Family & Children: All Articles and Books

Grand New Party

Ron Tang — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:18:00 -0400

* This article was excerpted from "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

The Old Consensus

When Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election by 16 million votes, carrying only six states and faring worse than any major-party candidate since Alf Landon in 1936, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that conservatism would rise from his defeat, let alone that the race might mark the beginning of a decades-long realignment in American politics. The Goldwater debacle was greeted instead as a welcome affirmation of a political and cultural… more

The New 'I Do'

Ron Tang — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 05:15:00 -0400

Hold the champagne.

Or at least the California sparkling wine.

This week should be a joyous one for those of us who believe in the right to marry the person you love. A month after the California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage, gay couples will be able to walk into county offices here and secure the same marriage license to which heterosexual couples such as my wife and I are entitled.

Partners are hastily arranging nuptials, and the wedding-industrial complex of caterers and consultants is anticipating a summer windfall. In San Francisco, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who are… more

The Lost Children

Ron Tang — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In the summer of 1995, an Iranian man named Majid Yourdkhani allowed a friend to photocopy pages from “The Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel, at the small print shop that he owned in Tehran. Government agents arrested the friend and came looking for Majid, who secretly crossed the border to Turkey and then flew to Canada. In his haste, Majid was forced to leave behind his wife, Masomeh; for months afterward, Iranian government agents phoned her and said things like “If you aren’t divorcing him, then you are supporting him, and we will therefore arrest you and torture you.”… more

Life Chances

adminn — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:35:00 -0500

The blue-ribbon commission has an inauspicious history in American public policy. Most often, assembling a dozen or two bipartisan grandees to deliberate soberly about a problem for several years is merely a way of evading the problem.

But there are exceptions. Though it will probably pass unnoticed, Dec. 22 of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of one of the most successful policy commissions in modern U.S. history: The National Commission on Children. Chaired by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the esteemed group four years later issued a report, Beyond Rhetoric, which was… more

Flexing Their Word Power

adminn — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:46:00 -0500

Watching a bunch of gangly middle-schoolers hopping around in their gym clothes at 9 in the morning brought back all sorts of bad memories from my own junior high school days. Still, just by watching Wilmington Middle School students in phys ed class one day last week, I learned a valuable lesson about generosity, voluntarism and just plain common sense.

I went to Wilmington to check out what I thought was a simple yet brilliant idea to help working-class students compete in the high-stakes world of educational testing.

We hear a lot about educational inequality, but we sometimes forget that inequality comes… more

Continuing the Investment

adminn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0500

Deep Creek Elementary School is an education success story. In 2001, Deep Creek, where more than three-quarters of students come from low-income families and 80 percent are black or Hispanic, was one of the worst elementary schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its third-graders were reading at a first-grade level. But the new principal, Anissa Brown Dennis, expanded collaboration and professional development for teachers, implemented an aligned reading and math curriculum from pre-K through third grade, and offered summer learning and after-school programs for struggling students. Today, nearly three-quarters of Deep Creek students read on grade level, teacher and student morale… more

Baby Bonds Pay Bipartisan Dividends

Articles — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:33:00 -0400

At a recent campaign stop with the Congressional Black Caucus, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account.”

That was enough to generate a few headlines and some right-wing outrage. The Drudge Report was quick to tweak one of its favorite targets and drive some Internet traffic with a bold banner, “A Bond for Every Bassinet.”

The conservative Washington Times and New York Post blasted the idea within 24 hours, and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani called it “pandering” and promptly incorporated it into his next fundraising appeal.

But… more

Serving Our Young Adults

Articles — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:44:00 -0400

Many churches are developing programs to serve young adults. Many are investing in young adult coordinators in order to help grow their church.

However, there is another reason for churches to focus on young adults -- the critical needs of the early young adult population in our nation.

The violence at Virginia Tech last April perpetrated by a disturbed young adult is a tragedy beyond belief. It calls attention to the challenges faced by an often overlooked age group.

While American society has appropriately focused on the needs of teenagers in recent years, we should not lose sight of the needs of… more

Teach Your Children About Interfaith

Articles — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:45:00 -0400

One of the great fears that parents and church leaders have about their youth engaging in interfaith dialog is that they will lose their connection to their own religion and will end up rejecting and leaving their faith, maybe even converting to another religion as a result. My experience as a Christian pastor has been just the opposite -- I have watched young people become stronger in their own faith through exposure to other traditions.

Personal relationships matter a great deal in influencing how individuals come to faith, switch faiths or grow in faith. Most of us are part of the… more

Forget Easy Money

Articles — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 07:12:00 -0400

Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, has a curious new idea -- or, more precisely, an old one. No longer will it use wads of Chinese cash recycled through Wall Street to make subprime loans to unqualified borrowers. Instead, it will take in deposits from small savers and lend them out to people who might actually repay them -- just like that humble thrift institution president George Bailey did in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Imagine: a bank that promotes thrift! This could be the start of something big. Writing recently in the American Banker, Eugene Ludwig, a former comptroller of… more

Help Kids via Junk Food Tax

Articles — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:41:00 -0400

In a few days, Congress will return to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The program will pay for expanded coverage for children through an increase in cigarette taxes. The logic is to raise revenue while discouraging a behavior harmful to child health. Instead of a cigarette tax, however, Congress should address the health problem that research indicates is the greatest crisis facing America’s young people by taxing junk food instead.

