Happy New Year’s Eve, all!
If you follow FamilyScholars or The Institute for American Values on Twitter or Facebook–if you don’t, let’s make that happen!-then you know we’ve been counting down both the most impactful posts on FamilyScholars in terms of views as well as several editor’s picks for 2012.
For a little sample of our editor’s picks, check out these posts from early in 2012 from Amber Lapp, John Culhane, Fannie, me, Stephanie Blessing, Christelyn D. Karazin, David Blankenhorn, Alana S., Stephanie Lind, or Matt N.
In terms of page views, several of our recent FamilyScholars Symposium pieces topped the list as well as several pieces by State of our Union’s co-author and blogger W. Bradford Wilcox. In looking at the numbers, I found it appropriate that the top viewed piece is a one-sentence post from David Blankenhorn–a popularity that shows the strength of the FamilyScholars commenting community. Granted, no blogger or commenter is perfect, but overall, the tenor and intellectual rigor of the comments is consistently high.
Thank you for reading and don’t forget to support FamilyScholars!
Categories: General
What were the criteria for selection? The number of readers? The number of comments or other responses?
Hi Billy, criteria for top ten were page views, not comments. The other picks were recommendations from staff. Would love to hear any recommendations of favorites!
As long as this is a year in review I would like to suggest that you print a list of everyone you banned from commenting. You moderation execution of your moderation policies are deplorable. It is supposed to be limited to what is it 3 or 4 comments per poster, but this policy is routinely ignored depending on if the blog article author is enjoying the conversation or not, and wishes to keep engaging on the subject matter.
Your Civility threshold is way way to high, and only serves to stifle speech. Am I wrong, do a count of the number of people you have banned. Notice how you no longer have a diverse group of people commenting now, you simply have the same old voices saying the same old things.
I would like to unequivecally state that David Blankenhorn and Elizabeth Marquardt have very thin skins. You are overly sensitive to opposing views and resort to banning people to avoid criticism. And not only that, but you two make some of the snottiness comments on the blog. It is do as I say, not as I do.
Civility is very much in the eye of the beholder. The unquestionably uncivil comments made on the ART articles stand and on the gay rights articles comments made in a similar tone are banned. “Gays are STEALING babies” as an article topic, or a comment will stand on the ART articles, which is appallingly uncivil. You per,it Marilyn to go on and on and on with lengthy comments but will cut anyone else off if they did that on other topics.
You may not believe me but I am telling you the truth and I have seen it happen elsewhere, you are killing your blog. If you continue executing you moderation policy the same way without changes, your articles will receive fewer and fewer comments until it becomes just another blog we read from time to time but don’t bother commenting on.
If you are going to make a 4 comment limit then stick to it. I have seen you ban many people who have complied with your rules which are, Be witty, be funny but don’t be mean. You have incorporated an extremely strict standard (which both David & Elizabeth routinely exempt themselves from) of what it is “not to be mean”. You fancy yourselves as intellectual elites, to good, traveling in to rarefied of intellectual circles to bother listening to the common man (woman). What you have done and you probably do not realize it, is you have created a walled garden. And you invite only into your walled garden those who meet your approval.
Elizabeth, “No Happy Danse” Marquardt, I’ll never forget you writing those words. Followed up immediately by, “Now can you cooperate with me so I can study your families?” Where is the apology for your years of work undermining the civil rights of sexual minorities? You think your one sentence, “I now support gay marriage” is sufficient? What really REALLY irks me is EM’s insistence that families who as a same gender couple jointly adopt children, or create their families via ART are equivalent to Step Families. This shows her ignorence of the issue. It is said to shore up her “opinion” that having gay parents is bad for children. I think the Step Family analogy is a particular evil that EM propagates. She says gay coupled families look like step families, and step families are the absolute worst situation for children to grow up in. This opinion, which has absolutely no scientific basis, simply shows EM’s biases and prejudices. I hope nobody ever cooperates with her on research on gay headed families, as when she states that gay headed families are most like step families as her belief, you can be assured that any research she heads will be biased against same sex couples. Until I see Elizabeth Marquardt doing a happy danse FOR the civil rights of gays and lesbians to be treated the same by our government, I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.
