My NYC MYSTIC friend knows what MOVING FORWARD global 1% has as a goal------BONOBOS ARE FAMILY MEN----CHIMPS ARE SCIENCE FOR SCIENCE SAKE NOT CARING FOR FAMILIES.
What has these few decades done to US family structure, stability, security? It has dismantled it no matter 99% BLACK, WHITE, OR BROWN CITIZENS. Our 99% US men have been pushed overseas in global labor pool as EX-PATS or fighting/staffing empire-building wars and embassies. US women wait at home supported by money sent home just as all global labor pool families in developing nations. Our US military is almost replaced with a WARRIOR MERCENARY CLASS filled with men often having no ties to marriage/family. Wages in US becoming so low as to have individual citizens seeking to support themselves and not think of raising a family. US cities as FAILED STATES as well as rural filled with global drug and gun cartel black markets breaking down our US family structure----all policies installed these few decades by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and that 5% to the 1% black, brown, and white citizens.
THE FIX IS IN FOR US SOCIETAL STRUCTURES TO EXCLUDE STRONG FAMILIES------PUSHING MEN AND WOMEN TO BE CORPORATE WARRIORS.
The goals of GREAT LEAP FORWARD MAO MARXISM in China was just the same---break down all societal structures and tie individual citizens to the STATE/NATIONAL POLITBURO GLOBAL 1% RICH and the global corporations.
This of course hit our US black families first with REAGAN/CLINTON union busting US industries filled with our US city workers ---high unemployment tied to welfare policies aimed at single mothers only forced black families to break up. This is REAGAN era 1980s-----REAL left social progressives were shouting then as we knew MOVING FORWARD would bring the same to all population groups.
Keep in mind REAGAN represented all those FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% RELIGIOUS RIGHT LEADERS who were OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% not caring at all about FAMILIES.
BREAKUP OF BLACK FAMILY IMPERILS GAINS OF DECADES
By JUDITH CUMMINGS
Published: November 20, 1983
At the height of the civil rights movement in 1965, when a quarter of black families with children were headed by women, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in a report to President Johnson that this growing matriarchy was an important cause of poverty among black Americans. Mr. Moynihan, then a White House aide, created a furor, accused by many of blaming the victims for their distress.
Today, 18 years later, virtually half of black families are headed by single women, and 55 percent of black babies are born to unmarried mothers.
Gun-shy from the Moynihan experience,
authorities for years were reluctant to speak out about the problem. But now, politicians and scholars - black and white, liberal and conservative - openly agree that the situation has reached such proportions that it threatens to undo the black economic gains of the past three decades.
Growing Alarm Among Blacks
The breakdown of traditional family structure is, they say, one of the underlying causes of black poverty, not only because there is no man to provide family income but also because women on the average earn much less than men.
Moreover, many black spokesmen are saying for the first time that this is one of the most serious problems facing their communities and that it may mean that larger and larger proportions of coming generations of blacks will grow up disadvantaged. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a law professor at Georgetown University who was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the Carter Administration, termed the family crisis ''a threat to the future of black people without equal.''
The problem must be resolved, the experts say, because otherwise society at large will have to pay the price, either in compensatory measures to prop up fractured lives or in strife and social conflict as the gap widens between the privileged and the excluded.
An Unmistakable Correlation
It is an open question which is more important: that breakdown in family structure causes poverty or that poverty is a cause of the breakdown. But the correlation between the two is unmistakable, and it is prompting a serious debate over the causes of the problem and a search for solutions.
A study last summer by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, a nonpartisan research group, showed that in all races, families headed by women were twice as likely as two-parent families to be poor. Half of all families headed by black women have incomes below the poverty line, the study showed.
The study noted that in 1981 the average income of black families with two working parents was 84 percent of the average for white families where both parents worked, an increase from 73 percent 13 years earlier. In contrast, a primary reason that the average income for all black families with children was just 56 percent of the average for whites, the study concluded, was that 47 percent of black families were headed by women, as against 14 percent of white ones.
Losses Exceed Gains
''Since black, female-headed households are the most rapidly increasing proportion of all black families, the fact that they have not gained economic ground has more than offset the increases made by other types of black families,'' the report said. The principal author of the report was the director of the center, Tom Joe, who was a welfare official in the Nixon Administration.
In one sense, according to some experts, single black mothers may represent a vanguard. These experts suggest that more and more white women will become single parents as they build a longer tradition of working and financial independence.
But the far-reaching effects on the black community might be mitigated among whites, partly because white women tend to get divorced less often than blacks and tend more often to remarry.
The problems of single mothers, black and white, are compounded by the fact that working women, on the average, earn much less than men. According to the Census Bureau, the median earnings of working black women last year were actually slightly higher than those of working white women, $7,802 as against $7,640. But the average working man earned about twice as much, $15,373.
''With the next generation,'' Mrs. Norton said, ''we could see proportionately greater numbers of disadvantaged people than in this generation, because of the proportion of children who got their start in life as the children of single girls and women.''
OH, REALLY????
Experts Voice Disagreement
While the politicians and social scientists agree that the dissolution of the black family structure has been a main cause of poverty among blacks, they disagree sharply over why such disintegration has occurred and over the possible remedies.
One camp, which includes many members of the Reagan Administration, argues that the nation's welfare system has encouraged families to split up and has led to a state of welfare dependency for generation after generation of blacks. They would reduce Government social programs, require able individuals on welfare to work and place more emphasis on apprehending fathers and forcing them to support their children.
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Then Bush/REAGAN era OPEN BORDERS setting the stage for filling our US cities with global 99% labor pool in 1980s-1990s created the same dismantling of safe and healthy families for our 99% Latino immigrant citizens. Continuous wars and civil unrest driven by global 1% banking killed Latin American societal structures for family just as happened in southeast Asia. Same global 1% MEN killing family structures to create global human capital distribution system ----
MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES IS NOT ABOUT STRENGTHENING FAMILIES NO MATTER 99% OF US CITIZENS OR GLOBAL 99% ---IT IS ABOUT ENDING FAMILY STATUS.
Women have evolved over millions of years as caretakers of family. It cannot be beaten, abused, repressed out of our DNA. Any attack on family is a direct attack on 99% OF WOMEN.
Aggressive Immigration Raids Are Breaking Up Families and Scaring Longtime Residents
Lawyers, activists, and undocumented immigrants are already gearing up for the next wave of crackdowns.
Meredith HoffmanFeb 17 2017, 12:02am
As she curled beneath a fleece blanket on her couch—where she now sleeps since she can't bear to be in bed without her husband—Patricia Ribera Sanchez, a lifelong Texan, recalled the morning she lost her "other half."
"Cesar got in the truck with his boss for work last Friday, and as soon as they turned the corner immigration officers stopped them, said they were looking for another man," Sanchez, 49, told me in her Austin apartment. "Then they asked if Cesar had papers, and he said no—he'd never lie to them. They handcuffed him and put him in their van. It's just so hard. I'm going to fall apart if he doesn't come back."
Sanchez's husband, Cesar Sanchez Ramirez, was one of about 700 immigrants detained last week in the first Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids of the Trump administration. Given Trump's harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and his signing of an executive order focused on making life harder for undocumented immigrants on US soil, it's no surprise that these raids were controversial. ICE has said the raids targeted dangerous people, announcing in a press release that 75 percent of those arrested had criminal records. But agents arrested many residents for merely being undocumented, people like Cesar. In Washington State, authorities picked up one man who was protected by an Obama-era order shielding those who came to the US as children; in Arizona, protesters attempted to stop the deportation of a mother who authorities had previously allowed to stay.
In the wake of the raids, shattered families are grieving the loss of loved ones, while immigrants around the country scramble to prepare for more crackdowns.
"What has become clear here and around the country is that many people were picked up without a criminal history or an order of deportation," said Stephanie Gharakhanian, legal director for the Austin immigrant advocacy organization Workers Defense Project, who has met with families of the raid victims. "They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Watch a VICE News Tonight segment on refugees who have come to Canada:
In the past few years, the Obama administration prioritized deporting only immigrants with criminal records or who recently entered illegally. But under Trump, virtually any undocumented immigrant can be deported, as these recent raids made all too obvious.
"You can't look at these incidents in isolation from the much bigger sea change around ICE activity and priorities and their mandate that is completely revamped under the executive order," Avideh Moussavian, policy attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, told me. "These enforcement actions are happening when the administration is moving in a direction to triple resources for ICE personnel… There's a cumulative effect of all these factors coming together."
The raids have particularly rattled Austin, a liberal mecca currently fighting Texas to remain a sanctuary city. Officials here say ICE's recent moves are unprecedented. The Workers Defense Project delivered ICE a Freedom of Information Act Request to determine if the agency targeted Austin for its pro-immigrant policies, and Austin's mayor issued an open letter claiming the raids caused "disproportionate harm." Latino businesses shuttered their doors Thursday, and people took to the streets, protesting the raids as part of the nationwide "Day Without Immigrants."
That anxiety is palpable in the undocumented community. Many children of immigrants have stayed home from school, and individuals have called Austin's deportation alert hotline frequently to report suspicious cars or to ask for advice. Meanwhile, at least one family has fled the home they own: A single Mexican mother with several children who are US citizens cowered when ICE agents knocked on her door last week, and since then has gone into hiding.
"She's been in the country many, many years and has no criminal record whatsoever. She's worked at the same job for decades and owned her own home. She's basically like a perfect citizen, but she's a noncitizen," an advocate helping the family who asked to remain anonymous told me. "She's taking it day by day, and many people in the community are supporting her. It's a terrible situation because she has several children in the school system, and these poor kids are being displaced."
Though Austinites say they've never witnessed such a barrage of raids, the national pace of ICE pickups last week did not exceed that of the Obama administration, immigration attorney Jeremy McKinney told me.
"If you annualize last week's numbers, the current administration would not exceed the number of removals from the Obama administration," said McKinney, a North Carolina–based member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "But, since Obama's directive in November 2014, the operations had specific targets, and if other people around were undocumented and they didn't fall within the administration's priorities, they were not taken in."
Now, McKinney said, ICE has "returned to collateral damage," meaning the agency will pick up anyone in the process of seizing their target—just as they did prior to November 2014.
"I can tell you in my region in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia enforcement is always intense, so what we're seeing so far is nothing new to us," he said. "It's very consistent with the way things were up until we had this brief moment of clarity saying we need to fill [immigrant detention] beds with people with felony convictions."
ICE claimed it apprehended 51 immigrants in the Austin area, but the Mexican consul general, Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, told me 53 Mexican nationals were detained Thursday through Sunday, with 30 picked up last Friday alone—nearly ten times the typical daily number. Advocates estimate that at least a dozen Central Americans were also detained.
"A significant number of the people we interviewed were caught in the process of ICE detaining some other target," Gutierrez said, noting that colleagues in his office had not seen such a "significant spike" in the past 15 years. "I saw hardworking people detained who have been living in this country for many years with established roots and children."
Cesar Sanchez Ramirez was one of those hardworking people. Patricia described her husband, who came to the States at age 18, as industrious or compassionate. He has held the same job doing electrical repairs for the past seven years and supported her through surgery and sickness.
"I'm in and out of the hospital because of diabetes, and I just had five hernias removed in May. My husband had to take care of me—he even had to change my diapers. I was out of work, and he paid for everything," Sanchez told me. "He's so sweet. He draws pictures for me of hearts and of my name in his name. He's never been in trouble. We just work all week, go to the grocery store on the weekend, go to church on Sunday, and then get ready to work again."
He has also become like the father of her two children.
"We met at a club in Austin, and he kept asking me to dance again and again," reminisced Sanchez, recalling the black-and-white sparkly top she wore that Saturday night eight years ago. "He was very nice and respectful and walked me to my car… I was abused as a child, and then my son's father was abusive. Then that night I was finally blessed with a good man. But now he's not here."
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We discussed in detail the POSING RIGHT WING CHRISTIAN RIGHT were all OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% CATHOLIC FREEMASONS pretending to be protestant or evangelical PASTORS. The US Christian right drove MOVING FORWARD CONTINUOUS WARS -----it drove US CITIES AS FAILED STATE and rural counties as global drug and violence by dismantling social safety net programs at the same time sending all US corporations overseas to build Foreign Economic Zones.
It is those same FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS LEADERS who make up that right wing policy stance shouting at those 99% of poor and working class. All the policies of REAGAN/CLINTON were far-right wing global 1% extreme wealth extreme poverty----all these policies KILLED 99% OF FAMILY STRUCTURES IN US AND GLOBALLY----and the FAKE religious right were pushing all these policies.
