Children are just commodities in the liberal culture.

[Starlight]

'Liberals' being the ones who originally jettisoned the goal of the ideal family being the father, mother, children.

I think most liberals would agree that a family remaining happily together is much better than broken families.

The difference lies in what conservatives vs liberals think should happen when the relationship between the parents breaks down. Conservatives tend toward thinking that the parents should remain together in the belief that this is best for the children, regardless of how bad the parents' relationship toward each other gets and regardless of what negative impacts that strained and broken relationship has on the children under their care. Whereas liberals tend towards thinking that the parents separating under such circumstances tends to be the best of various bad solutions in terms of limiting the amount of negative parental interactions that the children get exposed to.

[Abigail]

I think most liberals would agree that a family remaining happily together is much better than broken families.

The difference lies in what conservatives vs liberals think should happen when the relationship between the parents breaks down. Conservatives tend toward thinking that the parents should remain together in the belief that this is best for the children, regardless of how bad the parents' relationship toward each other gets and regardless of what negative impacts that strained and broken relationship has on the children under their care. Whereas liberals tend towards thinking that the parents separating under such circumstances tends to be the best of various bad solutions in terms of limiting the amount of negative parental interactions that the children get exposed to.

Conservative tend to think parents should remain together because they assume that ideally children should be born to married people and while marriage is about love, more importantly marriage is about commitment. Commitment through good and bad, through sickness and health , through riches and poverty etc etc. We don't say we get married until we decide we love someone more or until our husband/wife gets fat and doesn't 'turn us on' any longer or just gets on our nerves etc etc. Marriage is meant to be about commitment and people who enter into that seriously should work at keeping their relationship alive and trying to provide the best environment for their children. If it sounds too tough, then don't get married and don't have kids. Liberals on the other hand seem to have no qualms about ditching a marriage to 'follow their heart'. Unfortunately our hearts are so fickle and changeable that children can end up being passed from pillar to post and I think the article in the OP of this thread demonstrates that. The kid is fast becoming pass-the-parcel. So a conservative view of a broken family is where a marriage has truly broken down. Under the liberal view it is if one of the couple doesn't feel happy.

[Starlight]

Conservative tend to think parents should remain together because they assume that ideally children should be born to married people and while marriage is about love, more importantly marriage is about commitment. Commitment through good and bad, through sickness and health , through riches and poverty etc etc. We don't say we get married until we decide we love someone more or until our husband/wife gets fat and doesn't 'turn us on' any longer or just gets on our nerves etc etc. Marriage is meant to be about commitment and people who enter into that seriously should work at keeping their relationship alive and trying to provide the best environment for their children. If it sounds too tough, then don't get married and don't have kids. Liberals on the other hand seem to have no qualms about ditching a marriage to 'follow their heart'. Unfortunately our hearts are so fickle and changeable that children can end up being passed from pillar to post and I think the article in the OP of this thread demonstrates that. The kid is fast becoming pass-the-parcel. So a conservative view of a broken family is where a marriage has truly broken down. Under the liberal view it is if one of the couple doesn't feel happy.

Except your generalizations of liberals as not committing to their marriages and conservatives being all about long term commitment are just factually false when it comes to the actual behaviors. Look at the US data for example: Conservative, religious, states have higher divorce rates than the liberal states. The conservatives simply don't follow their own teachings on the subject. The liberals aren't getting divorces more often than the conservatives. The conservatives simply aren't living up to their talk, and are being giant hypocrites on the subject.

Of my own personal friends, the only one that has gotten divorced so far is the most conservative & religious among all my friends. I'm a liberal, and I absolutely value commitment in marriage!

[Abigail]

Except your generalizations of liberals as not committing to their marriages and conservatives being all about long term commitment are just factually false when it comes to the actual behaviors. Look at the US data for example: Conservative, religious, states have higher divorce rates than the liberal states. The conservatives simply don't follow their own teachings on the subject. The liberals aren't getting divorces more often than the conservatives. The conservatives simply aren't living up to their talk, and are being giant hypocrites on the subject.

Of my own personal friends, the only one that has gotten divorced so far is the most conservative & religious among all my friends. I'm a liberal, and I absolutely value commitment in marriage!