The proof is in the pudding. Their new State of Our Marriages article talks about all kinds of civil laws and government policy actions that can be taken to strengthen Marriage in our country yet they stay mutely silent on the biggest and meanest law of all that destablizes marriages of same sex couples, DOMA. By conspiculously remaining silent on THIS government law they showed their true colors. The policy of IAV is STILL ONLY about opposite sex couples and THEIR children. The fact that they stayed mum on the worst civil law on the books which directly harms couples of the same sex, AND THEIR CHILDREN, DOMA, tells us all we need to know about Blankenhorn & Marquardt. Truly they are ONLY interested in strengthing opposite sex ONLY marriages. Their supposed acceptance of equal civil rights for same sex people is a sham. They had the chance to discuss DOMA as one of the laws that should be eliminated in their most recent State of Marriage reports, and they didn’t do it. They didn’t do it.
Oh I know you will ban this comment, but at least one person there is going to have to read it first, before you ban it. And do forward it on to David and EM.
Hi SMS. I read it.
“SexualMinoritySupporter”, are you “Str8Grandmother”?
I have a question, where does Elizabeth say that step families are the absolute worst kind of family for people to grow up in? Also why would she refer to adoptive families as step families when their authority over the child is through a court approved adoption and not through marriage to the biological parent of a child?
What is wrong with step families? It is the proper term for the legal status of someone who is the spouse of a child’s biological parent. The whole point of adoption is to give people a way to get parental authority over a child that is not their own offspring. If you are calling yourself the parent of a child that is not your own offspring and you did not adopt that child…..you missed a step. Go back to square one and try this the ethical way. I’m sorry but the spouse or partner of someone that reproduces with a donor is not that child’s parent for real even though they may have put their name on the certificate and even though they may be legally recognized as the parent because it was a false presumption of paternity or maternity by the state that got them to that point as in they lied about paternity or maternity. They lied to get a fake ID they are not 21 get the bouncer fine the bar. They rested their case on a technicality, slipped through a loophole. Its just a back door to black market adoption. So the reality is that they are step parents and that is not such a bad thing to be at least it is the truth and it would be better to live the truth than a lie.
I think your harshing on Elizabeth for what you think she said rather than what she actually said. But go ahead and prove me wrong show me where she said that step families are the worst possible kind of family structure there is. If she did say that then I’ll hammer on her myself about that because what the hell are you going to do but make the best of it? Step families are not violating anyone’s freedom or liberties by existing where donor conception is a form of slavery where people are bought and sold. I’m confident that step families are way more ethical than donor conception. Betcha I could get her to come around on that one. I can be really persistent and convincing.
SMS I’m always getting kicked off and told to pipe down not use this word or that word are you kidding? I get nailed for the civility policy thing all the time and then I’ve been nailed for btching about it too. They allow me to go on and on….cha..as if, your thinking of Fannie and La Luba those chicks can fillibuster. I’m just a student of the well crafted diatribe.
I actually enjoyed the back and forth with Grandmother because she really was trying to debate the specifics of ART with me and there is just nobody that even tries that they all just go “children are not always better off with their biological parents” and I go “I did not say they were better at raising kids I said at least they did not buy the kids they’re raising” Which is not as much fun as having a conversation with someone who says the person paying the doctor is the person reproducing.
Whose cells reproduced? The donor or the person who paid the doctor? That was such a fun conversation. I believe I got in trouble on a couple of those threads too.
Marilyn, you make my point. If you are chastised all the time, and you get in trouble, why aren’t you banned? Teachers Pet. The execution of the moderation policies are atrocious on FS. Not blaming you Marilyn for being Teacher’s Pet, hey if you can swing it why not, obviously the blame is with the teachers not the recipient.