What created much of the tension in US marriages? The breaking of labor unions with mass unemployment for our 99% US black, white, and brown
men. Wives working while men have no employment -----creates great tension for many families. Did women take those labor union industrial jobs from our US men? Of course not----the TENSIONS IN US FAMILY THESE FEW DECADES OF MOVING FORWARD IS DELIBERATE----IT IS GREAT LEAP FORWARD ----MAO MARXISM COMES TO US.
MAO MARXISM or global banking 1% extreme wealth extreme poverty FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM------did this same thing in China---broke down all ideals of family to make the STATE/RICH/CORPORATIONS the only family Chinese citizens held as supreme.
Here are left social progressives shouting back in Clinton era 1990s-----that families in US were under attack by global neo-liberalism
'POVERTY TERMED A DIVORCE FACTOR
By ROBERT PEAR,
Published: January 15, 1993
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14— Poverty is a major factor contributing to the breakup of American families, the Census Bureau said today.
More generally, it said, stresses associated with economic insecurity and financial need make it more likely that families will dissolve.
"Poor two-parent families were about twice as likely to break up as were two-parent families not in poverty," said Donald J. Hernandez, the Census Bureau demographer who wrote the report'.
Who created US poverty? MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES------Clinton/Bush/Obama as Robber Baron 5% pols and players working for global 1% banking.
THE BLOG
08/10/2010 05:25 pm ET Updated 6 days ago
The Breakdown of the Traditional Family: Why Conservative Christians Should Rethink Their Blame Game
By John W. Whitehead
In his August 5 editorial entitled “You Call This Marriage?
“ Alexander Chee wrote:
The week of the decision on Proposition 8 was also the week of the decision on “The Bachelorette.” Ali Fedotowsky said yes to Roberto Martinez, one out of 25 who competed for the chance. ...
There could be no more perfect metaphor for the state of modern marriage this week.
In the U.S., a couple who barely know each other can marry in a publicly validated media spectacle with a sound track, soft lighting, promotional deals and a cash prize, as long as they are a man and a woman. So far, since the show’s inception in 2003, Trista Rehn is the only one of the annual contestants to still be married.
Yet a couple who quietly have been together for 15 years and married twice, in California, each time it became legal, have had to see their relationship invalidated twice by the courts, by people claiming their marriage was threatening traditional marriage.
Despite the political firestorm surrounding the federal court decision that overturned California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, little has been said about the real issues that are contributing to the dysfunctional American family. The disintegration of traditional marriage and the family, once the glue that kept society together, has set in motion a domino effect that, as it ripples outward, is relegating children to lives of poverty and servitude and destroying the foundations of freedom.
Contrary to what critics might say, same-sex marriage, while it may be a symptom of a cultural shift away from traditional marriage and all it has historically entailed, is not responsible for the collapse of marriage as a long-revered institution in this country. That blame rests squarely on the shoulders of heterosexuals for whom marriage — and the family unit that arises from it — has become a temporary arrangement at best, with divorce now seen as an immediate cure-all and cohabitation a happy, less permanent, alternative.
Even among professed evangelical Christians who tout traditional marriage, divorce rates are comparable to those of non-Christians. And while the decline in divorce in recent years has been hailed as good news (it now stands at 40 percent, down from a high of nearly 60 percent in the 1980s), it is a false positive that is offset by falling marriage rates and surging cohabitations.
As researcher George Barna observes:
There no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage. Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life.
That said, divorce is not solely to blame for the collapse of the institution of marriage. Marriage generally seems to be falling out of favor everywhere except in the realm of reality TV. For the first time in American history, unmarried households now make up the majority of all U.S. households. Younger generations are also more inclined to live together.
Where once the institution of marriage gave legitimacy to sexual relations and children, it no longer serves as much of a gatekeeper. This can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution, which paved the way for sex outside of marriage; the feminist movement, which pushed to legalize abortion, thereby making pregnancy a woman’s “problem” to deal with as she sees fit; and the decreased role of religion in American life. Consequently, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. children are now born out of wedlock. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of unmarried-couple households with children has risen to more than 1.7 million — up from under 200,000 in 1970. Moreover, there are 9.8 million single mothers versus 1.8 million single fathers.
The ramifications of the breakdown of marriage and the subsequent rise in single-parent households are far-reaching and alarming. For example, children living with a single mother are six times more likely to live in poverty than are children whose parents are married. The same study found that children in stepfamilies and single-parent families are almost three times more likely to drop out of school than children in intact families. And living in a single-parent home can cause a disconnect among children between family and marriage.
Moreover, as W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, notes in “The Evolution of Divorce”:
Since 1974, about 1 million children per year have seen their parents divorce — and children who are exposed to divorce are two to three times more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies. In their book Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur found that 31% of adolescents with divorced parents dropped out of high school, compared to 13% of children from intact families. They also concluded that 33% of adolescent girls whose parents divorced became teen mothers, compared to 11% of girls from continuously married families. And McLanahan and her colleagues have found that 11% of boys who come from divorced families end up spending time in prison before the age of 32, compared to 5% of boys who come from intact homes. ...
Sociologist Paul Amato estimates that if the United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did in 1960, the nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades, 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, approximately 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, about 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, and approximately 70,000 fewer suicides every year.
These statistics tell some painful truths about America at the dawn of the new millennium. They show that our priorities have clearly shifted. Despite the billions we spend on childcare, toys, clothes, private lessons, etc., a concern for our children no longer seems to be a prime factor in how we live our lives. What are the consequences of all this?
First, the loss of the traditional family structure has led to a destabilization in society of “mediating structures” — neighborhoods, families, churches, schools and voluntary associations. When they function as they should, mediating structures limit the growth of the government. But when these structures break down, people look to mega-structures, such as the state, for help. According to Wilcox, the public costs of family breakdown among working-class and poor communities exceed $112 billion a year “as federal, state, and local governments spend more money on police, prisons, welfare, and court costs, trying to pick up the pieces of broken families.”
Second, major religious institutions have virtually little to no moral or spiritual impact on American society — apart from politics, that is. The Christian church is a prime example. Intensely political, many Christian organizations today work feverishly to enact such anti-gay measures as same-sex marriage amendments while doing little to impact the traditional family positively. Indeed, despite all the money ($40 million and counting), politicking, fundraising and energy that conservative Christian groups put into defeating gay marriage in California, nothing was accomplished in terms of shoring up the traditional family structure.
Third, the data supports the premise that the decline in the family leads to a decline in our democratic form of government. Indeed, the family, not schools, is where children should learn self-government, basic moral values and the beliefs that determine the future of democratic institutions. Thus, it stands to reason that without stable families, we can have no hope of producing self-reliant, responsible citizens.
Finally, traditional marriage plays a critical role in the structure of free societies by interposing a significant legal entity between the individual and the state. None other than D. H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, once recognized:
The marriage bond is the fundamental connecting link in Christian society. Break it, and you will have to go back to the overwhelming dominance of the State, which existed before the Christian era. The Roman State was all-powerful, the Roman father represented the State, the Roman family was the father’s estate, held more or less in fee for the State itself. Now the question is, do we want to go back, or forward, to any of these forms of State control?
Lawrence continued:
It is marriage, perhaps, which has given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the State, given him his foothold of independence on which to stand and resist an unjust State. Man and wife, a king and queen with one or two subjects, and a few square yards of territory of their own: this, really, is marriage. It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfillment, for man, woman, and children.
There can be no easy fix for these problems. Certainly, there are no legislative or governmental solutions, and fighting gay marriage isn’t going to do it. Morality and the decline of the family have become convenient platforms for those on both sides of the political aisle. Having reduced the very real problems plaguing America’s families to soundbites bandied about in the quest for political dominance, today’s politicians, gay rights activists and traditional marriage activists are not providing a lasting solution to the marriage meltdown.
The solution, if there is one, is to be found where the problems start: with each man, woman and child taking responsibility for keeping their family together. So let’s forget about politics. Forget about the debates over who gets to marry whom. Instead, let’s look around at what’s left of our neighborhoods, our communities and our families, and put our children first.
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We have identified the corruption of our CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES as yet another breakdown in family ------the policies behind removing children from abusive families became more and more repressive to the point our parents felt they could not even discipline their children without having those children removed. Our US cities saw these corruptions SOAR-----
As this quote states----is was the DEREGULATION and dismantling of oversight and accountability that led to a corrupt child protective services.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life’Paul Grant, legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2121886/The-experts-break-families-The-terrifying-story-prospective-
While 99 %of US WE THE PEOPLE were watching LAW AND ORDER with detectives and child protective services working as they should----our US deregulated system was failing these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
We have global banking 5% pols and players shouting WHY ARE LOW-INCOME FAMILIES NOT DISCIPLINING THEIR CHILDREN after these few decades of those same families having their children taken because of issues of abuse often around discipline. The REAL left social progressive stance on child protective services BEFORE Clinton era was to keep children in home as families were counseled to stable and healthy...the far-right wing global 1% stance after Clinton was-----we are not going to stabilize or make healthy US 99% of families so we need to take those children. This is BALTIMORE THESE FEW DECADES.
The 'experts' who break up families:
The terrifying story of the prospective MP branded an unfit mother by experts who'd never met her - a nightmare shared by many other families
By Sue Reid for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 18:45 EST, 28 March 2012 | Updated: 07:57 EST, 29 March 2012
Ordeal: Lucy's son was nearly taken into care when she was wrongly accused of putting his life in danger
A little over a year ago, Lucy Allan led what most people would regard as an eminently respectable life.
The middle-class mother, a Tory councillor, was happily married to her stockbroker husband, Robin, and doted on their ten-year-old son, who loved going to school and was a passionate cricketer.
Indeed, such was Mrs Allan’s standing in the community that this accountant and former investment banker was on David Cameron’s A-list of potential MPs and a prospective Conservative candidate at the last election.
She devoted her spare time to her council duties. Twice a month, she sat on the local fostering panel, which oversaw the removal of children from their parents and placed them with new families.
It was heart-rending work, as she recalls. ‘At each fostering meeting we were presented with horrifying cases of abusive parents, almost always depicted as “substance abusers”, mentally unstable or “unable to put the needs of their children over their own needs”.
‘Often, this portrayal was supported by an expert report from a psychiatrist, psychologist or medical doctor,’ says Lucy.
‘It never occured to me, or any member of the panel, that the information we were presented with might be a distorted, twisted fiction — or that the reports were anything other than independent.’
Now, her view has changed. She suspects that many of the damning reports were written by experts who had never met the families in question, to suit the wishes of social workers under pressure from the Government to increase the number of children adopted.
As a result of this process, more and more children are being taken into state foster care.
So why has her faith in the system she once facilitated been shattered? Because, thanks to a bewildering chain of events, this eloquent, educated woman found herself under attack from social workers and fighting to stop her own son being taken into care.
Hers is a Kafkaesque story involving family experts who passed judgment on her fitness as a mother without, in some cases, even meeting her.
Ordeal: Lucy Allan with her adored son, whose identity we are protecting
Lucy’s story is particularly disturbing in the light of a report released this month which found that decisions about the futures of thousands of children are being based on flawed evidence from well-paid ‘experts’, some of whom are unqualified and, time and again, never meet the families concerned.
The damning study by Professor Jane Ireland, a forensic psychologist, examined more than 127 expert witness reports used in family court cases in three areas of England. She found that 90 per cent were produced by clinicians who no longer practise, but instead earn their living entirely as ‘professional expert witnesses’ paid for by council social work departments. Sixty-five per cent of the reports were poorly or very poorly carried out.
This has led to accusations from MPs, lawyers and families that many of the experts are on a gravy train — ‘hired guns’ paid to write precisely what social workers want to read.
This month the Mail reported how just such an accusation has been levelled against one leading psychiatrist, Dr George Hibbert — who faces allegations that he deliberately misdiagnosed parents as having mental disorders, which led to them having their children taken by social services.
John Hemming, a Lib Dem MP who is calling for a national inquiry into the use of expert testimonies in family court hearings, says this dubious system has resulted in families being torn apart and hundreds of children being wrongly taken for adoption from innocent parents.
It is a scenario Lucy Allan feared could happen with her own son. Her nightmare began last March when, aged 46, and having begun to feel depressed for no apparent reason, she decided to go to see a doctor.
‘I am close to my son, so I was worried that he knew I was feeling sad. I went to my local GP surgery expecting to be given a course of anti-depressants and then feel better,’ she recalls.
She was seen by a young female locum, who listened to what Lucy had to say, and then told her she wanted to refer her to social services to ‘see if the family needed support’.
