe? According to Oreskes: “American geologists…explicitly linked their inductive methodology to American democracy and culture… deduction was consistent with autocratic European ways of thinking and acting… [the Americans] methodological preferences were grounded in their political ideas.” 

So how can we accept anything that scientists proffer as a fact? Oreskes answers that in recent times method has won through as the main means to quieten sceptics. The popular view was that "the processes of science enabled theories to be verified, or they enabled theories to be falsified, or they enabled things to be predicted", as Spencer phrased it, adding: "Science was trustworthy because of its commitment to a reliable method."

However, complete acceptance of that principle has faded, with method being seen as necessary, but not necessarily sufficient. Distrust of science is rearing its ugly head again, as anti-vaxxers pick up on any inconsistencies in official scientific pronouncements, or as medical and psychological services leave young people mutilated as the transgender fad sweeps many Western societies. 

Central to the trustworthiness of science is this, as Spencer explains, drawing on Oreskes:

“It is not so much that science corrects itself, but that scientists correct each other.” And, as the growing body of sociology of science shows, when scientists are too homogenous, too similar, too close to outside interests, or too vested in certain ideologies, their ability and inclination to correct one another is blunted. “Objectivity [emerges] as a function of community practices rather than as an attitude of individual researchers.” (52) 

Spencer adds: "It may be that the importance of [gender] diversity among scientists matters more for some disciplines – particularly those closer to the questions of human nature and society – than for others." 

He states that "none of this amounts to a wholesale rejection of scientific method, so much as a question mark over its sufficiency".

 In her conclusion, Oreskes outlines five “themes” that combine to produce scientific knowledge:

1. Method

2. Evidence

3. Consensus

4. Values

5. Humility

It is striking, says Spencer, that the last three direct the question of why we should trust science "away from the narrow confines of what most people consider to be science, and towards the wider social and ethical context in which science takes place". 

Oreskes uses her depth of knowledge of the history of science - all the wrong paths taken, personal preferences and delusions, the conceit and unwillingness to face new evidence, the blindness to ethical issues - to plot a course for us as we open the door, with too little care, to the world of AI, the pursuit of immortality, and genetic manipulation for reasons of vanity - designer babies.

To borrow from Spencer's language, Oreskes states that matters of import to society cannot be left to just the scientist. Scientists should work in association with others who are suitably educated, learned, and informed. But education alone is not enough. We need the community to be involved, with members bringing to the fore their various backgrounds and experiences. 

Community participants, like scientists, must be characterised by integrity, patience, diligence, and responsiveness. Their work should be marked by humility, a refusal to foreclose on answers, an openness to new ideas, a reluctance to claim that you have somehow finally fathomed the mind of God.

But above all, the community should be varied, so that just as scientists correct each other to make better science, so members correct each other to make a better interpretation of the evidence. 

Science is a process, and the material world is the usual ingredient of that process. As the leading agent in that process, the scientist must not be closed from the real world. Ideological filters must be removed in conducting research so that a wider reality is not excluded. Here, I'm thinking of those prominent WEIRD neuroscientists who take what they know - so far- of the brain and go on their way mocking the more than 85 per cent of the world's population who acknowledge a spiritual dimension in their life.

Three takeaways: Science is essential in knowing our world; science does not stand alone; science is one part of the warp and woof of our human experience. 

And a fourth: Scientists belong to a community that is devoted to the truth, and whose members are willing to fight for the truth.

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Scientists' theories thrown into confusion

Particles of the Standard Model of particle physics (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN)

 Here's how the Associated Press described some breaking scientific news today:

The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought.

“It’s not just something is wrong,” said Dave Toback, a particle physicist at Texas A&M University and a spokesperson for the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Lab, which conducted the experiments. If replicated by other labs, “it literally means something fundamental in our understanding of nature is wrong.”

That fragility of science's understanding of the "really beautiful and weird” components and forces of what exists and how these unite to sustain our life was stressed in a BBC article on the same news arising from the publication of a research paper published in the journal Science:

Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the  Large Hadron Collider, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.

"The hope is that these cracks will turn into chasms and eventually we will see some spectacular signature that not only confirms that the Standard Model has broken down as a description of nature, but also give us a new direction to help us understand what we are seeing and what the new physics theory looks like.

"If this holds, there have to be new particles and new forces to explain how to make these data consistent".

The BBC report continues:

All eyes are now on the Large Hadron Collider which is due to restart its experiments after a three-year upgrade. The hope is that these will provide the results which will lay the foundations for a new more complete theory of physics.

"Most scientists will be a little bit cautious," says Dr Patel.

"We've been here before and been disappointed, but we are all secretly hoping that this is really it, and that in our lifetime we might see the kind of transformation that we have read about in history books." 