Marilyn, you’ll have to request of Elizabeth Marquardt for the link to her very long paper on step-families. Elizabeth, am I wrong? Don’t you contend that a same sex couple who adopt a child or conceives a child through ART, are most like step-families which is the worst situation for children to grow up in? Basically you just noodled this on your own without any scientific research to back up your claim. When challenged that same sex couples do not have ex-husbands/wives or a second legal parent who lives outside the child’s home which usually causes a lot of stress to the child, you basically shrugged you shoulders and stuck by your claim.
Knowing nothing about same sex parents you neatly put them in the “less desirable” step-parent box which coincidently aligns with your “gays should not have access to anonymous donor ART”. I find it counter intuitive that lesbians who conceive with an anonymous sperm donor or the same for gay men who use an anonymous egg donor, avoid creating the step-like families EM objects to, yet she insists in the case of ART conception these families MUST create step-family like families with known donors, which is according to her, the worst case scenario for a child to grow up in.
Then there was the most uncivil proposal by EM that same sex couples should have access to Civil Marriage (and that the Federal Government would recognize as second class “Civil Unions”) in all States that banned anonymous sperm and egg donation. Like same sex couples and ONLY same sex couples need to bargain away some of their personal Liberty Rights in order to secure another Constitutional right, (Civil Marriage). She does not require this of opposite sex couples, nope, only same sex couples.
Am I being to cranky? Should we jump up and down and clap our hands because EM finally “accepts” which has recently changed to “supports”, Civil Marriage for sexual minorities, even though she says she won’t be doing a “happy danse” when it happens? No Elizabeth it is NOT, “I now support gay marriage” rather it should be stated as, “I now support Civil Marriage for (sexual minorities, or gays & lesbians). They are entering into the same civil institution as you, they do not get a separate and distinct, “gay marriage license” from City Hall. Yes I know it takes longer to type out all those words, but the words, the description of what you now, “claim” to support are important. I still think your claim of support for Civil Marriage for Sexual Minorities is a straight up sham because of your deliberate and obvious omission of DOMA, of striking down DOMA as one of your recommendations in your latest State of Our Marriages Report. It appears you are playing both sides, and you are doing a very poor job of it.
SMS there is an archive of my posts here and you’re welcome to go through them in search of evidence to back up your argument. I also have published reports available through this site. Enjoy.
EM, that is a non answer, “Search the blog”. I am quite certain I read your comment maybe this fall sometime, claiming that a gay couple who adopts a child together, or uses ART to create their family, they most closely resemble step-parent families. If you have changed your mind, Bravo. You are here now, please tell me if my memory is faulty or not. Don’t you have a .pdf file on this, I seem to remember that, that part is fuzzy but I seem to recall you providing a link to a .pdf file.
If that is your opinion, that is your opinion, why not re-state it instead of telling the readers to search the blog? I could be wrong in what I am remembering you position to be. I don’t think I am, but it is a possibility.
SMS
Dude you need to substantiate your own points – I’m not going to help you make your case against me for you by researching everything Elizabeth has written looking for your needle in a haystack. Do it your damn self because the burden of proof is with the accuser not the accused – people are busy enough trying to defend themselves they can’t be wearing all the hats and doing everything for everyone else. Cause I’ll just cut to the chase and not accuse myself of anything to begin with I’ll save a bunch of time by not proving you right. Take some initiative, you dig your way out of this and find that quote to prove your point. Or apologize for making a ruckus over nothing. Your whole argument hinges upon things that I don’t believe she ever said and the burden of proving that she did say them is yours, not mine, or hers or anyone else’s. If you are correct and she really went and said that gay people become step parents by adopting, then I will join you in citing the family code of every state in the Union to show her that adopting makes a person into an adoptive parent, not a step parent.