The locum turned to Dr Peter Green, a consultant forensic physician and head of child safeguarding in Wandsworth, South London, where Lucy lives. A flamboyant figure with flowing grey hair and a penchant for bow ties, he has written thousands of reports for the family courts.
According to documents seen by the Allan family, Dr Green told the locum his view was that Lucy was ‘very self-centred’ — this despite the fact he had never set eyes on Lucy or spoken to her. (When she later complained about the conclusions he had drawn without even having seen her, the doctor is alleged to have told her he had relied on a ‘gut feel’).
Families torn apart: Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has called for a nationwide inquiry into the use of expert testimonies in family court hearings
To Lucy’s horror, following Dr Green’s assessment, the locum informed social services that Lucy’s son was at significant risk of harm from his mother.
Thus it was that a woman whose job it had been to make decisions on the fostering panel about which children should be removed from their families suddenly found herself under the most intense scrutiny.
‘Instead of reading reports on another mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading the same accusations in reports about me and my family,’ she says.
Social services insisted they interview her son, but as the inquiry unfolded, the evidence from his teachers suggested he was happy and thriving. An independent report from an NHS psychiatrist also said Lucy was ‘no risk to anyone, including her son’.
But social services hired their own psychiatrist from the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London — at taxpayers’ expense naturally.
‘Instead of reading reports on another mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading the same accusations in reports about me and my family’ Lucy AllanWithout meeting Lucy or her son, and based only on information provided by social services, the private psychiatrist stated in an ‘expert’ report that there was an ‘urgent need’ for the assessment and treatment of Lucy.
The psychiatrist added that there was ‘no way’ her depression would not have a ‘significant impact on her parenting’.
As the investigation dragged on, Lucy underwent a series of interviews by social services and by experts paid by them to examine her and her family. Many of their subsequent reports, says Lucy, were inaccurate, biased and took her family’s words out of context.
For example, her son had mentioned that when he got off the school bus, he always asked Lucy how she was, but this was described in one report as: ‘Her son demonstrates inappropriate anxiety for the wellbeing of his mother on a daily basis.’
When Lucy admitted taking sleeping pills for insomnia and diazepam for anxiety, another report on her said such ‘drug abuse would make her barely conscious on a daily basis’.
Her confession of sharing a bottle of wine with husband Robin most nights was written up as ‘alcohol abuse’, and the risk of Lucy harming her son was deemed to be ‘substantiated’.
All this begs the question of how often such judgments are passed down by ‘experts’ and social workers on those less well equipped than Lucy to defend themselves.
She has spent the past year trying to clear her name, paid out £10,000 on legal fees and has had to pull herself off the A-list of David Cameron’s potential Tory candidates, quit as a school governor, and, of course, resign from the fostering panel. ‘I am now ineligible for the Criminal Record Bureau check required for working with children or young people,’ she says sadly. Her son’s social services records state that she was once considered a ‘risk’ to him, and it will remain on his file till he is 18.
Finally, at Christmas, the council’s social services said officially no action was required concerning Lucy. She is trying to rebuild her life with the help of husband Robin — who, incredibly, was never interviewed by social services — but still fears she could come under scrutiny again.
'Alcohol abuse': Social Services' verdict on Lucy's confession that she and her husband shared a bottle most evenings
‘The system is designed to silence people,’ she says. ‘I have been prescribed anti-depressants and I am better. But at the back of my mind is the fear that if I complain too loudly about the child protection system they will be back at my door.’
No doubt she would agree with Nigel Priestley, a lawyer involved in family law, who said recently: ‘Just about the most draconian act the state can carry out is to remove a family’s child. What is at stake is the loss of their children, and on the basis of a report which might, or might not be, questionable.’
Those who write these reports — often psychologists or psychiatrists, but also medical doctors and consultants — do not face the glare of public scrutiny precisely because of the secrecy of the family court system. Lucy can describe her ordeal only because her case never got as far as those closed courts — no parent who appears at one of these hearings, which operate in every town and city in the land, is allowed to speak to anyone later about what has happened there, even to their own MP.
Every year, 200 mothers or fathers are jailed for ‘contempt of court’ for breaking this silence — while the same family courts request the removal of 225 children each week, 97 per cent of whom are never returned to their families.
Now, there are demands for an American-style ‘class’ legal action against the Government by parents who have had dubious or even bogus reports written about them. Paul Grant, a legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors in Southampton, says devastated parents have contacted him after his firm took on the case of a mother, known only as Miss A, who claims she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder by psychiatrist Dr George Hibbert because social workers wanted her baby adopted.
Now, Hibbert could be struck off by the General Medical Council, which is investigating extraordinary suggestions that he deliberately misdiagnosed ‘caring’ mothers as having ‘personality disorders’ in order to help social workers take away children.
When he was confronted with the allegation about Miss A, Hibbert offered to surrender his licence to practise as a doctor.
This week, his spokesman said he is ‘unable to comment due to his professional duty of confidentiality’. But I have learned that Porsche-driving Dr Hibbert amassed up to half-a-million pounds a year from his work as an expert witness, and from his reports on parents and children for social services departments.
Accounts for his company, Assessment in Care Ltd, show that profits soared from £23,000 in 2001 to a peak of £468,000 in 2007. It is now worth £2.7million, according to Companies’ House records.
Paul Grant says that Miss A’s distressing case ‘may be the tip of a very large iceberg’. He adds: ‘We contend that when a practising clinician becomes a professional expert witness with a private company, there is no registration process, and no machinery to vet what they do.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life.’
As Dr Hibbert’s professional conduct comes under scrutiny, it is emerging that he is not the only one whose actions are being questioned.
The Mail has been contacted by scores of parents who believe they have been mistreated on the word of these ‘experts’. We have been told by lawyers about clinicians charging £1,800 a day to appear at family courts, on top of the thousands of pounds a time they receive for writing the reports, which often contain lies, ambiguities and insinuations.
One mother said she had her children taken away because an ‘expert’ said she ‘liked shopping’; another was criticised as mentally unfit for ‘burning the toast’, and lost her child, too.
In another case, an expert was paid handsomely to write a report based on the observations of a social worker who said a five-year-old girl was ‘monosyllabic’.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life’
Paul Grant, legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors
Yet we are told a secret tape recording of the social worker’s interview showed the child chatting away about school, her family and her home. The little girl has since been removed from her mother.
We have also been told about a gregarious 47-year-old business adviser in the north of England who had to fight to keep her five-year-old daughter after being labelled a ‘totally isolated schizoid’ by a psychologist, who we understand is trained only to treat children, and should never have been involved in the analysis of adult behaviour.
The psychologist in question (who writes up to 100 expert reports a year) charged £6,000 for his written opinion on the mother, her husband and child. Yet the mother says she was given no chance to deny the ‘schizoid’ report — and kept her girl by the skin of her teeth only after the child’s nanny vouched for her parenting skills.
In another extraordinary case, after a woman was found by a psychologist to be a ‘competent mother’, the social workers are said to have insisted on commissioning a second expert’s report. It agreed with the first.
They then commissioned a third, which finally found that the mother had a ‘borderline personality disorder’. All three of her children were taken away for adoption.
So how have such apparent travesties been allowed to go on virtually unchecked in child protection?
Knee-jerk reaction?
Since the harrowing case of baby Peter Connelly more youngsters than ever before in British history are being removed from families every week
No other country in Western Europe removes so many children from their parents. The numbers taken into care — the first step towards adoption — have doubled in a decade to more than 10,000 a year.
The last Labour government set adoption targets and rewarded local councils with hundreds of thousands of pounds if they reached them.
The targets have been scrapped after protests from MPs and lawyers, but the dangerous legacy persists. Social workers now get praise and promotion if they raise adoption numbers. David Cameron is also demanding more adoptions — and that they are fast-tracked.
Since the case of 17-month-old Baby P, more youngsters than ever before in British history are being removed from families every week. Many say this is a knee-jerk reaction, which is probably true. But it’s not the whole story.
‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven guilty’ Ian Joseph, author and expert on forced adoption
It is the 1989 Children Act — which introduced a blanket secrecy in the family courts — that is the real culprit. It encouraged a lack of public scrutiny in the child protection system and what MP John Hemming calls the ‘twaddle and psychobabble’ peddled there, which has caused dreadful miscarriages of justice.
Ian Joseph, who has written a book on forced adoption, told me this week: ‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven guilty and also be free to talk about what is happening in those courts without being thrown into jail.’
Until that happens, hundreds more children may be seized from their families on the word of experts — many of whom are either not qualified or are receiving huge sums of money to play God.
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The result of these few decades of WAR ON FAMILY by global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was to create this aberration in family where the grandparents still having some wealth from working during strong US economic policies BEFORE REAGAN/CLINTON global neo-liberalism replaced those parents struggling with long-term unemployment and being pushed into BLACK MARKET ECONOMIES.
EDWEEK is CLINTON/BILL GATES global education corporation media outlet ------telling us our grandparents should have that power of child as student even as grandparents are top target of MOVING FORWARD SUBPRIMING OF ALL US CITIZENS' RETIREMENTS, HOME-OWNERSHIP ET AL. No population group has been under stress than our aging baby boomers-----who have indeed become that extended family support.......going, going, going under as global Wall Street frauds soar.
99% of black, white, and brown citizens are seeing this shift in grandparenting replacing parents as more and more US citizens are pushed to long-term unemployment---it is a problem for all 99% of black,white, and brown citizens.
OF COURSE THIS FALLS HEAVIEST ON OUR GRANDMOTHERS.
As far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/OBAMA pretend they are being left social progressive in helping our seniors care for children---they are killing our senior's wealth, stability, and health.
Published Online: August 3, 2011
Statistics Show More Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren
Sandra Smith has been taking care of her granddaughter, Jonea Wilson-Hardy, since she was 5. Jonea, 12, holds her half-brother Jaiden Fonchenela, 1, while Smith looks on. Smith is one of thousands of grandparents in the country increasingly involved in their grandchildren's education.
—Jenn Ackerman for Education Week
By Sarah D. Sparks
Years after she’d thought her parenting days were behind her, Minneapolis retiree Sandra L. Smith got the news that her grown daughter in Ohio had been badly injured in an accident.
Ms. Smith found herself with custody of her granddaughter, Jonea, who was just entering 1st grade. She had to help the child cope not only with a new home but also a new school.
“It did change my world a great deal,” Ms. Smith recalled. “I was disabled when I got her, but I got into a routine of getting up early where I hadn’t before. I got involved more; I joined the PTA.”
Six years later, Jonea is entering 7th grade at Field Community School in Minneapolis come fall, and Ms. Smith has worked her way up to become co-chair of Field’s parent-teacher association and the diversity chair of the 6,000-member state PTA.
Statistics show that she’s one of thousands of grandparents who are becoming more involved, through necessity as well as interest, in their grandchildren’s education. Some experts predict grandparents’ increasing presence and the challenges they face could change the way schools and districts approach the basics of parent involvement, from enrolling children in school to making educational decisions and volunteering at school.
More than one-tenth of American children younger than 18 lived in a household with at least one grandparent at the time of Census interviews conducted in 2009, and the number of children living with grandparents instead of their parents has nearly doubled since 1991, according to a June report by the U.S. Census Bureau. Some 7.8 million children lived with at least one grandparent in the household as of 2009, up from 4.7 million in 1991, a 64 percent jump, and such children make up a larger share of the population as well.
Moreover, grandparents are, hands down, the most common child-care providers for families after parents, particularly for young children: As of 2005, the most recent data, grandparents cared for 13.8 percent of preschoolers—more than Head Start, day-care centers, and nursery schools combined. They also provided care for 12.8 percent of all school-age children ages 5 to 14. The Census Bureau found the average time children spent in their grandparents’ care also increased, from 13 hours a week in 2005 to 14 to 16 hours per week in 2006.
The Census Bureau found grandparents’ role particularly vital among families of color. In 2009, 9 percent of white children lived with a grandparent, compared with 14 percent of Hispanic and 17 percent of African-American children. Moreover, while about 2 percent of white and Hispanic children lived with a grandparent rather than a parent, 5 percent of black children did so.
“We have many more grandparents and relatives caring for children, including their educational needs,” said Cate Newbanks, the executive director of FACES of Virginia Families, a Richmond-based support and advocacy group for foster, adoptive, and kinship-based families.
“There is a whole younger generation of people taking care of their grandchildren now; we’re not all in our 80s,” said Ms. Newbanks, who cares for three grandchildren.
One of those grandparents is Molene Martin, 60, of the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. For more than seven years, she has been raising her four grandnieces, now ages 9 through 16, and recently her 15-year-old grandson came to live with her, too.