I have never set foot in the US so will not comment on their data as there might be many things that influence the interpretation which are not apparent to me. What I can say is that traditionally conservatives have been the ones to get married whereas the more liberal amongst us would have disdained the idea and just lived together. Marriage has only become the 'must have' because gay people want to own it.

[Starlight]

Marriage has only become the 'must have' because gay people want to own it.

Gay people want to "own" marriage? Er, what you mean is, a lot of gay people want to have equal rights, including the right to marry.

[Cow Poke]

And so in response to this, you...amen the sensationalized, broad-brushing OP, then quote it and approvingly add "Yeah!" (post #5)

So, I mention the Title is sensationalized, then you crank on my comments about the actual OP. I'm beginning to think you're a whole order of fries short of a happy meal.

That's certainly an odd response when it seemed like you were frowning upon sensationalizing and broad-brushing things.

You need to do something fun - you're WAY too crabby and whiney lately.

[Cow Poke]

But what we liberals find so amusing about the situation is the blatant hypocrisy.

Perhaps it's your screwed up brain that keeps you from understanding that most of us conservatives don't pretend to be perfect, even though that's what you liberals claim when we hold Jesus up as the model of perfection.

We make mistakes, we fall short - that doesn't mean we don't continue to hold up the model of perfection, even when we fail.

[Roy]

Just like we have to suck up that bringing children up in a Christian house is child abuse because they get to hear about things like Hell, Christians are homophobes, Christians are ignorant and stupid, Christians are mentally weak and belief in God shows metal illness. Etc etc etc. Get over yourself.

So your excuse for maligning "liberals" is that others malign Christians.

Roy

P.S. Matt 5:39

[seer]

If you really want to play this game, someone could argue that conservative culture is ultimately to blame for the slaughter of millions of unborn children, since such a culture frowned upon providing easier access to birth control, refused to support measures such as paid maternity leave, and disapproved of policies that could've helped the poor. One could argue that conservatives are guilty because they wouldn't alleviate the conditions that drive women to seek an abortion in the first place. That conservatives could've helped create a world in which far more women who found themselves pregnant wanted the baby and/or were in a better financial and social position to keep it, but instead the conservatives blew it.

Utter nonsense. Babies do not generally die because the mother does not get maternity leave, and even in the Great Depression death by starvation was not a large problem. And if a woman doesn't want a child there is one sure way to prevent that and it doesn't cost a dime. You guys ushered in the sexual revolution then blame us for not wanting to pay for the bad choices of others? The fact is, the liberals have been treating unborn children as property to be disposed of at will. There is no question about that.

[Starlight]

Perhaps it's your screwed up brain that keeps you from understanding that most of us conservatives don't pretend to be perfect, even though that's what you liberals claim when we hold Jesus up as the model of perfection.

We make mistakes, we fall short - that doesn't mean we don't continue to hold up the model of perfection, even when we fail.

I'm not asking that anyone be perfect. I'm simply asking that people who teach others be good at the things they are teaching. If you're bad at something, that's fine: 50% of people are necessarily below average at any given thing. Just don't go out and lecture other people on a topic that you are bad at. For some reason, US conservatives regularly just don't seem to get this basic idea, and instead often portray competence, education and expertise as being "liberal" values. The hypocrisy that comes out of the conservatives so often is just mind-blowing... "don't judge others on an issue on which you wouldn't want your own conduct to be judged" isn't a difficult concept, and yet we see story after story after story of conservatives failing that oh-so-basic test. Sometimes it makes me think that conservatives view hypocrisy as a virtue.

[fm93]

So, I mention the Title is sensationalized, then you crank on my comments about the actual OP.

Because the actual OP was also sensationalized, and additionally, you included a comment on broad-brushing, which the OP certainly does.

You need to do something fun - you're WAY too crabby and whiney lately.

I have a difficult time maintaining an upbeat mood when you not only condone but actively support statements like this:

Liberals always think they know better than anyone else and yet they are storing up untold harm for all of us as they drag society down to the level where the only thing that counts is their own selfish desires.

