Category Archives: family

Ohio Senate Approves Pro-Life Legislation

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

(COLUMBUS, OH) – The Ohio Senate passed House Bill 63, Ohio Right to Life’s Judicial Bypass legislation, by a 23 to 9 bipartisan vote this afternoon. This pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by closing loopholes and raising the bar to protect parents’ ability to care for their children.

“We thank Senate President Tom Niehaus and the pro-life members of the Senate who continue to advance life-saving policies,” said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life. “H.B. 63 strengthens parents’ ability to care for their children and prevents lawyers and others from taking mom and dad’s place when the child needs them most.”

Current Ohio law states that parental consent is required before a minor can obtain an abortion, but a loophole exists which allows judges to bypass parental involvement and allow a minor to obtain an abortion. H.B. 63 puts an end to this “rubber-stamp” judicial approval.

Today’s vote on the Senate floor follows the overwhelming 64 to 33 bipartisan vote of support it received in the Ohio House earlier this year. After the House concurs with today’s passage of the legislation, the bill will be sent to pro-life Governor John Kasich to be signed into law.

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Grandparents Caring for Children

Posted on September 25, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Marian Wright Edelman

At a time in life when many are beginning to ease into retirement and enjoying a little more free time, Mr. and Mrs. B. found themselves unexpectedly starting all over again-struggling to care for their adopted daughter’s two young sons. Their daughter’s bipolar disorder was recognized very late, and though she stays involved in her sons’ lives, neither she nor their father were able to be a full-time parent. So the boys went to live with their grandparents. As in all families with children, there’s always something happening that demands attention and this family has had very serious needs. When their youngest grandson was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Mr. and Mrs. B. had trouble finding a good doctor to care for him. Then Mrs. B. was diagnosed with cancer. But
there are no regrets: “There’s no ‘us time,'” Mr. B says, “but I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Their family isn’t alone. Lots of us who are grandparents are used to stepping in and caring for grandchildren from time to time. I know my husband and I have spent many evenings and weekends on “grandma and grandpa duty,” and loved every wonderful but exhausting moment! But many grandparents and other family members are going far beyond the occasional Saturday night or long weekend. Since all children deserve safe, permanent and loving families, when parents can’t care for their children-they may have died, be incarcerated, or be struggling with substance abuse or other health or mental health challenges-relatives like Mr. and Mrs. B. often end up “parenting a second time around.” They step in to give their grandchildren or nieces or nephews the love and stability they need and avoid the need for foster care with strangers.

As rampant unemployment and housing foreclosures ravage families across our nation, an increasing number of children are living in households headed by grandparents and other relatives, often three generations sharing scarce resources due to the recession. Nearly 7.8 million children live in households headed by a grandparent or other relative. More than 2.5 million grandparents report they are responsible for grandchildren living with them-a third with no parent present. Black children are twice as likely as all children to live with their grandparents or other relatives only.

These grandparents and other relatives are providing vital care, stability, and continuity to millions of America’s most vulnerable children. They are keeping children safe and families together: children raised by relatives are more likely to be placed with siblings and less likely to lose touch with their cultural traditions and community connections. But this enormous responsibility can have many effects on caregivers’ own lives and financial stability. Many are still working and many others live on fixed incomes. Twenty percent of grandparents raising grandchildren are poor and many relative caregivers need financial help and other forms of support. Often caregivers unexpectedly thrust into this role may be hesitant to share their new challenges with others, and if they do, often find it difficult to connect with networks to find programs and assistance for which they are eligible.

That’s why on September 15th grandparents and other relative caregivers from across the country gathered on the West Lawn of the U. S. Capitol to participate in the Fourth National GrandRally for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children sponsored by AARP, Child Welfare League of America, Children’s Defense Fund, Generations United, GrandFamilies of America, and National Committee of Grandparents for Children’s Rights. The GrandRally saught to educate Congress about the importance of relative caregivers, the challenges they face, and the contributions they make. With scarce resources and a tumultuous economy, relatives’ critical role in keeping children safe and in stable homes will be highlighted along with the important role Social Security plays in helping caregivers assume care of related children.