“My grandson just moved here from Pennsylvania, so I had to go and do the research on what school is best for him,” Ms. Martin said. “I want to know about test scores, I want to know what resources they provide, but if you don’t know to ask those questions, it’s not like they are just going to tell you. I know as a parent or grandparent you have to do the research yourself, but if you don’t know the right questions to ask, your child could be sent to the wrong school.”
Ms. Martin has become one of the founding members of the Baltimore-area Grandfamilies Parent Teacher Student Association, launched this May by longtime grandparent advocate Annette Saunders, a human-resources consultant for the Baltimore public schools. The group holds workshops and meetings for grandparents and parents on topics from how to navigate school system procedures and handle changing curricula to refreshing their own resumes. “We’re finding out grandparents are younger now than ever before, and they might need job skills; some of them may just be getting computer skills.” she said. “Our vision is to make sure every parent and grandparent can develop their leadership skills.”
Legal Barriers at School
Ms. Newbanks and other experts say grandparents often have trouble navigating education systems that are not set up to involve nontraditional families.
According to the Grandfamilies State Law and Policy Resource Center, an online partnership of the Casey Family Programs, the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law, and Generations United, only 14 states allow grandparents without legal custody to enroll their grandchildren in school and participate in their education. They are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
And only about 122,000 of the 2.5 million American children being raised by grandparents, as opposed to just living with them, are covered under the foster-care system, which would enable the grandparents to have temporary legal custody. In many cases, grandparents act as an informal alternative placement for parents and social workers alike.
In Virginia, as in many states, grandparents must prove that they have legal custody of a child to register him or her for school, a rule intended to prevent parents from shopping for different schools by using relatives’ addresses. While temporary custody can help a child get enrolled, it does not provide any rights for the grandparent to get involved in schooling.
Molene Martin, 60, waits for the rest of the family to return home with her granddaughter Teagan Diggs, 4, left, and adopted grandniece Raqell Martin, 15, in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. For more than seven years, she has been raising her four grandnieces, now ages 9 through 16, and recently her 15-year-old grandson came to live with her, too.
—Nicole Frugé/Education Week
The enrollment restrictions are intended to prevent cases like that of Akron, Ohio, mother Kelley Williams-Bolar, who used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters out of their neighborhood school and into a higher-performing suburban district. Ms. Williams-Bolar served nine days in jail for falsifying records and still faces additional probation time.
Moreover, federal and state privacy laws sharply limit what information schools can give out to relatives who are not a child’s legal guardians, and decades of intrafamily custody disputes have taught schools to be wary of allowing nonguardians to get involved in school.
“What happens for grandparents is if we don’t take legal custody of the children, it’s a privacy violation if [schools] even allow you to participate,” Ms. Newbanks said. “If the child needs special education, you can’t petition for those services; you can’t help plan for those; you can’t get any information on how the child is doing. They can’t do anything except allow you to bring the child to school.”
Michael Carter, the director of community engagement for the Baltimore district, said his office tries to work with grandparents who are in tricky custody situations. “When we know the child is living under that caregiver’s roof, we accord that person the same rights and support we would give any parent,” he said. “We’re not trying to put roadblocks in front of them.”
Mr. Carter noted, however, that families can be closemouthed about exact custody arrangements, particularly when a grandparent is caring for a child because the parents have personal or financial problems. “Families aren’t a lot of times willing to say, ‘I’m the grandparent raising my grandchild.’ Often they just say, ‘I’m the guardian; this is my child,’ ” he said.
FACES of Virginia Families has been lobbying the state legislature to allow grandparents to be considered guardians for educational purposes without requiring parents to give up custody of their children.
“Something has to be done to marry child welfare and education,” Ms. Newbanks said. “If we are going to try to keep families together, … we’ve got to come up with an approach that allows them to [stay together] without making it a tremendous burden.”
Providing Support
Beyond just allowing grandparents to participate in education, school and district administrators should rethink parent-involvement programs if they want to get grandparents engaged, according to Deborah M. Whitley, the director of the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren and an associate professor of social work at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
“Sometimes we have grandparents near their 80s trying to take care of toddlers,” she said. “When you have those aging issues overlaid with trying to take care of the educational needs of the grandchildren, extra supports may be needed.”
The way a school frames its parent-involvement message can influence whether grandparents get involved, Ms. Whitley said. For example, many schools advertise “Grandparents Day” celebrations in September and October, she said, but those often focus on bringing grandparents in for lunch or a party, rather than discussing academic topics with them.
By contrast, she said, administrators often advertise teacher conferences and sessions on how to help with homework under the banner “Parents’ Day.”
“Grandparents may think, ‘Well, that’s not for us,’ where they may be more engaged if it was called ‘Family Day,’ ” she said.
Moreover, it can be difficult, Ms. Whitley said, for grandparents to articulate their grandchildren’s needs, particularly after a traumatic transition.
“When these grandparents were raising their own kids, they never had to have special services, and now they are in a position where their grandchildren may need special services,” she said. “Sometimes grandparents are totally unaware of anything in that realm; they don’t know what to ask for, or how to monitor what should be delivered to their grandchildren.”
Mr. Carter agreed, recalling a recent phone call with a great-grandmother trying to navigate school requirements. “They were simple to me, but to an 81-year-old raising a teenage great-granddaughter, there were things difficult for her,” he said. “I told her I would be her legs, I would do the legwork for her.”
Jonea’s grandmother, Ms. Smith, said she had private guides to getting involved at her granddaughter’s school.
“I had three sisters who were teachers, so they let me know how to navigate the system,” Ms. Smith said. “I went right away to connect with all her teachers, and I’ve stayed up on all of her classes and homework.”
Still, even Ms. Smith has struggled to get support from the school. After repeatedly trying and failing to reach the school social worker when Jonea began to struggle with depression and academic problems, Ms. Smith found an outside tutor and a state-supported therapist, she said. The latter identified the girl to be tested for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Baltimore’s Grandfamilies group holds training for grandparents on how to work with teachers and their students on academic issues, and Ms. Martin said she gets to know new teachers as quickly as she can. “When I first go in, they think I’m the grandmother, but now they just treat me like any other parent,” she said.
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Here is MOVING FORWARD MYANMAR AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE----today's example of the stages of development and its affects on 99% of global citizens. Here in US we can see the exact societal stresses in MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
How can we make a living if we're not allowed to catch fish?
This is what MOVING FORWARD in US has as a goal---all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens along with our global 99% immigrant citizens will see FAMILIES BROKEN----FAMILIES DISSOLVED----societal ethos making family about the STATE/CORPORATE CAMPUS
MOVING FORWARD IS A DIRECT ATTACK ON 99% OF WOMEN------WE ARE THE CARETAKERS OF FAMILY.
“How can we make a living if we’re not allowed to catch fish?” said Nyein Aye, who bought a bigger boat just four months ago but now says his income has dropped by two-thirds due to a decreased catch resulting from restrictions on when and where he can fish. Last month he joined more than 100 people in a protest demanding compensation from pipeline operator Petrochina'.
'But villagers in Kyauk Pyu say they fear the project would not contribute to the development of the area because the operating companies employ mostly Chinese workers'.
#Business News
June 8, 2017 / 7:07 PM / 6 months ago
China's $10 billion strategic project in Myanmar sparks local ire
Yimou Lee, Wa Lone
KYAUK PYU, Myanmar (Reuters) - Days before the first supertanker carrying 140,000 tonnes of Chinese-bound crude oil arrived in Myanmar’s Kyauk Pyu port, local officials confiscated Nyein Aye’s fishing nets.
The 36-year-old fisherman was among hundreds banned from fishing a stretch of water near the entry point for a pipeline that pumps oil 770 km (480 miles) across Myanmar to southwest China and forms a crucial part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” project to deepen its economic links with Asia and beyond.
“How can we make a living if we’re not allowed to catch fish?” said Nyein Aye, who bought a bigger boat just four months ago but now says his income has dropped by two-thirds due to a decreased catch resulting from restrictions on when and where he can fish. Last month he joined more than 100 people in a protest demanding compensation from pipeline operator Petrochina.
The pipeline is part of the nearly $10 billion Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone, a scheme at the heart of fast-warming Myanmar-China relations and whose success is crucial for the Southeast Asian nation’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Embattled Suu Kyi needs a big economic win to stem criticism that her first year in office has seen little progress on reform. China’s support is also key to stabilizing their shared border, where a spike in fighting with ethnic armed groups threatens the peace process Suu Kyi says is her top priority.
China’s state-run CITIC Group [CITIC.UL], the main developer of the Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone, says it will create 100,000 jobs in the northwestern state of Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest regions.
But many local people say the project is being rushed through without consultation or regard for their way of life.
Suspicion of China runs deep in Myanmar, and public hostility due to environmental and other concerns has delayed or derailed Chinese mega-projects in the country in the past.
China says the Kyauk Pyu development is based on “win-win” co-operation between the two countries.
“AVOIDING PANIC”
Since Beijing signaled it may abandon the huge Myitsone Dam hydroelectric project in Myanmar earlier this year, it has pushed for concessions on other strategic undertakings - including the Bay of Bengal port at Kyauk Pyu, which gives it an alternative route for energy imports from the Middle East.
Internal planning documents reviewed by Reuters and more than two dozen interviews with officials show work on contracts and land acquisition has already begun before the completion of studies on the impact on local people and the environment, which legal experts said could breach development laws.
The Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone will cover more than 4,200 acres (17 sq km). It includes the $7.3 billion deep sea port and a $2.3 billion industrial park, with plans to attract industries such as textiles and oil refining.
A Reuters’ tally based on internal planning documents and census data suggests 20,000 villagers, most of whom now depend on agriculture and fishing, are at risk of being relocated to make way for the project.
“There will be a huge project in the zone and many buildings will be built, so people who live in the area will be relocated,” said Than Htut Oo, administrator of Kyauk Pyu, who also sits on the management committee of the economic zone.
He said the government has not publicly announced the plan, because it didn’t want to “create panic” while it was still negotiating with the Chinese developer.
AMBITIOUS DEADLINE
In April, Myanmar’s President Htin Kyaw signed two agreements on the pipeline and the Kyauk Pyu port with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as Beijing pushed to revive a project that had stalled since its inception in 2009.
While the studies are expected to take up to 15 months and have not yet started, CITIC has asked Myanmar to finalize contract terms by the end of this year so that the construction can start in 2018, said Soe Win, who leads the Myanmar management committee of the zone.
Such a schedule has alarmed experts who fear the project is being rushed.
“The environmental and social preparations for a project of these dimensions take years to complete and not months,” said Vicky Bowman, head of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business and a former British ambassador to the country.
CITIC said in an email to Reuters it would engage “a world-renowned consulting firm” to carry out assessments.
Although large-scale land demarcation for the project has not yet started, 26 families have been displaced from farmland due to acquisitions that took place in 2014 for the construction of two dams, according to land documents and the land owners.
Slideshow (12 Images)Experts say this violates Myanmar’s environmental laws.
“Carrying out land acquisition before completing environmental impact assessments and resettlement plans is incompatible with national law,” said Sean Bain, Myanmar-based legal consultant for human rights watchdog International Commission of Jurists.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES?
CITIC says it will build a vocational school to provide training for skills needed by companies in the economic zone. It has given $1.5 million to local villages to develop businesses.
Reuters spoke to several villagers who had borrowed small sums from the village funds set up with this money.
“The CITIC money was very useful for us because most people in the village need money,” said fisherman Thar Sai Aung, who borrowed $66 to buy new nets.
Chinese investors say they also plan to spend $1 million during the first five years of the development, and $500,000 per year thereafter to improve local living standards.
But villagers in Kyauk Pyu say they fear the project would not contribute to the development of the area because the operating companies employ mostly Chinese workers.
From more than 3,000 people living on the Maday island, the entry point for the oil pipeline, only 47 have landed a job with the Petrochina, while the number of Chinese workers stood at more than double that number, data from labor authorities showed.
Petrochina did not respond to requests for comment. In a recent report it said Myanmar citizens made up 72 percent of its workforce in the country overall and it would continue to hire locally.
“I don’t think there’s hope for me to get a job at the zone,” said fisherman Nyein Aye. He had been turned down 12 times for job applications with the pipeline operator.
“Chinese companies said they would develop our village and improve our livelihoods, but it turned out we are suffering every day.”
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Here we see the same societal breakdown after these several decades of global 1% naked capitalist neo-liberalism tied to far-right extreme wealth extreme poverty MARXISM------Chinese men sent off as global 99% labor pool-----Chinese mothers pushed into global corporate factories------Chinese families with ancient land rights pushed off land to become dependent on food and housing charity.