The AP provides insight into the shock waves sent through all those digging into the mysteries of quantum mechanics:

The result is so extraordinary it must be confirmed by another experiment, scientists say. If confirmed, it would present one of the biggest problems yet with scientists’ detailed rulebook for the cosmos, called the Standard Model. [Go to this site for an interesting read]

Duke University physicist Ashutosh V. Kotwal, the project leader for analysis, said it’s like discovering there’s a hidden room in your house.

Scientists speculated that there may be an undiscovered particle that is interacting with the W boson that could explain the difference. Maybe dark matter, another poorly understood component of the universe, could be playing a role. Or maybe there’s just new physics involved that they just don’t understand at the moment, researchers said.

 The finding is important because of its potential effect on the Standard Model of physics.

“Nature has facts,” Duke’s Kotwal said. “The model is the way we understand those facts.”

Scientists have long known the Standard Model isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explain dark matter or gravity well. If scientists have to go in and tinker with it to explain these findings they have to make sure it doesn’t throw out of whack mathematical equations that now explain and predict other particles and forces well, researchers said.

It is a recurring problem with the model. A year ago a different team found another problem with the Standard Model and how muons react.

“Quantum mechanics is really beautiful and weird,” Toback said. “Anyone who has not been deeply troubled by quantum mechanics has not understood it.”

I like that thought - that the design of the universe, whether on the scale of innumerable galaxies or on the scale of subatomic particles - is "beautiful" and awe-inspiring ("troubling"?). It gives science as a whole a fresh purpose, that of serving humanity by revealing the wonder of what has been provided for us out of love.

💢 See also Machine finds tantalising hints of new physics 

                    New force of nature

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Hero Mom saves daughter from sex-change pressure

Determined mother exposes fallacy of transgender rules      Photo by Albert Rafael

Theresa's daughter went through a time of wretchedness believing that the answer to her anxiety over the changes occuring in her body at puberty was to become a boy. Theresa stood her ground as the daughter's school followed the "affirm, affirm, affirm" path. By changing school and losing access to social media, Theresa's daughter has regained her balance and is happy she can flourish as a teenage girl.

Whereas the "experts'" response to the daughter's declaration was to affirm every thought the daughter had, Theresa wanted to tread carefully and, particularly, protect all options for her daughter's future. Theresa and her husband were not against transgenderism but they knew their child, who had delighted in all things feminine but also had a history of  anxiety and depression. They wanted the school to continue to treat their daughter as a girl and to support her as she went through a period of counselling to identify exactly why she felt distressed at that time.

Accounts of clashes between protective parents and schools that have succumbed to transgender orthodoxy are very informative about the character of our society, where the right of parents to have the governing responsibility for care of children is clearly downgraded by those whose goal is to redefine the family and to assert that the rights of adults must take precedence, no matter the harm inflicted on the vulnerable.

To scrutinise the rescue of Theresa's daughter is definitely instructive:

Despite their daughter’s protests, Theresa and her husband decided it would be best that she be identified as a girl and by her real name when she returned to school in mid-January. They assumed their local suburban school district about 30 miles west of Milwaukee would support their rights as parents to make this delicate medical decision for their daughter.

They were wrong.

Leaders of her daughter’s middle school told Theresa that while they couldn’t change her daughter’s name and gender in official records, they would refer to her as a boy and by her new chosen name, Leo, if that’s what her daughter wanted. “We’re an advocate for the child and not the parent,” they told her, Theresa recalled. To Theresa, the school-district leaders were usurping her and her husband’s rights as parents. 

Theresa and her husband have sued the school district, as other challenges to school policies that shut parents out from decisions regarding kids’ gender identification at school occur in California, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia. Cases are that schools violated their constitutional rights as parents.

This is the situation:

To progressive trans advocates, not immediately affirming a child’s new gender identity is a form of abuse. Earlier this year, teachers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were instructed by “diversity” staffers from a local college to hide their students’ changing gender identities from their parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned”, according to leaked training documents.

This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in a case regarding a Madison Metropolitan School District policy, adopted in 2018, that commits to affirming “each student’s self-designated gender identity” and prohibits staff from letting parents know that their child is using a new name and pronouns at school. To prevent the parents from finding out, staff are instructed to use “the student’s affirmed name and pronouns in the school setting, and their legal name and pronouns with family”, according to the policy.

 Back to the circumstances to Theresa's daughter:

Anxiety and depression had been an issue throughout her daughter’s childhood, and that got worse during the Covid-19 lockdowns when she was isolated at home, stuck in her mind, and with access to too much social media.

“She struggles with self-worth, and feeling like she’s pretty enough, is she thin enough,” Theresa said. “She has struggled with that for some time.”

On the first occasion that her daughter had opened up about wanting to be a boy Theresa had responded with the message that: 

“I think we need to work on you starting to like who you are instead of constantly focusing on changing yourself into something you’re not.”