You know people like pancreasman are the polar opposite of that. You should know that a statement like the OP blocks out room for nuance and understanding, and is grossly unfair, irresponsible, and inaccurate. Don't bother with the excuse "Oh, I'm SURE most of us really mean a subset of that group when we use sweeping language that condemns the entire group." Even if that's true for you, there's no indication of that in the OP.

I guess the summary of this complaint would be "[i]Why are you supporting such misguided and irresponsible ideas when you KNOW better?" It's unfair to pancreasman and many, many others, not to mention sows further discord among people.

[Paprika]

Except your generalizations of liberals as not committing to their marriages and conservatives being all about long term commitment are just factually false when it comes to the actual behaviors.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation that leaps to the eye.

Cast your eyes onto the the graph of the nationally aggregated data:
• Edited by a Moderator •

1)Why the huge spike in divorces/married couple in the 1960s -1980? Those are the liberals divorcing to pursue sexual liberalisation.

2) But why does it drop after that? Because

a) The more promiscuous have weeded themselves out of the marrying pool

b) With the general devaluation of marriage amongst liberals those that marry are those that value it more; those that don't value it have been weeded out.

c) Many liberals scarred by their parents' divorces naturally tend to marry only when they are committed to the marriage and when they've found a partner with similar commitment because they don't want to scar themselves more or their future children, therefore

d) Over time those liberals that marry become more committed to keeping the marriage going, despite liberal values being anti-marriage, because those less committed to marriage have been weeded out

3) But why the spike from 2005-2007? Those are the 'conservatives' who are mostly liberals just a generation or two behind (cf. for example the Catholics embracing contraception and marriage annulment for de facto divorce)*. Many of the 'conservatives' embrace the liberals values and praxes of 1-2 generations earlier and hence divorce at high rates.

4) All is explained:

a) Married liberals have over time been more committed to marriage, while conservatives have been less committed to marriage because they've been steadily embracing the liberal values therefore

b) 'Conservatives' have recently been divorcing at higher rates than liberals (though the actual numbers and proportion of 'conservatives' divorcing is not as great as the 1960/70 liberals, explaining why the second spike is not as great).

So yes, many 'conservatives' are hypocrites, but the reason why they act hypocritically and divorce is because they have abandoned conservative values for liberal ones, and the reason why married liberals have been more committed is because they've personally experienced the damage caused by liberal values and therefore embrace the conservative commitment to marriage.

So liberalism (or progressivism) is causing the harm. QED.

Postscript:
(*The alert reader might question this interpretation given the short duration of the spike, instead preferring to attribute it to some anomaly. The answer, of course, is that conservatives have been divorcing in increasing numbers all the time from ~1980s, this trend is merely masked by the great national decrease in divorces/married couples due to married liberals being much more committed to marriage. The above image with the relatively large interval is chosen to highlight the general trends.

For full disclosure, we append a more detailed graph from the range of 1950s to 2009, where the great spike and following decline is still very clear; the various small spikes in the decline are easily explained as the work of the 'conservatives'.)

• Edited by a Moderator •

Moderated By: QuantaFille

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[seer]

You know people like pancreasman are the polar opposite of that. You should know that a statement like the OP blocks out room for nuance and understanding, and is grossly unfair, irresponsible, and inaccurate. Don't bother with the excuse "Oh, I'm SURE most of us really mean a subset of that group when we use sweeping language that condemns the entire group." Even if that's true for you, there's no indication of that in the OP.

OK, so the majority of liberals don't support treating unborn children like property to be disposed of at will.

[Cow Poke]

I have a difficult time maintaining an upbeat mood when you not only condone but actively support statements like this:

There is something seriously wrong when your "mood" depends on what somebody you don't even know writes on the internet.

Seriously - you need to get help.

[Cow Poke]

I'm not asking that anyone be perfect. I'm simply asking that people who teach others be good at the things they are teaching.

In the case of the Duggars - it would appear they are EXCELLENT at what they are teaching, given that 18 of 19 children apparently behave incredibly well, and the one who misbehaved SELF-REPORTED. I think only a jackass jumps in to attack a family who had a personal crisis and dealt with it the best they knew how, EVEN reporting it to local authorities.