'Of the world’s 2.3 billion children 14 percent – or 320 million – are living in single-parent households, most often headed by single mothers. Those children aged 0 to 17 years and their single mothers and single fathers face special challenges, including economic hardships, social stigma and personal difficulties, that require society’s attention and assistance'.
The American people MUST STAND UP to stop MOVING FORWARD or our entire societal structure around family -----not even to think of a strong first world freedom, liberty, justice, and pursuit of happiness climbing the income ladder families-----ARE GOING UNDER THE BUS.
IT WILL BE OUR 99% OF US WOMEN BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN WOMEN AND 99% OF GLOBAL LABOR POOL WOMEN WHO LEAD ------GET RID OF THOSE 5% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.
We see our LATIN AMERICAN nations hit earliest by REAGAN/CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----highest--------
'The highest rates of non-marital childbearing occur in Latin America, including Columbia (74 percent), Peru (69 percent) and Chile (68 percent). Other countries outside that region with high rates of non-marital childbearing are Iceland (68 percent), South Africa (59 percent), France (56 percent), Sweden (55 percent) and the United States (40 percent)'.
These developing nations have had decades of their 99% men killed in civil wars and unrest and pushed into being global labor pool -----same MOVING FORWARD these few decades in US. Women without families---women left behind to handle all duties of families---women feeling they must make their own families.
Featured, Gender, Headlines, Population, Poverty & SDGs | Analysis | Opinion
320 Million Children in Single-Parent Families
By Joseph Chamie
Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division.
Lone mothers typically head more than 80 percent of single-parent households.
File Image. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS
NEW YORK, Oct 15 2016 (IPS) - Of the world’s 2.3 billion children 14 percent – or 320 million – are living in single-parent households, most often headed by single mothers. Those children aged 0 to 17 years and their single mothers and single fathers face special challenges, including economic hardships, social stigma and personal difficulties, that require society’s attention and assistance.
While raising children is a major responsibility and protracted undertaking for couples, it becomes markedly more demanding and often onerous for lone parents. Children raised in single-parent households generally do not have the same financial means, personal care and parental support available to them as those brought up in two-parent families. Consequently, children in single-parent families are frequently disadvantaged due to comparatively high levels of unemployment, poverty and poor health among such households.
The primary cause of single-parent households in the distant past was parental death due to disease, war, maternal mortality and accidents. As a result of those high adult mortality rates, it is estimated that at least one-third of the children had lost a parent during childhood.
Today in addition to parental death, which fortunately has declined markedly over the past century, socio-cultural factors have arisen as the primary causes for single-parent households. Divorce, separation and abandonment are now major reasons for single-parent families globally. In addition, unplanned pregnancy, intended pregnancy and adoption by those who are unmarried and without partners are among the causes of single-parent households in many Western societies.
The proportion of children living in single-parent households varies considerably across countries. At the lowest levels where 10 percent or less of the children live in single-parent families are three dozen mainly developing countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan and Turkey. However, due to their large population size, those countries together account for close to one-third of all children living in single-parent households worldwide (Figure 1).
At the other end of the spectrum with more than 25 percent of the children living in single-parent households are also close to three dozen countries, all of which are developing nations except for Latvia (31 percent) and the United States (28 percent). A particularly high level of single-parent families is in South Africa where close to 40 percent of the children live with their mothers only and about 4 percent live with their fathers only. Other countries with high levels of children in single-parent households include Mozambique (36 percent), Dominican Republic (35 percent), Liberia (31 percent) and Kenya (30 percent). Together the high level countries account for approximately one-quarter of all children living in single-parent households.
The levels for the remaining 129 countries fall between 11 to 24 percent of children living in single-parent households. Most OECD countries fall within this range, with Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom having no less than one-fifth of their children living with a single parent, again typically a lone mother.
Over the recent past the incidence of single-parent families has by and large increased worldwide, with the largest increases occurring in industrialized countries. Between 1980 and 2005, for example, the proportion of single-parent households doubled for many developed countries, including France, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States (Figure 2). During the last few years, however, the levels of single-parent households have generally stabilized and some have even declined slightly.
In virtually every country most single-parent households consist of mothers and their children. Lone mothers typically head more than 80 percent of single-parent households. Besides fathers abandoning or separating from their families, divorce courts generally award child custody, especially young children, to the divorced mother.
In addition to differences across countries, the levels of single-parent households may vary considerably within countries. In the United States, for example, significant differences exist among the major ethnic groups. Whereas the proportion of children in the US living in single-parent households is 13 percent for Asians and 19 percent for non-Hispanic Whites, the proportion for Hispanics and Blacks is 29 percent and 53 percent, respectively (Figure 3). Similar large differences in the proportion of single-parent households are observed among major ethnic groups in the United Kingdom, with Caribbean and African families having approximately triple the levels of Asian families.
While parental death continues to be an important cause of single-parent households, especially among high-mortality countries, most single-parent families are the result of divorce, separation and abandonment, which have increased markedly over the past half-century. Also, the increasing incidence of cohabitation and non-marital childbearing particularly noteworthy in most Western countries has made breakups, separations and abandonments easier, generally placing them outside normal channels of legal recourse and state jurisdiction. Consequently, cohabiting family households are disrupted or dissolved more frequently than married family households.
The regions where children are least likely to be reared in single-parent households are Asia and the Middle East, where cohabitation and non-marital childbearing are rare. For example, less than 1 percent of children are born out of wedlock in China, Egypt, India and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
The highest rates of non-marital childbearing occur in Latin America, including Columbia (74 percent), Peru (69 percent) and Chile (68 percent). Other countries outside that region with high rates of non-marital childbearing are Iceland (68 percent), South Africa (59 percent), France (56 percent), Sweden (55 percent) and the United States (40 percent).
It is important to note that a woman having a non-marital birth does not necessarily translate into a single-parent household. Often non-marital births occur to cohabiting couples. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United States, for example, more than half of non-marital births are to women in cohabiting relationships.
Although relatively small, growing numbers of women in developed countries, especially those who are professional and older, are becoming single mothers by choice. Concerned about their reproductive clock ticking and the lack of a suitable partner, some of those single women have turned to sperm donors in order to have a baby and establish a family.
Other single women, and to a lesser extent single men, are increasingly choosing to adopt and raise a child in a one-parent household. In the United Kingdom 10 percent of all adoptions between 2012 and 2013 were done by single persons. Also in the United States it estimated that in the last few years approximately 25 percent of special needs adoption and 5 percent of adoptions were by single parents. Again, it is important to note that a child adopted by a single parent is likely to be better off than not having been adopted at all.
Marriage, the relationships of couples and childbearing are widely recognized as private matters for individuals to decide and manage largely on their own. However, considerable research finds that not all family structures produce equally beneficial outcomes for children. In addition, the growth of families with a single parent has important economic, social and political consequences for societies.
Children brought up in single-parent households typically do not have the same economic, social and human resources available to them as children reared in two-parent families. Consequently, children in single-parent families are generally more likely to experience poverty, drop out of school and have social, emotional and behavioral difficulties than those in two-parent families.
Worldwide nearly one in every seven children under age 18 years – or 320 million children – is living in a single-parent household, mostly in mother-only families. Governments and civil society need to adopt policies and establish programs providing the necessary assistance, support and opportunities to ensure that children in single-parent families are not penalized or disadvantaged, but can lead lives permitting them to develop successfully to their full potential, and thereby contribute meaningfully to overall societal wellbeing.
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It has only been ONE CENTURY that US women fought and won our rights of CITIZENSHIP. Fast forward these few decades of CAPTURED, RIGGED, AND FRAUDULENT elections tied to installing ROBBER BARON 5% pols and players-----and we have LOST OUR 99% OF WOMEN ENFRANCHISEMENT at the hands of women's organizations PRETENDING TO SUPPORT VOTING RIGHTS.
The Bush family are central in corrupting US elections these few decades but no one killed our left social progressive DEMOCRATIC PARTY bringing it FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POWER neo-liberal than BILL AND HILLARY.
'Can the 2016 election be rigged? You bet
| TheHill
thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/291534-can-the-2016-election-be-rigged-you-bet
Aug 16, 2016 ... The issue here is both voter fraud, which is limited but does happen, and election theft through the manipulation of the computerized voting machines, particularly the ... Today, the polling industry has been reported to be “in a state of crisis” because they are altering their samples to favor Hillary'.
There is no more important public policy issue for 99% of US WOMEN than regaining our ENFRANCHISEMENT----fixing elections to be able to install our own left social progressive EQUAL RIGHTS EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER LAW----means getting rid of global 5% to the 1% Hillary nasty ladies.
'Suffrage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Enfranchisement)
Suffrage universel dédié à Ledru-Rollin, Frédéric Sorrieu, 1850
Not to be confused with Suffering.
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote).[1][2][3] The right to run for office is sometimes called candidate eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full suffrage.[4] In many languages, the right to vote is called the active right to vote and the right to run for office is called the passive right to vote. In English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage'.
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Looking locally at the same----all media outlets are controlled by far-right wing global 1% neo-con/neo-liberal and Baltimore has not had REAL JOURNALISM in a very long time.
Here are two TOP GUN GLOBAL 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% POLS----you can bet they want to keep MEDIA out of community development that has a goal of more and more and more Baltimore families black, white, and brown 99% of citizens unemployed, impoverished, and pushed out as global corporate campuses and global factories replace our surrounding Baltimore communities....MOVING FORWARD SAYS JACK YOUNG CATHERINE PUGH NOT PRETTY FOR WOMEN, CHILDREN, FAMILIES.
The Baltimore Spectator
22 hrs · “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” City Council President Jack Young said, at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night'
The Drip
by Fern Shen10:00 amDec 13, 201711
Council President Young denounces the press at community meeting“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” Jack Young tells West Baltimore audience
Above: Jack Young with Mayor Catherine Pugh at Carver Vocational-Technical High School last night.
Standing besides Mayor Catherine Pugh at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night, City Council President praised the mayor for her leadership (“I’m glad that she’s my partner”) before taking a swipe at the press.
“I’m working along with my Council colleagues – I see Councilman Bullock in the back. We’re just like any other family, you know? We’re a family at City Hall. We have our little disagreements,” Young said, speaking at Carver Vocational-Technical High School to an audience of about 30 residents and many more agency heads and staffers.
“But we don’t want the news media – you can, um, tweet this – to determine how we respond to one another in city government,” he continued. “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city.”
“So, Madam Mayor, I’m willing to work with you. Yeah, I said it,” he concluded, handing the podium back to Pugh. “I’m willing to work with you to move this city forward.”
Asked this morning for some context for Young’s remarks and what might have sparked his criticism, his spokesman, Lester Davis, has not responded.
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What has these few decades done to US family structure, stability, security? It has dismantled it no matter 99% BLACK, WHITE, OR BROWN CITIZENS. Our 99% US men have been pushed overseas in global labor pool as EX-PATS or fighting/staffing empire-building wars and embassies. US women wait at home supported by money sent home just as all global labor pool families in developing nations. Our US military is almost replaced with a WARRIOR MERCENARY CLASS filled with men often having no ties to marriage/family. Wages in US becoming so low as to have individual citizens seeking to support themselves and not think of raising a family. US cities as FAILED STATES as well as rural filled with global drug and gun cartel black markets breaking down our US family structure----all policies installed these few decades by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and that 5% to the 1% black, brown, and white citizens.
THE FIX IS IN FOR US SOCIETAL STRUCTURES TO EXCLUDE STRONG FAMILIES------PUSHING MEN AND WOMEN TO BE CORPORATE WARRIORS.
The goals of GREAT LEAP FORWARD MAO MARXISM in China was just the same---break down all societal structures and tie individual citizens to the STATE/NATIONAL POLITBURO GLOBAL 1% RICH and the global corporations.
This of course hit our US black families first with REAGAN/CLINTON union busting US industries filled with our US city workers ---high unemployment tied to welfare policies aimed at single mothers only forced black families to break up. This is REAGAN era 1980s-----REAL left social progressives were shouting then as we knew MOVING FORWARD would bring the same to all population groups.
Keep in mind REAGAN represented all those FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% RELIGIOUS RIGHT LEADERS who were OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% not caring at all about FAMILIES.
BREAKUP OF BLACK FAMILY IMPERILS GAINS OF DECADES
By JUDITH CUMMINGS
Published: November 20, 1983
At the height of the civil rights movement in 1965, when a quarter of black families with children were headed by women, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in a report to President Johnson that this growing matriarchy was an important cause of poverty among black Americans. Mr. Moynihan, then a White House aide, created a furor, accused by many of blaming the victims for their distress.
Today, 18 years later, virtually half of black families are headed by single women, and 55 percent of black babies are born to unmarried mothers.