The Children’s Defense Fund often gets calls from grandparents and other relative caregivers seeking sources of financial assistance. In recent months, many have called to tell us they’ve been laid off and need financial help to continue caring for their grandchildren. They are often embarrassed by their circumstances and afraid to contact public agencies for assistance, fearful their grandchildren will be taken away and placed in foster care. Grandparent caregivers often face barriers to participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/Food Stamps) or qualifying their grandchildren for the National School Lunch Program. And while Social Security provides needed support for grandparents, grandchildren aren’t always eligible for benefits.

Over the last decade youth unemployment has soared, adding extra stress for grandfamilies already struggling to keep grandchildren in high school and now worrying about them finding a job if they do graduate. The percentage of youths ages 16-19 employed in 2010 was the lowest since the end of World War II. While specific data on youths with relative caregivers are unavailable, the teen employment rate dropped to 27 percent in 2010 – only one in five teens in a low income family was working. Even youths whose grandparents helped them graduate from college are likely to be employed at much lower salaries in jobs that do not use their college degrees. Nearly half of all Associate Degree holders and one-third of Bachelor Degree holders were mal-employed in 2010.

Three past GrandRallies inspired caregivers to establish support groups and create kinship navigator programs to connect children to supports for which they are eligible. Relative caregivers organized state and local coalitions, held State GrandRallies to educate local policymakers about children’s needs and conducted statewide kinship care conferences. Some were invited to return to Washington, D.C. to share their stories at Congressional briefings.

For more information about the GrandRally, visit www.grandrally.org.You can also find out more about children in your own state being raised by grandparents and other relatives on the AARP Website.

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.

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Legal Brief Details Flaws in Pro-Lesbian Custody Ruling

Posted on September 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Thomas McFeely

NEW YORK (C-FAM) Pro-family legal experts have mobilized in defense of a Chilean father at risk of losing custody of his three daughters, courtesy of a decision by an international human rights tribunal.

Jaime López Allende has had sole custody of his daughters for the last eight years, has been an exemplary father, and is the girls’ preferred custodial parent. This didn’t matter when the transnational Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ruled on a claim filed against the Chilean government by ex-wife Karen Atala, a Chilean judge who broke up their marriage to pursue a lesbian relationship.

The IACHR concluded Chile’s courts impermissibly violated the American Convention on Human Rights by denying Atala custody because of her “sexual orientation.” The commission’s non-binding decision is now before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has authority under the American Convention on Human Rights to issue binding rulings. On Sept. 8, the Alliance Defense Fund submitted a carefully-researched amicus legal brief to the Court detailing four fundamental flaws in the IACHR’s findings.

First, the ADF brief argues, the Inter-American Court would undermine national sovereignty and “most certainly exceed its competency” by intervening in a matter that Chilean courts handled in full conformity with that country’s legal procedures. The ADF brief also addresses an IACHR request that the Court order Chile to punish the judges who ruled against Atala. “Such overreach is breathtaking in its audacity and patently wrong in so many ways,” the brief comments. “That the Commission would do so … indicates that the Commission must have been overcome by a reckless ideological impulse, in service of which all other principles must be cast aside.”

Second, the amicus brief points out that “sexual orientation” isn’t even mentioned in the American Convention on Human Rights. Moreover, there is neither a substantial body of international legal precedent nor consensus within the international community that the ill-defined concept of “sexual orientation” should be a protected human-rights category.

The third critical flaw in the IACHR decision is that Chilean courts “determined that Karen Atala was an unfit mother for reasons unrelated to her sexual orientation,” the ADF legal brief notes. Judges did consider aspects of Atala’s personal life that suggested she was an inappropriate custodial parent, such as her role in breaking up the family, her subsequent inability to maintain a continuous relationship and her insistence on utilizing her daughters as unwilling pawns in her high-profile political activism as a “lesbiana publica.” But this consideration didn’t violate Atala’s “right to privacy,” as concluded by the IACHR, since similar conduct by a heterosexual parent automatically would be regarded as highly relevant in determining whether granting that parent custody was in the best interests of the parent’s children.