I have a hunch that you misunderstood something she might have said regarding step parent adoptions which are sometimes done by step parents when the other bio parent has lost parental rights or is willing to relinquish parental rights. A married person can undertake a step parent adoption regardless of their sexual orientation and I’m sure that many married gay step parents have adopted their step children. They are step parents who adopted and their relationship to the child then will legally outlast the marriage if it disolves. They are still step parents but legally they are in it for life. -their authority over the child came through marriage to the spouse first and then through the court. It’s a technicality that might be a big deal to a step parent who really wants to be viewed as an adoptive parent. So I’m thinking you misunderstood something she said about that senario to mean that when two gay people adopt a child together that they become step parents rather than adoptive parents. That would be way wrong. Of course both of them are adoptive parents they adopted a child. Neither of them is a unqualified parent to a child they both adoptied. You would not have adoptive parents if the child did not also have parents somewhere that failed so – the kid has a set of parents and a set of adoptive parents. No big whoop. Marriage or partnership gets u a step child and adoption gets you an adopted child and reproducing gets you a plain old child. It matters how people come to legal parenthood because children can be exploited so we have to differentiate for the safety of the child not to be exploited or sold. It’s not a statement on the quality of care someone can provide.
At 41 I knew my naughty school girl days were numbered but I really saw myself graduating to bad teacher or dirty librarian, not a boring goody two shoes teacher’s pet. Someone call my parents their little delinquent finally did something right to get the teachers attention. I guess pot wasn’t the gateway drug after all eh Mom?
So here’s the thing Gramma, I don’t know why I have not been banned after having so many of my posts deleted after 10 minutes of air time. I slept through the FS primer on Civility so I have no idea what the fine points of their policy are. I have said some hurtful things on this blog and have appologized and felt genuinely like sht for having hurt people’s feelings. I am proud of being blunt and am not worried about the fact that some people’s feelings might be hurt by not letting them treat people unfairly anymore. I don’t have a real beef with any of the bloggers and avoid discussing areas where we totally disagree unless its germane to my point. David and Elizabeth don’t even know who I am, only once or twice have either of them ever responded to my direct and repeated questioning – they don’t pick me when my hand is raised – that’s for sure. Shoot Ki and La Luba and Fanny and that other guy who has not been around lately all got guest blogger status after being way rude to Elizabeth and David both and rude to Karen too for Pete sake someone was mean to Stephanie when she wrote about her stepfather dying and they got away with it- your calling me teachers pet sheesh and for crying out loud. I’m chopped liver over here with a mouth full of sht to say and nobody’s telling me to have at it, you’ll get the red carpet as a guest blogger before this teacher’s pet – StraightG.
Oh I betcha its that they form step families when one reproduces with a donor and the partner of the rearing bio parent is like kind of in a non-legal step parent type roll for the kid. Yeah OK she is not saying that the bio parent doing the raising is step parent G, she’s saying that the bio parent is forming a step family situation which of course separates the kid from the bio family and that sucks. It’s not so much that the step family sucks its that it is a tragedy that the child’s bio family fell apart to begin with. You see step families are always going to be formed because someone’s bio family tragically separated. Now it may be the best and safest thing for everyone that the bio family split up in separate households but it’s always going to be a shame that the bio family was not able to live peacefully and cooperatively under one roof – I mean it’s just sad. Whether it’s a divorce that caused the separate living situation or a donor agreement or a surrogacy agreement or a one night stand – it sucks that the family is not able to live happily together as a unit. The best you can do when a family spits into separate living situations is cooperate with one another so that the child still receives all they deserve from both parents and that does not happen when donor or surrogacy agreements or step parent adoption are involved. All those senarios involve at least one parent stepping down and not doing their job and whether someone else wants to take their place and do the work for them is irrelevant to the point that the parent should not be stepping away as a service to anyone else that feels like doing the job more because that means the child and parenthood becomes objects of property that can be traded sold bartered gifted. That is not respectful and of course it means that the object lacks freedom that all people are suppose to have by virtue of that being born equal thing.
Pls feel free to take all the shts and swearwords out of my post but try not to block the whole darned thing. I think I understand why she thought what she thought and that was my valiant attempt at communication for real not to put her down or make her look bad or embarrass her or anything. I see how if the step parent adoption thing went by real fast she’d get the wrong idea. Maybe not get so bent about it but I think I know what she is referring to now. Take my swear words away I’m peaceful.
“What really REALLY irks me is EM’s insistence that families who as a same gender couple jointly adopt children, or create their families via ART are equivalent to Step Families.”