Gun-shy from the Moynihan experience,
authorities for years were reluctant to speak out about the problem. But now, politicians and scholars - black and white, liberal and conservative - openly agree that the situation has reached such proportions that it threatens to undo the black economic gains of the past three decades.
Growing Alarm Among Blacks
The breakdown of traditional family structure is, they say, one of the underlying causes of black poverty, not only because there is no man to provide family income but also because women on the average earn much less than men.
Moreover, many black spokesmen are saying for the first time that this is one of the most serious problems facing their communities and that it may mean that larger and larger proportions of coming generations of blacks will grow up disadvantaged. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a law professor at Georgetown University who was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the Carter Administration, termed the family crisis ''a threat to the future of black people without equal.''
The problem must be resolved, the experts say, because otherwise society at large will have to pay the price, either in compensatory measures to prop up fractured lives or in strife and social conflict as the gap widens between the privileged and the excluded.
An Unmistakable Correlation
It is an open question which is more important: that breakdown in family structure causes poverty or that poverty is a cause of the breakdown. But the correlation between the two is unmistakable, and it is prompting a serious debate over the causes of the problem and a search for solutions.
A study last summer by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, a nonpartisan research group, showed that in all races, families headed by women were twice as likely as two-parent families to be poor. Half of all families headed by black women have incomes below the poverty line, the study showed.
The study noted that in 1981 the average income of black families with two working parents was 84 percent of the average for white families where both parents worked, an increase from 73 percent 13 years earlier. In contrast, a primary reason that the average income for all black families with children was just 56 percent of the average for whites, the study concluded, was that 47 percent of black families were headed by women, as against 14 percent of white ones.
Losses Exceed Gains
''Since black, female-headed households are the most rapidly increasing proportion of all black families, the fact that they have not gained economic ground has more than offset the increases made by other types of black families,'' the report said. The principal author of the report was the director of the center, Tom Joe, who was a welfare official in the Nixon Administration.
In one sense, according to some experts, single black mothers may represent a vanguard. These experts suggest that more and more white women will become single parents as they build a longer tradition of working and financial independence.
But the far-reaching effects on the black community might be mitigated among whites, partly because white women tend to get divorced less often than blacks and tend more often to remarry.
The problems of single mothers, black and white, are compounded by the fact that working women, on the average, earn much less than men. According to the Census Bureau, the median earnings of working black women last year were actually slightly higher than those of working white women, $7,802 as against $7,640. But the average working man earned about twice as much, $15,373.
''With the next generation,'' Mrs. Norton said, ''we could see proportionately greater numbers of disadvantaged people than in this generation, because of the proportion of children who got their start in life as the children of single girls and women.''
OH, REALLY????
Experts Voice Disagreement
While the politicians and social scientists agree that the dissolution of the black family structure has been a main cause of poverty among blacks, they disagree sharply over why such disintegration has occurred and over the possible remedies.
One camp, which includes many members of the Reagan Administration, argues that the nation's welfare system has encouraged families to split up and has led to a state of welfare dependency for generation after generation of blacks. They would reduce Government social programs, require able individuals on welfare to work and place more emphasis on apprehending fathers and forcing them to support their children.
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Then Bush/REAGAN era OPEN BORDERS setting the stage for filling our US cities with global 99% labor pool in 1980s-1990s created the same dismantling of safe and healthy families for our 99% Latino immigrant citizens. Continuous wars and civil unrest driven by global 1% banking killed Latin American societal structures for family just as happened in southeast Asia. Same global 1% MEN killing family structures to create global human capital distribution system ----
MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES IS NOT ABOUT STRENGTHENING FAMILIES NO MATTER 99% OF US CITIZENS OR GLOBAL 99% ---IT IS ABOUT ENDING FAMILY STATUS.
Women have evolved over millions of years as caretakers of family. It cannot be beaten, abused, repressed out of our DNA. Any attack on family is a direct attack on 99% OF WOMEN.
Aggressive Immigration Raids Are Breaking Up Families and Scaring Longtime Residents
Lawyers, activists, and undocumented immigrants are already gearing up for the next wave of crackdowns.
Meredith HoffmanFeb 17 2017, 12:02am
As she curled beneath a fleece blanket on her couch—where she now sleeps since she can't bear to be in bed without her husband—Patricia Ribera Sanchez, a lifelong Texan, recalled the morning she lost her "other half."
"Cesar got in the truck with his boss for work last Friday, and as soon as they turned the corner immigration officers stopped them, said they were looking for another man," Sanchez, 49, told me in her Austin apartment. "Then they asked if Cesar had papers, and he said no—he'd never lie to them. They handcuffed him and put him in their van. It's just so hard. I'm going to fall apart if he doesn't come back."
Sanchez's husband, Cesar Sanchez Ramirez, was one of about 700 immigrants detained last week in the first Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids of the Trump administration. Given Trump's harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and his signing of an executive order focused on making life harder for undocumented immigrants on US soil, it's no surprise that these raids were controversial. ICE has said the raids targeted dangerous people, announcing in a press release that 75 percent of those arrested had criminal records. But agents arrested many residents for merely being undocumented, people like Cesar. In Washington State, authorities picked up one man who was protected by an Obama-era order shielding those who came to the US as children; in Arizona, protesters attempted to stop the deportation of a mother who authorities had previously allowed to stay.
In the wake of the raids, shattered families are grieving the loss of loved ones, while immigrants around the country scramble to prepare for more crackdowns.
"What has become clear here and around the country is that many people were picked up without a criminal history or an order of deportation," said Stephanie Gharakhanian, legal director for the Austin immigrant advocacy organization Workers Defense Project, who has met with families of the raid victims. "They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Watch a VICE News Tonight segment on refugees who have come to Canada:
In the past few years, the Obama administration prioritized deporting only immigrants with criminal records or who recently entered illegally. But under Trump, virtually any undocumented immigrant can be deported, as these recent raids made all too obvious.
"You can't look at these incidents in isolation from the much bigger sea change around ICE activity and priorities and their mandate that is completely revamped under the executive order," Avideh Moussavian, policy attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, told me. "These enforcement actions are happening when the administration is moving in a direction to triple resources for ICE personnel… There's a cumulative effect of all these factors coming together."
The raids have particularly rattled Austin, a liberal mecca currently fighting Texas to remain a sanctuary city. Officials here say ICE's recent moves are unprecedented. The Workers Defense Project delivered ICE a Freedom of Information Act Request to determine if the agency targeted Austin for its pro-immigrant policies, and Austin's mayor issued an open letter claiming the raids caused "disproportionate harm." Latino businesses shuttered their doors Thursday, and people took to the streets, protesting the raids as part of the nationwide "Day Without Immigrants."
That anxiety is palpable in the undocumented community. Many children of immigrants have stayed home from school, and individuals have called Austin's deportation alert hotline frequently to report suspicious cars or to ask for advice. Meanwhile, at least one family has fled the home they own: A single Mexican mother with several children who are US citizens cowered when ICE agents knocked on her door last week, and since then has gone into hiding.
"She's been in the country many, many years and has no criminal record whatsoever. She's worked at the same job for decades and owned her own home. She's basically like a perfect citizen, but she's a noncitizen," an advocate helping the family who asked to remain anonymous told me. "She's taking it day by day, and many people in the community are supporting her. It's a terrible situation because she has several children in the school system, and these poor kids are being displaced."
Though Austinites say they've never witnessed such a barrage of raids, the national pace of ICE pickups last week did not exceed that of the Obama administration, immigration attorney Jeremy McKinney told me.
"If you annualize last week's numbers, the current administration would not exceed the number of removals from the Obama administration," said McKinney, a North Carolina–based member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "But, since Obama's directive in November 2014, the operations had specific targets, and if other people around were undocumented and they didn't fall within the administration's priorities, they were not taken in."
Now, McKinney said, ICE has "returned to collateral damage," meaning the agency will pick up anyone in the process of seizing their target—just as they did prior to November 2014.
"I can tell you in my region in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia enforcement is always intense, so what we're seeing so far is nothing new to us," he said. "It's very consistent with the way things were up until we had this brief moment of clarity saying we need to fill [immigrant detention] beds with people with felony convictions."
ICE claimed it apprehended 51 immigrants in the Austin area, but the Mexican consul general, Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, told me 53 Mexican nationals were detained Thursday through Sunday, with 30 picked up last Friday alone—nearly ten times the typical daily number. Advocates estimate that at least a dozen Central Americans were also detained.
"A significant number of the people we interviewed were caught in the process of ICE detaining some other target," Gutierrez said, noting that colleagues in his office had not seen such a "significant spike" in the past 15 years. "I saw hardworking people detained who have been living in this country for many years with established roots and children."
Cesar Sanchez Ramirez was one of those hardworking people. Patricia described her husband, who came to the States at age 18, as industrious or compassionate. He has held the same job doing electrical repairs for the past seven years and supported her through surgery and sickness.
"I'm in and out of the hospital because of diabetes, and I just had five hernias removed in May. My husband had to take care of me—he even had to change my diapers. I was out of work, and he paid for everything," Sanchez told me. "He's so sweet. He draws pictures for me of hearts and of my name in his name. He's never been in trouble. We just work all week, go to the grocery store on the weekend, go to church on Sunday, and then get ready to work again."
He has also become like the father of her two children.
"We met at a club in Austin, and he kept asking me to dance again and again," reminisced Sanchez, recalling the black-and-white sparkly top she wore that Saturday night eight years ago. "He was very nice and respectful and walked me to my car… I was abused as a child, and then my son's father was abusive. Then that night I was finally blessed with a good man. But now he's not here."
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We discussed in detail the POSING RIGHT WING CHRISTIAN RIGHT were all OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% CATHOLIC FREEMASONS pretending to be protestant or evangelical PASTORS. The US Christian right drove MOVING FORWARD CONTINUOUS WARS -----it drove US CITIES AS FAILED STATE and rural counties as global drug and violence by dismantling social safety net programs at the same time sending all US corporations overseas to build Foreign Economic Zones.
It is those same FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS LEADERS who make up that right wing policy stance shouting at those 99% of poor and working class. All the policies of REAGAN/CLINTON were far-right wing global 1% extreme wealth extreme poverty----all these policies KILLED 99% OF FAMILY STRUCTURES IN US AND GLOBALLY----and the FAKE religious right were pushing all these policies.
What created much of the tension in US marriages? The breaking of labor unions with mass unemployment for our 99% US black, white, and brown
men. Wives working while men have no employment -----creates great tension for many families. Did women take those labor union industrial jobs from our US men? Of course not----the TENSIONS IN US FAMILY THESE FEW DECADES OF MOVING FORWARD IS DELIBERATE----IT IS GREAT LEAP FORWARD ----MAO MARXISM COMES TO US.
MAO MARXISM or global banking 1% extreme wealth extreme poverty FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM------did this same thing in China---broke down all ideals of family to make the STATE/RICH/CORPORATIONS the only family Chinese citizens held as supreme.
Here are left social progressives shouting back in Clinton era 1990s-----that families in US were under attack by global neo-liberalism
'POVERTY TERMED A DIVORCE FACTOR
By ROBERT PEAR,
Published: January 15, 1993
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14— Poverty is a major factor contributing to the breakup of American families, the Census Bureau said today.
More generally, it said, stresses associated with economic insecurity and financial need make it more likely that families will dissolve.
"Poor two-parent families were about twice as likely to break up as were two-parent families not in poverty," said Donald J. Hernandez, the Census Bureau demographer who wrote the report'.
Who created US poverty? MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES------Clinton/Bush/Obama as Robber Baron 5% pols and players working for global 1% banking.
THE BLOG
08/10/2010 05:25 pm ET Updated 6 days ago
The Breakdown of the Traditional Family: Why Conservative Christians Should Rethink Their Blame Game
By John W. Whitehead
In his August 5 editorial entitled “You Call This Marriage?
“ Alexander Chee wrote:
The week of the decision on Proposition 8 was also the week of the decision on “The Bachelorette.” Ali Fedotowsky said yes to Roberto Martinez, one out of 25 who competed for the chance. ...
There could be no more perfect metaphor for the state of modern marriage this week.
In the U.S., a couple who barely know each other can marry in a publicly validated media spectacle with a sound track, soft lighting, promotional deals and a cash prize, as long as they are a man and a woman. So far, since the show’s inception in 2003, Trista Rehn is the only one of the annual contestants to still be married.
Yet a couple who quietly have been together for 15 years and married twice, in California, each time it became legal, have had to see their relationship invalidated twice by the courts, by people claiming their marriage was threatening traditional marriage.