Finally, the ADF brief asserts, even if the Court finds that Atala’s human rights were violated, it’s still bound to reject the IACHRs’ custody finding. That’s because it’s settled international law that the children’s best interests trump all other factors, and the facts incontrovertibly establish Allende as a superior custodial parent.

“An individual’s sexual orientation must remain a neutral factor in all custody determinations, and should not give rise to a ‘supercategory’ or preferential treatment,” the ADF brief concludes. “To do so would be in direct violation of long-standing international principles placing the best interests of children above all other considerations.”

The Court is currently hearing arguments about the Atala case. Other pro-family groups from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Chile, Mexico, Argentina and Jamaica have said they also intend to submit briefs in support of Allende.

Thomas McFeely writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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Catholic Marriage Advocate Questions Her Church’s Stance On Marriage

Posted on September 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

On August 29, Catholics recalled the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, who was beheaded after being imprisoned by Herod Antipas. John had boldly reprehended Herod for an adulterous relationship.

There is an undercurrent of voices standing up for marriage, especially in light of Pope Benedict’s comments about the Sunday Gospel on August 28.

Sunday’s Gospel recounted Jesus’ rebuking Peter for wanting Jesus to stay away from Jerusalem if it meant death. Pope Benedict XVI says, “A Christian follows the Lord when he accepts lovingly his own cross, which in the world’s eyes seems a defeat and a ‘loss of life’, knowing that he is not carrying it alone but with Jesus, sharing his same journey of self-giving.”

On August 25, LifeSite News emphasized how people in the younger generation have an intense desire for self-sacrificial, unconditional, lifelong married love. Their story featured a video produced by the Emerging Leaders program, showing testimonials from people who know, “society has lost something in that they are not committed to lifelong married love.” Interviewees said, “It is good to serve someone else. Lifelong commitment has an impact on everyone.”

Emerging Leaders is a project of the Ruth Institute and its goal is to empower young adults and college students to create a positive social and intellectual climate for marriage.

About St. John the Baptist, St. Bede the venerable wrote, “Such was the quality and strength of the man who accepted the end of this present life by shedding his blood after the long imprisonment. He preached the freedom of heavenly peace, yet was thrown into irons by ungodly men. He was locked away in the darkness of prison, though he came bearing witness to the Light of life and deserved to be called a bright and shining lamp by that Light itself, which is Christ. To endure temporal agonies for the sake of the truth was not a heavy burden for such men as John; rather it was easily borne and even desirable, for he knew eternal joy would be his reward.”

Bai Macfarlane, founder of Mary’s Advocates, has networked with people who she says strive to endure “marital agonies for the sake of truth.” Mary’s Advocates supports those who remain faithful to marriage after their spouses have abandoned marriage, according to Macfarlane.

Macfarlane says, “Marriage is not about self. It is about the other and it is about ones children and society at large. Sometimes marriage can even be analogous to an imprisonment, and from the world’s perspective it appears as a defeat and a ‘loss of life.’ But for those who have confidence in our valid marriage, there is no reason to lose hope; reconciliation is always a possibility. And while our spouses choose to renege on the marital life, we suffer. But if we suffer for Christ’s sake, He can use our suffering for the sake of the Church (Col. 1:24).”

David Borer, from Iowa, is faithful to his wife after she abandoned their marriage and divorced him. He had no power to stop the civil divorce, and he now is defending his marriage in the Catholic Church tribunal system. Under the canon law of the Catholic Church, David’s wife must ask the Catholic tribunal system to decree that she and he never had a valid marriage and therefore permit an annulment of the marriage.

David sees parallels between his current state in life and imprisonment. He says “people in prison lose the companionship of their friends and family and in divorce I’ve lost the companionship of my spouse and my children. I’ve been stripped of many of my freedoms. I can’t see my children everyday; I can’t assure their authentic Catholic education; I can’t stop the scandal my wife is causing our children; I don’t have financial freedom because I’m forced to pay child support on top of maintaining our marital home where our children spend half their time.”