They are more like siblings that adopt children or create families via ART than step families. Do siblings ever jointly adopt children or create families via ART? I don’t know but there are lots of siblings raising kids together, usually where one is the bio-parent and the other is just helping raise their nephew or niece. But that uncle or aunt is often in a parenting role, and that is the equivalent of a same-sex partner as far as the parenting goes. (I know same-sex couples are intimate together and siblings generally aren’t, but that’s not important to the parenting or the needs of the kids, and are just moral choices they make).
Back to step families, I think the similarity is that the bio-parent spouse feels more of a parent to the child than the non-bioparent, and the non-bioparent feels resentment of the child for reminding them that they aren’t the real parent. That can create unsafe conditions for the step child. It’s definitely best when both parents feel like they are fully equal parents of their child, and the child feels like both parents are both their real parents. Any situation other than that is to be avoided and should require some major irreconcilable differences before the law approves of it.
@Ricardo – in my experience, siblings do not usually live together and raise children. Sometimes women will live with their mother and raise children. Sometimes a child will live primarily with their grandmother or aunt. I haven’t seen a lot of kids living with a parent and aunt or uncle in the same house.
Anyhow, here’s my opinion on same-sex couples:
A same sex couple raising a child after one person is divorced from the biological parent is like a remarried heterosexual couple with a step-parent.
A same sex couple raising a child they have adopted is like a heterosexual adoptive family. Adoptive parents are parents, but there are biological parents somewhere who the child might someday want to meet.
A same sex couple raising a child produced with ART is like a heterosexual couple raising a child produced with donor egg or sperm. One parent is the biological parent and one parent is not, but the non-biological parent will be like an adoptive parent who adopted their child at birth.* Again, they are both parents, but there is a biological parent somewhere and the child might someday want to meet him or her.
*Unless neither parent is a biological parent, but I think that must be very rare.
Charlie Sheen and the other guy in Two and Half Men were brothers raising the “half man” but OK, say mother and daughter raising a child together instead.
“A same sex couple raising a child after one person is divorced from the biological parent is like a remarried heterosexual couple with a step-parent.”
No, because the remarried heterosexual couple might make more children together, half-siblings of the existing children. A same-sex couple can’t, that’s why I compared them to siblings or other parenting pairs that cannot make children together.
“A same sex couple raising a child produced with ART is like a heterosexual couple raising a child produced with donor egg or sperm.”
No, because everyone knows that the same-sex couple are not both the parents of the child, but people assume that a hetero couple are both the parents, or at least that they could be in theory.
@Ricardo – “’A same sex couple raising a child produced with ART is like a heterosexual couple raising a child produced with donor egg or sperm.’
No, because everyone knows that the same-sex couple are not both the parents of the child, but people assume that a hetero couple are both the parents, or at least that they could be in theory.”
True, and the same sex couple may face more discrimination in general and they don’t have a role model for one gender. However, it’s the closest we can get and it’s what they are most like (as opposed to being step-parents).
The same sex couple can’t make more kids together. That would generally seem like an advantage to the kid to me. On the other hand, the other parent might have children of their own, they could adopt, or they could use donor assisted reproduction. So the child could get more siblings which seems like the most important thing from the child’s point of view.
Ricardo: “Back to step families, I think the similarity is that the bio-parent spouse feels more of a parent to the child than the non-bioparent, and the non-bioparent feels resentment of the child for reminding them that they aren’t the real parent.”
Why do you presume this is true of all families? There’s been research to suggest that that can happen sometimes, but that the opposite also happens for some same-sex couples with children. As referenced here on page 20, that’s a social issue that’s almost exclusive to female-female couples who have children conceived with ARTs, where one of the mothers carried the child. In families that adopted, used other ART methods, or otherwise differed from that model, I’ve never seen this issue be addressed.
“No, because the remarried heterosexual couple might make more children together, half-siblings of the existing children.”