Despite the political firestorm surrounding the federal court decision that overturned California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, little has been said about the real issues that are contributing to the dysfunctional American family. The disintegration of traditional marriage and the family, once the glue that kept society together, has set in motion a domino effect that, as it ripples outward, is relegating children to lives of poverty and servitude and destroying the foundations of freedom.
Contrary to what critics might say, same-sex marriage, while it may be a symptom of a cultural shift away from traditional marriage and all it has historically entailed, is not responsible for the collapse of marriage as a long-revered institution in this country. That blame rests squarely on the shoulders of heterosexuals for whom marriage — and the family unit that arises from it — has become a temporary arrangement at best, with divorce now seen as an immediate cure-all and cohabitation a happy, less permanent, alternative.
Even among professed evangelical Christians who tout traditional marriage, divorce rates are comparable to those of non-Christians. And while the decline in divorce in recent years has been hailed as good news (it now stands at 40 percent, down from a high of nearly 60 percent in the 1980s), it is a false positive that is offset by falling marriage rates and surging cohabitations.
As researcher George Barna observes:
There no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage. Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life.
That said, divorce is not solely to blame for the collapse of the institution of marriage. Marriage generally seems to be falling out of favor everywhere except in the realm of reality TV. For the first time in American history, unmarried households now make up the majority of all U.S. households. Younger generations are also more inclined to live together.
Where once the institution of marriage gave legitimacy to sexual relations and children, it no longer serves as much of a gatekeeper. This can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution, which paved the way for sex outside of marriage; the feminist movement, which pushed to legalize abortion, thereby making pregnancy a woman’s “problem” to deal with as she sees fit; and the decreased role of religion in American life. Consequently, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. children are now born out of wedlock. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of unmarried-couple households with children has risen to more than 1.7 million — up from under 200,000 in 1970. Moreover, there are 9.8 million single mothers versus 1.8 million single fathers.
The ramifications of the breakdown of marriage and the subsequent rise in single-parent households are far-reaching and alarming. For example, children living with a single mother are six times more likely to live in poverty than are children whose parents are married. The same study found that children in stepfamilies and single-parent families are almost three times more likely to drop out of school than children in intact families. And living in a single-parent home can cause a disconnect among children between family and marriage.
Moreover, as W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, notes in “The Evolution of Divorce”:
Since 1974, about 1 million children per year have seen their parents divorce — and children who are exposed to divorce are two to three times more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies. In their book Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur found that 31% of adolescents with divorced parents dropped out of high school, compared to 13% of children from intact families. They also concluded that 33% of adolescent girls whose parents divorced became teen mothers, compared to 11% of girls from continuously married families. And McLanahan and her colleagues have found that 11% of boys who come from divorced families end up spending time in prison before the age of 32, compared to 5% of boys who come from intact homes. ...
Sociologist Paul Amato estimates that if the United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did in 1960, the nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades, 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, approximately 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, about 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, and approximately 70,000 fewer suicides every year.
These statistics tell some painful truths about America at the dawn of the new millennium. They show that our priorities have clearly shifted. Despite the billions we spend on childcare, toys, clothes, private lessons, etc., a concern for our children no longer seems to be a prime factor in how we live our lives. What are the consequences of all this?
First, the loss of the traditional family structure has led to a destabilization in society of “mediating structures” — neighborhoods, families, churches, schools and voluntary associations. When they function as they should, mediating structures limit the growth of the government. But when these structures break down, people look to mega-structures, such as the state, for help. According to Wilcox, the public costs of family breakdown among working-class and poor communities exceed $112 billion a year “as federal, state, and local governments spend more money on police, prisons, welfare, and court costs, trying to pick up the pieces of broken families.”
Second, major religious institutions have virtually little to no moral or spiritual impact on American society — apart from politics, that is. The Christian church is a prime example. Intensely political, many Christian organizations today work feverishly to enact such anti-gay measures as same-sex marriage amendments while doing little to impact the traditional family positively. Indeed, despite all the money ($40 million and counting), politicking, fundraising and energy that conservative Christian groups put into defeating gay marriage in California, nothing was accomplished in terms of shoring up the traditional family structure.
Third, the data supports the premise that the decline in the family leads to a decline in our democratic form of government. Indeed, the family, not schools, is where children should learn self-government, basic moral values and the beliefs that determine the future of democratic institutions. Thus, it stands to reason that without stable families, we can have no hope of producing self-reliant, responsible citizens.
Finally, traditional marriage plays a critical role in the structure of free societies by interposing a significant legal entity between the individual and the state. None other than D. H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, once recognized:
The marriage bond is the fundamental connecting link in Christian society. Break it, and you will have to go back to the overwhelming dominance of the State, which existed before the Christian era. The Roman State was all-powerful, the Roman father represented the State, the Roman family was the father’s estate, held more or less in fee for the State itself. Now the question is, do we want to go back, or forward, to any of these forms of State control?
Lawrence continued:
It is marriage, perhaps, which has given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the State, given him his foothold of independence on which to stand and resist an unjust State. Man and wife, a king and queen with one or two subjects, and a few square yards of territory of their own: this, really, is marriage. It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfillment, for man, woman, and children.
There can be no easy fix for these problems. Certainly, there are no legislative or governmental solutions, and fighting gay marriage isn’t going to do it. Morality and the decline of the family have become convenient platforms for those on both sides of the political aisle. Having reduced the very real problems plaguing America’s families to soundbites bandied about in the quest for political dominance, today’s politicians, gay rights activists and traditional marriage activists are not providing a lasting solution to the marriage meltdown.
The solution, if there is one, is to be found where the problems start: with each man, woman and child taking responsibility for keeping their family together. So let’s forget about politics. Forget about the debates over who gets to marry whom. Instead, let’s look around at what’s left of our neighborhoods, our communities and our families, and put our children first.
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We have identified the corruption of our CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES as yet another breakdown in family ------the policies behind removing children from abusive families became more and more repressive to the point our parents felt they could not even discipline their children without having those children removed. Our US cities saw these corruptions SOAR-----
As this quote states----is was the DEREGULATION and dismantling of oversight and accountability that led to a corrupt child protective services.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life’Paul Grant, legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2121886/The-experts-break-families-The-terrifying-story-prospective-
While 99 %of US WE THE PEOPLE were watching LAW AND ORDER with detectives and child protective services working as they should----our US deregulated system was failing these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
We have global banking 5% pols and players shouting WHY ARE LOW-INCOME FAMILIES NOT DISCIPLINING THEIR CHILDREN after these few decades of those same families having their children taken because of issues of abuse often around discipline. The REAL left social progressive stance on child protective services BEFORE Clinton era was to keep children in home as families were counseled to stable and healthy...the far-right wing global 1% stance after Clinton was-----we are not going to stabilize or make healthy US 99% of families so we need to take those children. This is BALTIMORE THESE FEW DECADES.
The 'experts' who break up families:
The terrifying story of the prospective MP branded an unfit mother by experts who'd never met her - a nightmare shared by many other families
By Sue Reid for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 18:45 EST, 28 March 2012 | Updated: 07:57 EST, 29 March 2012
Ordeal: Lucy's son was nearly taken into care when she was wrongly accused of putting his life in danger
A little over a year ago, Lucy Allan led what most people would regard as an eminently respectable life.
The middle-class mother, a Tory councillor, was happily married to her stockbroker husband, Robin, and doted on their ten-year-old son, who loved going to school and was a passionate cricketer.
Indeed, such was Mrs Allan’s standing in the community that this accountant and former investment banker was on David Cameron’s A-list of potential MPs and a prospective Conservative candidate at the last election.
She devoted her spare time to her council duties. Twice a month, she sat on the local fostering panel, which oversaw the removal of children from their parents and placed them with new families.
It was heart-rending work, as she recalls. ‘At each fostering meeting we were presented with horrifying cases of abusive parents, almost always depicted as “substance abusers”, mentally unstable or “unable to put the needs of their children over their own needs”.
‘Often, this portrayal was supported by an expert report from a psychiatrist, psychologist or medical doctor,’ says Lucy.
‘It never occured to me, or any member of the panel, that the information we were presented with might be a distorted, twisted fiction — or that the reports were anything other than independent.’
Now, her view has changed. She suspects that many of the damning reports were written by experts who had never met the families in question, to suit the wishes of social workers under pressure from the Government to increase the number of children adopted.
As a result of this process, more and more children are being taken into state foster care.
So why has her faith in the system she once facilitated been shattered? Because, thanks to a bewildering chain of events, this eloquent, educated woman found herself under attack from social workers and fighting to stop her own son being taken into care.
Hers is a Kafkaesque story involving family experts who passed judgment on her fitness as a mother without, in some cases, even meeting her.
Ordeal: Lucy Allan with her adored son, whose identity we are protecting
Lucy’s story is particularly disturbing in the light of a report released this month which found that decisions about the futures of thousands of children are being based on flawed evidence from well-paid ‘experts’, some of whom are unqualified and, time and again, never meet the families concerned.
The damning study by Professor Jane Ireland, a forensic psychologist, examined more than 127 expert witness reports used in family court cases in three areas of England. She found that 90 per cent were produced by clinicians who no longer practise, but instead earn their living entirely as ‘professional expert witnesses’ paid for by council social work departments. Sixty-five per cent of the reports were poorly or very poorly carried out.
This has led to accusations from MPs, lawyers and families that many of the experts are on a gravy train — ‘hired guns’ paid to write precisely what social workers want to read.
This month the Mail reported how just such an accusation has been levelled against one leading psychiatrist, Dr George Hibbert — who faces allegations that he deliberately misdiagnosed parents as having mental disorders, which led to them having their children taken by social services.
John Hemming, a Lib Dem MP who is calling for a national inquiry into the use of expert testimonies in family court hearings, says this dubious system has resulted in families being torn apart and hundreds of children being wrongly taken for adoption from innocent parents.
It is a scenario Lucy Allan feared could happen with her own son. Her nightmare began last March when, aged 46, and having begun to feel depressed for no apparent reason, she decided to go to see a doctor.
‘I am close to my son, so I was worried that he knew I was feeling sad. I went to my local GP surgery expecting to be given a course of anti-depressants and then feel better,’ she recalls.
She was seen by a young female locum, who listened to what Lucy had to say, and then told her she wanted to refer her to social services to ‘see if the family needed support’.
The locum turned to Dr Peter Green, a consultant forensic physician and head of child safeguarding in Wandsworth, South London, where Lucy lives. A flamboyant figure with flowing grey hair and a penchant for bow ties, he has written thousands of reports for the family courts.
According to documents seen by the Allan family, Dr Green told the locum his view was that Lucy was ‘very self-centred’ — this despite the fact he had never set eyes on Lucy or spoken to her. (When she later complained about the conclusions he had drawn without even having seen her, the doctor is alleged to have told her he had relied on a ‘gut feel’).
Families torn apart: Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has called for a nationwide inquiry into the use of expert testimonies in family court hearings
To Lucy’s horror, following Dr Green’s assessment, the locum informed social services that Lucy’s son was at significant risk of harm from his mother.
Thus it was that a woman whose job it had been to make decisions on the fostering panel about which children should be removed from their families suddenly found herself under the most intense scrutiny.
‘Instead of reading reports on another mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading the same accusations in reports about me and my family,’ she says.
Social services insisted they interview her son, but as the inquiry unfolded, the evidence from his teachers suggested he was happy and thriving. An independent report from an NHS psychiatrist also said Lucy was ‘no risk to anyone, including her son’.
But social services hired their own psychiatrist from the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London — at taxpayers’ expense naturally.
‘Instead of reading reports on another mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading the same accusations in reports about me and my family’ Lucy AllanWithout meeting Lucy or her son, and based only on information provided by social services, the private psychiatrist stated in an ‘expert’ report that there was an ‘urgent need’ for the assessment and treatment of Lucy.
The psychiatrist added that there was ‘no way’ her depression would not have a ‘significant impact on her parenting’.
As the investigation dragged on, Lucy underwent a series of interviews by social services and by experts paid by them to examine her and her family. Many of their subsequent reports, says Lucy, were inaccurate, biased and took her family’s words out of context.
For example, her son had mentioned that when he got off the school bus, he always asked Lucy how she was, but this was described in one report as: ‘Her son demonstrates inappropriate anxiety for the wellbeing of his mother on a daily basis.’
When Lucy admitted taking sleeping pills for insomnia and diazepam for anxiety, another report on her said such ‘drug abuse would make her barely conscious on a daily basis’.
Her confession of sharing a bottle of wine with husband Robin most nights was written up as ‘alcohol abuse’, and the risk of Lucy harming her son was deemed to be ‘substantiated’.