When asked what motivates him, David says, “I’m doing this because I want to go to heaven and I want my wife and children to go to heaven. If I were to quit and go find a new ‘girlfriend,’ I fear my children would conclude that Catholicism and Catholic teaching on marriage is pointless and meaningless.”

http://www.speroforum.com/a/59407/Catholic-marriage-advocate-questions-her-Churchs-stance-on-marriage

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Book Review: Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Posted on August 27, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

Part II: How “Complicit” is the UN in Asia’s Sex Selective Abortion Crisis?

(C-FAM) A new book has raised hackles among abortion advocates about just how much the UN Population Fund is to blame for more than 160 million missing girls in Asia: aborted in the quest for sons.

Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men is “one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion” according to a Wall Street Journal review; the book’s scholarly credentials bolstered by a standing-room-only event with demographer Nicholas Eberstadt at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

While conservatives hail the book’s breakthrough research, Hvistendahl’s fellow progressives haggle over its findings. The liberal Guardian’s review elicited a terse letter from UNFPA condemning Hvistendahl’s conclusion that UNFPA and feminist organizations have done little to stop the practice. In the letter UNFPA claims credit for persuading the Chinese to outlaw sex selection in 1994.

That law has done little, however. Sex selective abortion persists despite a similar ban in India, resulting in extremely skewed sex ratios at birth. Normally there are around 105 males per 100 females born, but China now reports a ratio of 120 boys to 100 girls and that has led to trafficking for prostitution and widespread bride buying.

In her response to the UNFPA letter, Hvistendahl dodges direct conflict with the agency and instead criticizes the Guardian’s review as “misleading” readers into thinking she had proven UNFPA’s direct complicity in the one-child policy that fuels sex selective abortion. “There is a difference between outright funding an injustice and ignoring injustice once it occurs,” she argues. Readers may not be so convinced.

Hvistendahl ably demonstrates that despite UNFPA’s touted mission to fight gender discrimination, the agency deliberately refrains from taking a position on sex selective abortion. UNFPA officials told her privately this is because they are “in a bind” since, as one demographer working with UNFPA put it, “the right to abort remains UNFPA’s ‘priority issue.’”

“How do you hold on to this discrimination tag and at the same time talk about safe abortion access to it?” a UNFPA officer told her: “It has been a huge challenge to us…We are walking a tightrope.”

Internal UNFPA directives tell officers to shift the blame, emphasizing “women whose husbands beat them or threaten divorce if they don’t produce an heir.” One pamphlet directs advocates to “avoid language that holds the mother responsible…she has very little control over the decision…choice in the absence of autonomy is no choice.”

Hvistendahl cites a 2010 internal staff memo warning UNFPA country officers to stay away from the 1995 UN Beijing statement on women that condemned “prenatal sex selection and female infanticide” and to avoid associating the practice with human rights.

As soon as they acknowledge how many women go through numerous abortions to get a boy, a Canadian sociologist told her, “the Vatican will be the first one to say, ‘Ban abortion, make abortion illegal!’”

“Fear of the ‘A-word’,” Hvistendahl concludes, has “immobilized the very people who should be crying oppression.”

By Susan Yoshihara writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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International Youth Coalition Members Challenge United Nations Approach to Youth Sexuality

Posted on August 18, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Lauren Funk

NEW YORK (C-FAM) Members of the International Youth Coalition are voicing their disapproval of the rights-based approach to youth issues and the promotion of sexual license presented at the recent United Nations High Level Meeting on Youth.

“Just as we have laws prohibiting youth from using drugs, it would seem that we also have a responsibility to protect youth from engaging in sexual license, ” reflected IYc member Savanna Buckner. Buckner made her comments after attending a discussion hosted by UNFPA, which asserted that youth have the right to sexual education and to make their own autonomous decisions regarding their sexuality without consent of their parents.

“As a young person, it is extremely disturbing to witness …certain UN forces working to isolate youth from their families and particularly their parents. For its education policies to be just, the UN must accept that focusing on the family as the fundamental unit of society and on parents as primary educators is not outdated and does not overlook the individuality of each person,” Buckner told the Friday Fax.

Buckner also commented on the rejection of abstinence by the proponents of sexuality education. “By assuming abstinence is impractical, these organizations discourage youth from practicing self-restraint and effectively make contraceptives the only ‘choice.’”