Okay, so you’ve moved the goalposts from actually having children to the mere potential of having a child, which not all remarried male-female couples act on (or for that matter, have – infertility is a thing!). Beyond that though, as Diane mentioned, whether they’re a same-sex or male-female couple with children from a previous marriage, they could have more children together with the use of ARTs or through adoption.
The problem with your argument is that you view biological kinship as the most important terms on which to classify families to the exclusion of other considerations. For many people, shared personal history and generational or romantic-partnership structures are more visible and important to them than any biological relationships. Your system of dividing people up works, sure, but it only necessarily works for you.
Matt, right, it necessarily true of all families that the non-bioparent feels resentment, obviously. My point is that both same-sex couples and step-parents have one parent who is a non-bioparent and (usually) one who is, and so they are similar in that respect. And it is known that that dynamic is often harmful in step-parent families, so it’s reasonable to assume it is harmful in same-sex families too.
And my second point there is that though step-parent families and same-sex ART families are similar in that they each have one bio-parent and one non-bioparent, they are also very very different in that the step-parent family might make more kids together. That difference is why they should be expected to get married while the same-sex couple is in a very different situation and doesn’t deserve the legal benefits and obligations of marriage. If they have kids, it won’t be with each other, so why should they be married to each other? People should be married to the person they have kids with, not to someone else.
Matt, I went to the link you provided (page 20) which references this research paper,
Vanfraussen, K., I. Ponjaert-Kristoffersen, and A. Brewaeys. 2002. What does it mean for youngsters to grow up in a lesbian family created by means of donor insemination?
Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychologye 20, no. 4: 238–52.
I was not able to find a free copy of the paper, however I did find an excellent dissertation, which I bet was probably published, and the planned lesbian couples’s children did just fine. Also the biological mothers and the non biological mothers are both happy in their relationships and in being parents. It is a 2004 paper from the Netherlands. I recognize the scholar, HMW Bos. There is NOTHING in this research that indicates the non biological mother is jealous of the children, nothing.
http://dare.uva.nl/document/11341
If you have access to the Vanfraussen paper it would be great if you could compare it to the Bos paper for scientific rigor, methods, sampling etc.
Just high level. In cases like this usually I just write to the researcher and ask for a copy, but the Journal didn’t give enough information on who they are affiliated with, and no first names. By looking at their names I bet they are from the Netherlands.
Ricardo, you are ignoring the fact that step parent families can consist of
Child
Mother
Father
Step father
Step mother
Half sisters
Half brothers
The child can live full time with a parent and a step parent, or part time at both houses.
Whereas a child born to for example a lesbian couple using an anonymous sperm donor, has a family of-
Two mothers who live together with the child.
I fail to see how a planned lesbian family looks remotely like a step family. Although one mother is genetically linked to the child there is a bond that should not be forgotten, a bond that the non biological mother DID create, and that is the bond of conception. The mothers together, with medical assistance conceived the child by joining a sperm from a donor they mutually selected, with the birth mother. It is that conception process that the women did together, that binds the child to the non birth mother. It is bonding for them.
A step father, or a step mother never participated in the conception of their step child and lesbian mothers and gay fathers DO. To equate the planned families of lesbian and gay couples to step parent families is a false analogy.
People should be married to the person they make kids with, I agree. Lesbian and gay families complete the act of conception together, because without them acting together telling the doctor to join that egg and sperm together, there is no child. Lesbian women and gay men ARE conceiving children, they are doing so AS A COUPLE, they are just doing it in a different way, so they should be married.
SMS, yes there are also differences between step families and donor families, and you point out some significant ones. Yes, there is no second bio-family to deal with, which definitely makes things less hectic and conflicted for the kid. But I was trying to show the similarities, which is both live with a bioparent and a non-bioparent, and that can adversely affect things. And there IS a second bio-parent out there somewhere, and half siblings, and it’s just a matter of time before all those hectic conflicts surface.
And the point about the other parent having participated in the decision to conceive with a donor, while step parents weren’t involved, I don’t think is necessarily better. And I don’t think it should be called “conceiving together” it just isn’t equal to a couple that truly conceives a baby together. What would we call truly conceiving together? We can’t just say they are the same, because they aren’t.