She continued to press for that basic step when her daughter entered a mental health facility for a few days. She asked the girl's counsellor whether he had looked into whether the eruption of depression and anxiety might explain why she was trying to “create a brand new person”.

“And he was kind of like, essentially, ‘No.’ But he was like, ‘If you don’t do what your daughter wants, if she decides to hurt or kill herself, that’s really going to fall on you guys, because you’re not respecting your child’s choices.’”

Theresa said her husband was willing to call his daughter whatever she wanted if that meant keeping her alive. Theresa put her foot down. Her daughter is a girl, “and until somebody is going to take some time to find out what the hell is going on in her mind, it’s going to stay that way,” she said. “I’m not going to appease her for short-term gain when I feel like there are long-term problems that need to be worked out.”

At home, she said, her daughter was continuing with outpatient virtual therapy and growing angrier. Some nights her daughter just vented, said she was a boy, and called Theresa a “transphobe”. But Theresa said she refused to negotiate.

“I told her, ‘I’m not telling you that you can’t be transgender. I’m not telling you that you can’t be a boy. I’m telling you that you can’t change your name and your gender right now,’” she said.  “You have a lot of underlying issues that need to be addressed before you make the decision that you were born in the wrong body. I understand that all these people around you are appeasing you and giving you want you want, and I’m not doing that, and that makes you angry. But I am your best friend. I am looking out for your best interest.”

Her daughter just seemed to grow angrier.

Therapists were telling the girl that her mother was her biggest opponent to any sex change. Theresa states:

“I was going to be the biggest problem in her life because I do not accept her for who she is now, nor will I ever,” she said. “They discussed her getting on medication to transition to a man because it’s easier when you’re younger. Her anger was fueled by the therapy I was paying for.” 

Theresa took her daughter out of the school that would not comply with her wishes for her daughter. It cited an executive order on transgender issues from President Biden. This was in January 2021. At that time her daughter now identified as a lesbian. Also:

Theresa didn’t send her daughter back to her therapist after her month of outpatient care ended. She took away her daughter’s access to social media. And after a couple of weeks, she said, her daughter’s demeanor began to revert back to where it was before.

 Time is a great healer!

One day, Theresa said, she came home and found her daughter in the kitchen talking with her dad. “She was like, ‘You know, Mom, I’m really sorry. Affirmative care really messed me up. They really made me hate you and Grandma. I know that you love me, and you just want what’s best for me,’” Theresa said. “She’s just a completely different kid.”

Theresa said her daughter now sees a therapist they vetted well. They work well together, and her daughter is doing better. The family bought a new home in another school district, and her daughter is going to school there. She said her daughter no longer identifies as a lesbian or a boy, though she would be free to do so in her new school.

 What a great mom! She went the full forty yards. For the sake of her daughter she studied peer-reviewed research on gender dysphoria and treatment, which made her concerned about the affirmation approach. She would not let the self-identified experts and officials push her from the track she knew was best for her daughter. She knew that it was going to be her and her husband who would have to pick up the pieces if transgender orthdoxy were to be inflicted on their daughter.

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Male+female parenting is best

Artificial families are not optimal for children

A single man wanted a baby of his own, so he hired a surrogate to deliver the child. But what will he say when his son declares he wants a mother of his own?

Society is beginning to suffer in fundamental ways from this kind of self-indulgence, and especially from the form manifested in the civilisation-destroying triumph of gender ideology.

One way that society is being affected detrimentally by the explosion in our midst of "gay rights" and by the tragedy of same-sex marriage, is in the loss of the rich insight from time immemorial that a child needs parents who are male and female. Conversely, each child is in the best environment when they are raised by their own biological mother and father.

A thorough reading of the academic literature makes it plain that parents of each sex have distinctive attributes and combined, they complement each other. That said, it goes without saying that the devoted single mothers and fathers bringing up children deserve only praise from society.

However, the University of Texas Child and Family Research Center can stress in its document "Five things you should know about the importance of fathers", that children suffer through the absence of a committed male father:  

Involved fatherhood is linked to better outcomes on nearly every measure of child wellbeing, from cognitive development and educational achievement to self-esteem and pro-social behavior. Children who grow up with involved fathers are:

39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school,

45% less likely to repeat a grade,

60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school,

twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school,

75% less likely to have a teen birth, and

80% less likely to spend time in jail.

This post will delve into substantial research on the subject of female-male parenting, but, first, interesting findings:

Dads [...] seem to offer a unique touch, with at least one study suggesting that fathers are better than mothers at teaching children how to swim because they are less overprotective and more likely to let their children venture into the deep end or swim facing away from them.

Broadly, the research suggests that boys lean on their fathers more than anyone else as they develop social skills. And one large study of nearly 9,000 adults confirmed that a father’s death affects sons more strongly than daughters, leading to the same sort of health problems seen after an ugly divorce.