Antoine Kazzi, a member of the IYc from Australia, challenged the prevalent misrepresentation of sexual and reproductive health matters as universal human rights. “Sovereign nations are being misled into thinking they have to recognize and protect sexual and reproductive health ‘rights’ in their territories… [and] that these ‘rights’ are already recognized as universal human rights; and organs of the UN are being used to perpetuate this lie,” Kazzi said.

Kazzi noted the conflict these sexual ‘rights’ have with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “These ‘rights’ encompass the right to have an induced abortion, which is the deliberate ending of a child’s life. The ending of this vulnerable life offends the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… [including] the right to life.”

Maria Lizaur, another IYc member, recounted her frustration after presenting the merits of abstinence and family values programs in reducing HIV infections and unplanned pregnancies at one of the conference’s panel discussions. “Instead of [the panelists] encouraging dialogue about what is in fact good for the youth, and about what it is that the youth wants, we [who presented this information] were simply dismissed as “too young” to understand. It is tremendously sad that there were individuals and organizations at the conference who refused to listen to the voice of young individuals seeking to share ideas that expressed pro-life and pro-family solutions.”

Though voicing frustration with those at the United Nations Youth Meeting who supported autonomous freedom of sexual engagement for young people, the IYc members are hopeful that, through true dialogue, their peers and elders alike will heed their calls for support of the family and increased personal responsibility on the part of youth in matters of sexuality.

More observations by the members of the International Youth Coalition can be found at their blog, IYc Vox.

“Lauren Funk writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

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American Psychological Association Need Its Head Examined

Posted on August 17, 2011 by | Leave a comment

It is common knowledge that psychologists often developed emotion and other psychological problems. For many, the problems are the result of continually dealing with the problems of others. Consequently, APA professionals loose grip on themselves and sometimes on reality as well. I learned this while taking a clinical counseling course in college.

When a group of behavioral professionals can no longer recognize harmful behavior, those professionals need to seek professional help. Pretending same-sex relations are somehow normal or beneficial is a tell-tale sign that they have lost their way. Unnatural realtions cannot be made good or legitimate because the APA says so.

Various religious and denominational nor federal and state stamp of approval cannot make it right, good or natural. Not even a consensus vote can change reality that made humanity male and female and that the future of humanity is the family tradition of men marrying women and reproducing after their own kind. Reason, nature, and their Creator have concurred for a long time.

That is why the American Psychological Association’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage (see CitizenLink article) only proves the need for its professsionals to seek counseling from those not intimately involved in the unnatural behavior not approved by nature and its God.

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Rights of Parents in America: Overruled? (video)

Posted on August 17, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Find out more about the plundering of your parental rights and what you can do to preserve your role as the decision maker for your children; go to parentalrights.org.

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The Debt Ceiling and the PRA

Posted on August 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Michael Ramey,

You’re probably tired of hearing about the debt by now, but did you realize the proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution will help keep us out of worse trouble in the future?

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been used internationally to urge nations to spend more on their children’s programs, and the CRC Committee has in multiple instances faulted a country for not investing more of its gross domestic product (or GDP) in child aid programs. The Committee has held these nations to be out of compliance with the treaty’s demands – including Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe, which was urged in 2009 to “further increase budget allocations for the implementation of the rights recognized in the Convention.”

Such criticisms may fall on deaf ears elsewhere in the world, but if we were to ratify the CRC here, “the judges in every State [would be] bound thereby,” regardless of any law or state constitutional provisions to the contrary (U.S. Constitution, Article VI). That means our own courts would be constitutionally bound to correct whatever the Committee says is out of compliance with the treaty.

So imagine if we had ratified the CRC last year. Added to the already deafening clamor of voices demanding various expenditures not be touched by Congress, our courts would likely be demanding an increase in federal funding of children’s programs to fulfill treaty obligations under the CRC.

The Parental Rights Amendment will prevent ratification of that treaty and preserve our national sovereignty. At a time when our Congress has been spending way too much already, the last thing we need is the international community (backed by our own courts) demanding that they spend even more!