The new epidemic facing American children is obesity. The Foundation for Child Development’s 2007 Child Well-Being Index has found that the overall health of America’s children… more

Mr. Successful

adminn — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:52:00 -0400

Anyone who's ever been to a wedding knows not everybody can stand up in front of a roomful of people and just talk. Anthony Pico discovered by accident, at 15, that he has a gift for doing that. He's 18 now, and he's become so well known as a public speaker on the subject of foster care, which he knows well, he was appointed to a blue… more

Islamophobes Rejoice! EU Countries are Becoming More Christian

Articles — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:50:00 -0400

Americans of all political stripes tend to see what they want to see in the European Union. For progressives, its example is supposed to show how a robust welfare state, including universal health care, is consistent with prosperity. It’s also supposed to show how separation of church and state, multilateralism, multiculturalism, opposition to the death penalty, embrace of gay marriage, state-sponsored preschool, gun control, the Kyoto Treaty, and other progressive causes are all consistent with a just and sustainable civilization -- indeed, with becoming a "moral superpower."

And so we have received books like Mark Leonard’s Why Europe Will Run the… more

The Case for Pre-K

Articles — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:10:00 -0400

In 1961, 13 three- and four-year-olds from poor black families began attending a preschool class at Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. They were there as much to learn as to teach. A team of researchers followed not only their time at the preschool, but their trajectory over the next four decades, and the findings were startling:

Compared to a control group of similar children who didn’t attend preschool, this class from Perry Elementary School would be less likely to skip class, be placed in special education, or wind up in jail. They’d be more likely to graduate high school… more

Living Wage Feasible and the Right Thing to Do

Articles — Fri, 11 May 2007 07:33:00 -0400

I never thought that trying to extend the city’s "living wage" law to a dozen hotels near Los Angeles International Airport was a good idea.

Please don’t misunderstand. Directing businesses to pay their employees at least $10.64 an hour is a smart and principled way to help the working poor. Those who insist that such a policy would trigger a huge loss of jobs are flat-out wrong.

The problem with targeting a handful of hotels -- and this was true even before a Superior Court judge last week barred the city from enforcing the ordinance -- is the narrowness of the approach.

Proponents… more

A Gift of Flexibility For Our Moms

Articles — Thu, 10 May 2007 13:56:00 -0400

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and many of us will be out this week buying gifts for our moms. That is the right thing for us to do. As a nation, one way for our country to say "thank you" to our moms is by giving them more flexibility to balance their work and family commitments through creative public policies that increase workplace flexibility.

The changing roles of mothers have been one of the most pronounced social trends seen in the last century. Today, more than 60 percent of families have two working parents. Moms are working harder than ever both… more

Rallies Magnify the Shortage in Child Care

Articles — Fri, 04 May 2007 18:31:00 -0400

The turnout may have been relatively puny at this week’s immigration rights rallies in Los Angeles, but I have no doubt that the demonstrations threw more than a few families’ routines into turmoil.

After all, life can become pretty complicated when the nanny doesn’t show and you’re forced to figure out what to do with the kids so that you yourself can get to work.

For many thousands of Californians, this isn’t a one-day dilemma. It’s a constant headache, which presents some extremely difficult choices.

Just ask Aida Sanchez, a single mother of two who lives in Koreatown. Her 7-year-old son takes part… more

Is America Serious About Mental Health?

Articles — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:10:00 -0400

The Virginia Tech massacre raises questions that may never be answered. Even in the insolubility of this week's events, however, one thing is clear: Cho Seung-Hui was a very sick young man.

No one deserves an explanation to the questions this tragedy raises more than the victims and their families. One question we all should be asking: Is America serious about the mental health of its young people?

America's young people face a mental health crisis. According to the Foundation for Child Development's 2007 Child Well-Being Index, the emotional and spiritual well being… more

The Moral Case for Covering Children

Articles — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:55:00 -0400

Abstract: Before the crucial upcoming debate over reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and all of the 10,000 general health reform questions that this discussion will engender, we should consider one fundamental moral question, for our answer will reveal the kinds of policies we actually want to pursue: Who should be allowed to sit at our health care table of plenty?

This essay sketches an answer to this question, drawing on the literature of various faith traditions as well as recent health services research. The short answer is: Everyone, but poor kids have a special place reserved for… more

Kids' Accounts Warrant Debate

Articles — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:38:00 -0400

Governor Schwarzenegger was cheered when he recently talked about post-partisanship in Washington, D.C. But the post-partisan waters don’t run deep back home in California. Two state senators who just crossed the aisle to forward a creative solution to a pressing problem are getting more grief than glory.

Senator Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Robert Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, held a press conference on February 28 to introduce their bill to create a California Kids Account for every newborn. The goal is to encourage parents to start saving early for their children’s future and, in the process, build the whole family’s financial know-how.… more