Most studies suggest that, until children hit puberty, the father effect is roughly equal for boys and girls. Both boys and girls who are fortunate enough to have dads in their lives excel and, in some cases, outperform their peers. But when hormones kick in, studies demonstrate that dads suddenly become the arbiters of their children’s sexual behavior too. This is most acutely felt by teenage daughters, who take fewer sexual risks if they have strong relationships with their dads.

Although DelPriore examined several outside factors, one of the most salient links between a woman and her sexual decision-making was how close she felt to her father [as a man]. 

Promundo, a global group promoting sexual equality, provides these research results:

Over the last four decades, efforts by researchers and practitioners have contributed to increase the body of evidence that improved the conceptualization and understanding of the myriad ways fathers can positively impact the health and wellbeing of children. Though most of the research is from the Global North, it has become clear that fathers can and do distinctly contribute to foundational components for children’s growth and development including nutrition and safety, early learning and responsive care (WHO, 2018).[My emphasis]

Fathers’ positive engagement in their children’s upbringing has been linked to children’s improved physical and mental health, better cognitive development and educational achievement, improved peer relations and capacity for empathy, fewer behavioral problems (in boys) and psychological problems (in girls), higher self-esteem and life satisfaction, lower rates of depression, fear and selfdoubt into adulthood, lower rates of criminality and substance abuse, and more openness to critically examining traditional gendered roles (Levtov et al., 2015). 

The distinctiveness of how each sex relates to their children is clear from a 2019 paper from UC Berkeley. The author states:

I provide evidence on the role of parent gender. Fathers are more likely than mothers to enter their child into competition, and this difference is sizeable enough to make fathers choose more competition for girls than mothers do for boys. The difference in mothers’ and fathers’ choices is not explained by a difference in their beliefs about children’s preferences. Rather, it appears that parents’ choices are partly determined by the competitiveness preferences of parents themselves, with fathers being more willing than mothers to compete (51 percent versus 32 percent). 

Another instance of sex coming to the fore naturally in dealing with children is this:

Also, lesbian biological mothers typically assumed greater caregiving responsibility than their partners, reflecting inequities among heterosexual couples. 

The traditional family has survived for good reason. Schumm reports on research findings:

Relationship instability appears to be higher among gay and lesbian parent couples and may be a key mediating factor influencing outcomes for children.

Western society has let itself down by not defending more vigorously the foundations of what makes for a healthy existence, especially for the most vulnerable. The tide-change in mentality toward aggressive individualism fostered the narcissistic sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, and now the massive family-redefinition machine.  

Psychiatrist and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association Scott Haltzman observes:

Parenting styles correlate to biological differences between men and women. Women, compared to men, have higher levels of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for emotional bonding—and oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin serves to calm anxiety, reduce motor activity, and foster an increase in touch. In contrast, testosterone—present in men at levels tenfold higher than women—is correlated to an increase in motor activity in infant boys and may be responsible for higher levels of physical activities in men compared to women.

Rob Palkovitz, professor of human development and family studies at the University of Delaware writes,

As far as biological sex goes, men tend to be firmer and more nondirective than women as parents, while women tend to be more responsive, structured, and regimented than men. Fathers are more demanding of children in regard to problem solving than mothers and make more action-related demands for accomplishment of tasks. Fathers tend to be more unconventional in their toy and object use than mothers and use objects to engage in physical contact with children to a greater degree than mothers. Fathers also destabilize children during play through the use of teasing to a greater extent than mothers.

Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, notes that fathers “emphasize play more than caretaking and their play is more likely to involve a rough-and-tumble approach”. 

Further:

Fathers emphasize more competition, risk-taking, and independence while mothers stress more self-paced play, that is, mothers tend to encourage more play that is at their child’s level. For example, fathers are more likely to encourage their kids to go hiking with them and take a more challenging trail. Fathers are more likely to engage in wrestling and grappling with their kids and also to play sports that are more physically demanding. By promoting and encouraging diverse activities, fathers and mothers build their children up in distinct ways.

The 2010 research conclusions from Biblarz and Stacey that there was no difference in outcomes for children raised by male-female and those by same-sex couples have been well and truly debunked with the preponderance of research in the past 10 years producing evidence that children need male-female parents to be equipped to thrive. 

Children's rights are a much neglected area. It shouldn't be that way, but thanks to the successful push for legislation introduced on behalf of adults' "rights", society is going to have to learn from its suffering as children grow up in less than optimal environments and wreak havoc through mental illness, drug consumption and anti-social behaviour. Reality will win out.

So let's get back to reality, away from the woke-imposed anti-scientism that flows through the study of history, through sociology, and into a debilitating form of family life. 

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Divorce is a tragedy for kids

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) April 1, 2022