The national debt is indeed a huge concern, but let’s not lose sight of how vital our parental rights are as well, for the preservation of our nation, our heritage, and our homes.

Michael Ramey is Director of Communications at the Parental Rights organization. To learn more about their work and the Parental Rights amendment, go to www.parentalrights.org

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A National Family Portrait

Posted on August 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

In the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)’s new report on The State of America’s Children 2011, we give a comprehensive overview on the well-being of America’s children. But just who are America’s children and families today? Children make up almost one in four of the people living in the United States today. More than one-quarter of our nation’s children are young-infants, toddlers, or preschoolers. They are the poorest age group in America. And the younger they are the poorer they are-cheating them in the years of greatest brain development. In on child population and family structure we take a closer look, and a national child and family portrait begins to emerge.

One of the most striking facts about America’s children is the rapidly blurring distinction between who is a “minority” child and who is in the “majority.” Today, almost 45 percent of America’s young are children of color, and by 2019-just eight years away-they will be the majority of our child population. In fact, the majority of children are already children of color in the District of Columbia and nine states-Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Maryland, and Georgia. Of the 74.5 million children in America, 41.2 million (55.3%) are White, non-Hispanic; 16.8 million (22.5%) are Hispanic; 11.3 million (15.1%) are Black; 3.5 million (4.7%) are Asian/Pacific Islander; and 951,000 (1.3%) are American Indian/Alaska Native. The number of Hispanic children has increased every year since 1980, rising from 5.3 million in 1980 to 17 million in 2009. The number of White children has decreased every year since 1994, and the number of Black children has remained steady over the past two decades.

Behind these numbers and statistics is an urgent call to action. Throughout America’s history and still today, children’s life chances have always been unequal based on color, although God did not make two classes of children and every child is sacred. But practicality will force what morality has been unable to achieve. We can’t afford to keep leaving whole groups of children of color behind who are becoming our nation’s majority without condemning our entire nation to failure. Right now The State of America’s Children 2011 tells us children of color are behind on virtually every measure of child well-being. They face multiple risks that put them in
grave danger of entering the pipeline to prison rather than the pipeline to college, productive employment, and successful futures. Children of color are at increased risk of being born at low birth weight and with late or no prenatal care, living in poverty and extreme poverty, lacking family stability, facing greater health risks, lacking a quality education, being stuck in foster care without permanent families, ending up in the juvenile justice system, being caught in the college completion gap, being unemployed, and being killed by guns.

The multiple risks facing children of color are cause for great concern from us all who need to raise a next generation that can care not only for themselves and their own families but also our seniors of tomorrow. While today there are almost twice as many children as seniors, the national snapshot shows that by 2040, that gap will close. There will be 94 million children and 81 million seniors. Our children’s success in education and in employment will be essential to keep our society functioning, businesses running, adults teaching, and health care professionals serving everyone’s needs. Today’s children will care for all of us tomorrow, and we’ll be counting on them as the economic drivers of the future who will be raising their own families, assisting their parents, and investing in the economy and in Social Security to keep us all thriving. We must take extraordinary steps to address the crisis today-so we will have a generation who can succeed in life.

The snapshot of our nation’s families tells us a lot about where our next generation is heading, because family structure and stability make an enormous difference in every child’s life and impact the availability of resources-both emotional and financial-for children. Single parents often need extra support, and teen parents even more. About 70 percent of all children-but fewer than 40 percent of Black children-live with two parents. Twenty-three percent of all children and half of Black children live with their mother only. Black children are more than twice as likely as White children, almost twice as likely as Hispanic children, and three-and-a-half times as likely as Asian/Pacific Islander children to live with neither parent. Teen parenthood also varies widely; the birth rate for Hispanic teens ages 15 – 19 is twice that for White teens but just above that for Black and American Indian teens.

Taken together, all of these numbers paint a clearer picture of what our country’s children-and future-will look like. It’s clear that if we still want to see a strong, prosperous America tomorrow, it’s time to invest in a positive rather than negative future for millions of our children right now. There is not a moment to wait or a child to waste.

Click here to learn more about The State of America’s Children.

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