All this begs the question of how often such judgments are passed down by ‘experts’ and social workers on those less well equipped than Lucy to defend themselves.
She has spent the past year trying to clear her name, paid out £10,000 on legal fees and has had to pull herself off the A-list of David Cameron’s potential Tory candidates, quit as a school governor, and, of course, resign from the fostering panel. ‘I am now ineligible for the Criminal Record Bureau check required for working with children or young people,’ she says sadly. Her son’s social services records state that she was once considered a ‘risk’ to him, and it will remain on his file till he is 18.
Finally, at Christmas, the council’s social services said officially no action was required concerning Lucy. She is trying to rebuild her life with the help of husband Robin — who, incredibly, was never interviewed by social services — but still fears she could come under scrutiny again.
'Alcohol abuse': Social Services' verdict on Lucy's confession that she and her husband shared a bottle most evenings
‘The system is designed to silence people,’ she says. ‘I have been prescribed anti-depressants and I am better. But at the back of my mind is the fear that if I complain too loudly about the child protection system they will be back at my door.’
No doubt she would agree with Nigel Priestley, a lawyer involved in family law, who said recently: ‘Just about the most draconian act the state can carry out is to remove a family’s child. What is at stake is the loss of their children, and on the basis of a report which might, or might not be, questionable.’
Those who write these reports — often psychologists or psychiatrists, but also medical doctors and consultants — do not face the glare of public scrutiny precisely because of the secrecy of the family court system. Lucy can describe her ordeal only because her case never got as far as those closed courts — no parent who appears at one of these hearings, which operate in every town and city in the land, is allowed to speak to anyone later about what has happened there, even to their own MP.
Every year, 200 mothers or fathers are jailed for ‘contempt of court’ for breaking this silence — while the same family courts request the removal of 225 children each week, 97 per cent of whom are never returned to their families.
Now, there are demands for an American-style ‘class’ legal action against the Government by parents who have had dubious or even bogus reports written about them. Paul Grant, a legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors in Southampton, says devastated parents have contacted him after his firm took on the case of a mother, known only as Miss A, who claims she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder by psychiatrist Dr George Hibbert because social workers wanted her baby adopted.
Now, Hibbert could be struck off by the General Medical Council, which is investigating extraordinary suggestions that he deliberately misdiagnosed ‘caring’ mothers as having ‘personality disorders’ in order to help social workers take away children.
When he was confronted with the allegation about Miss A, Hibbert offered to surrender his licence to practise as a doctor.
This week, his spokesman said he is ‘unable to comment due to his professional duty of confidentiality’. But I have learned that Porsche-driving Dr Hibbert amassed up to half-a-million pounds a year from his work as an expert witness, and from his reports on parents and children for social services departments.
Accounts for his company, Assessment in Care Ltd, show that profits soared from £23,000 in 2001 to a peak of £468,000 in 2007. It is now worth £2.7million, according to Companies’ House records.
Paul Grant says that Miss A’s distressing case ‘may be the tip of a very large iceberg’. He adds: ‘We contend that when a practising clinician becomes a professional expert witness with a private company, there is no registration process, and no machinery to vet what they do.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life.’
As Dr Hibbert’s professional conduct comes under scrutiny, it is emerging that he is not the only one whose actions are being questioned.
The Mail has been contacted by scores of parents who believe they have been mistreated on the word of these ‘experts’. We have been told by lawyers about clinicians charging £1,800 a day to appear at family courts, on top of the thousands of pounds a time they receive for writing the reports, which often contain lies, ambiguities and insinuations.
One mother said she had her children taken away because an ‘expert’ said she ‘liked shopping’; another was criticised as mentally unfit for ‘burning the toast’, and lost her child, too.
In another case, an expert was paid handsomely to write a report based on the observations of a social worker who said a five-year-old girl was ‘monosyllabic’.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life’
Paul Grant, legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors
Yet we are told a secret tape recording of the social worker’s interview showed the child chatting away about school, her family and her home. The little girl has since been removed from her mother.
We have also been told about a gregarious 47-year-old business adviser in the north of England who had to fight to keep her five-year-old daughter after being labelled a ‘totally isolated schizoid’ by a psychologist, who we understand is trained only to treat children, and should never have been involved in the analysis of adult behaviour.
The psychologist in question (who writes up to 100 expert reports a year) charged £6,000 for his written opinion on the mother, her husband and child. Yet the mother says she was given no chance to deny the ‘schizoid’ report — and kept her girl by the skin of her teeth only after the child’s nanny vouched for her parenting skills.
In another extraordinary case, after a woman was found by a psychologist to be a ‘competent mother’, the social workers are said to have insisted on commissioning a second expert’s report. It agreed with the first.
They then commissioned a third, which finally found that the mother had a ‘borderline personality disorder’. All three of her children were taken away for adoption.
So how have such apparent travesties been allowed to go on virtually unchecked in child protection?
Knee-jerk reaction?
Since the harrowing case of baby Peter Connelly more youngsters than ever before in British history are being removed from families every week
No other country in Western Europe removes so many children from their parents. The numbers taken into care — the first step towards adoption — have doubled in a decade to more than 10,000 a year.
The last Labour government set adoption targets and rewarded local councils with hundreds of thousands of pounds if they reached them.
The targets have been scrapped after protests from MPs and lawyers, but the dangerous legacy persists. Social workers now get praise and promotion if they raise adoption numbers. David Cameron is also demanding more adoptions — and that they are fast-tracked.
Since the case of 17-month-old Baby P, more youngsters than ever before in British history are being removed from families every week. Many say this is a knee-jerk reaction, which is probably true. But it’s not the whole story.
‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven guilty’ Ian Joseph, author and expert on forced adoption
It is the 1989 Children Act — which introduced a blanket secrecy in the family courts — that is the real culprit. It encouraged a lack of public scrutiny in the child protection system and what MP John Hemming calls the ‘twaddle and psychobabble’ peddled there, which has caused dreadful miscarriages of justice.
Ian Joseph, who has written a book on forced adoption, told me this week: ‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven guilty and also be free to talk about what is happening in those courts without being thrown into jail.’
Until that happens, hundreds more children may be seized from their families on the word of experts — many of whom are either not qualified or are receiving huge sums of money to play God.
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The result of these few decades of WAR ON FAMILY by global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was to create this aberration in family where the grandparents still having some wealth from working during strong US economic policies BEFORE REAGAN/CLINTON global neo-liberalism replaced those parents struggling with long-term unemployment and being pushed into BLACK MARKET ECONOMIES.
EDWEEK is CLINTON/BILL GATES global education corporation media outlet ------telling us our grandparents should have that power of child as student even as grandparents are top target of MOVING FORWARD SUBPRIMING OF ALL US CITIZENS' RETIREMENTS, HOME-OWNERSHIP ET AL. No population group has been under stress than our aging baby boomers-----who have indeed become that extended family support.......going, going, going under as global Wall Street frauds soar.
99% of black, white, and brown citizens are seeing this shift in grandparenting replacing parents as more and more US citizens are pushed to long-term unemployment---it is a problem for all 99% of black,white, and brown citizens.
OF COURSE THIS FALLS HEAVIEST ON OUR GRANDMOTHERS.
As far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/OBAMA pretend they are being left social progressive in helping our seniors care for children---they are killing our senior's wealth, stability, and health.
Published Online: August 3, 2011
Statistics Show More Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren
Sandra Smith has been taking care of her granddaughter, Jonea Wilson-Hardy, since she was 5. Jonea, 12, holds her half-brother Jaiden Fonchenela, 1, while Smith looks on. Smith is one of thousands of grandparents in the country increasingly involved in their grandchildren's education.
—Jenn Ackerman for Education Week
By Sarah D. Sparks
Years after she’d thought her parenting days were behind her, Minneapolis retiree Sandra L. Smith got the news that her grown daughter in Ohio had been badly injured in an accident.
Ms. Smith found herself with custody of her granddaughter, Jonea, who was just entering 1st grade. She had to help the child cope not only with a new home but also a new school.
“It did change my world a great deal,” Ms. Smith recalled. “I was disabled when I got her, but I got into a routine of getting up early where I hadn’t before. I got involved more; I joined the PTA.”
Six years later, Jonea is entering 7th grade at Field Community School in Minneapolis come fall, and Ms. Smith has worked her way up to become co-chair of Field’s parent-teacher association and the diversity chair of the 6,000-member state PTA.
Statistics show that she’s one of thousands of grandparents who are becoming more involved, through necessity as well as interest, in their grandchildren’s education. Some experts predict grandparents’ increasing presence and the challenges they face could change the way schools and districts approach the basics of parent involvement, from enrolling children in school to making educational decisions and volunteering at school.
More than one-tenth of American children younger than 18 lived in a household with at least one grandparent at the time of Census interviews conducted in 2009, and the number of children living with grandparents instead of their parents has nearly doubled since 1991, according to a June report by the U.S. Census Bureau. Some 7.8 million children lived with at least one grandparent in the household as of 2009, up from 4.7 million in 1991, a 64 percent jump, and such children make up a larger share of the population as well.
Moreover, grandparents are, hands down, the most common child-care providers for families after parents, particularly for young children: As of 2005, the most recent data, grandparents cared for 13.8 percent of preschoolers—more than Head Start, day-care centers, and nursery schools combined. They also provided care for 12.8 percent of all school-age children ages 5 to 14. The Census Bureau found the average time children spent in their grandparents’ care also increased, from 13 hours a week in 2005 to 14 to 16 hours per week in 2006.
The Census Bureau found grandparents’ role particularly vital among families of color. In 2009, 9 percent of white children lived with a grandparent, compared with 14 percent of Hispanic and 17 percent of African-American children. Moreover, while about 2 percent of white and Hispanic children lived with a grandparent rather than a parent, 5 percent of black children did so.
“We have many more grandparents and relatives caring for children, including their educational needs,” said Cate Newbanks, the executive director of FACES of Virginia Families, a Richmond-based support and advocacy group for foster, adoptive, and kinship-based families.
“There is a whole younger generation of people taking care of their grandchildren now; we’re not all in our 80s,” said Ms. Newbanks, who cares for three grandchildren.
One of those grandparents is Molene Martin, 60, of the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. For more than seven years, she has been raising her four grandnieces, now ages 9 through 16, and recently her 15-year-old grandson came to live with her, too.
“My grandson just moved here from Pennsylvania, so I had to go and do the research on what school is best for him,” Ms. Martin said. “I want to know about test scores, I want to know what resources they provide, but if you don’t know to ask those questions, it’s not like they are just going to tell you. I know as a parent or grandparent you have to do the research yourself, but if you don’t know the right questions to ask, your child could be sent to the wrong school.”
Ms. Martin has become one of the founding members of the Baltimore-area Grandfamilies Parent Teacher Student Association, launched this May by longtime grandparent advocate Annette Saunders, a human-resources consultant for the Baltimore public schools. The group holds workshops and meetings for grandparents and parents on topics from how to navigate school system procedures and handle changing curricula to refreshing their own resumes. “We’re finding out grandparents are younger now than ever before, and they might need job skills; some of them may just be getting computer skills.” she said. “Our vision is to make sure every parent and grandparent can develop their leadership skills.”
Legal Barriers at School
Ms. Newbanks and other experts say grandparents often have trouble navigating education systems that are not set up to involve nontraditional families.
According to the Grandfamilies State Law and Policy Resource Center, an online partnership of the Casey Family Programs, the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law, and Generations United, only 14 states allow grandparents without legal custody to enroll their grandchildren in school and participate in their education. They are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
And only about 122,000 of the 2.5 million American children being raised by grandparents, as opposed to just living with them, are covered under the foster-care system, which would enable the grandparents to have temporary legal custody. In many cases, grandparents act as an informal alternative placement for parents and social workers alike.
In Virginia, as in many states, grandparents must prove that they have legal custody of a child to register him or her for school, a rule intended to prevent parents from shopping for different schools by using relatives’ addresses. While temporary custody can help a child get enrolled, it does not provide any rights for the grandparent to get involved in schooling.
Molene Martin, 60, waits for the rest of the family to return home with her granddaughter Teagan Diggs, 4, left, and adopted grandniece Raqell Martin, 15, in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. For more than seven years, she has been raising her four grandnieces, now ages 9 through 16, and recently her 15-year-old grandson came to live with her, too.
—Nicole Frugé/Education Week
The enrollment restrictions are intended to prevent cases like that of Akron, Ohio, mother Kelley Williams-Bolar, who used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters out of their neighborhood school and into a higher-performing suburban district. Ms. Williams-Bolar served nine days in jail for falsifying records and still faces additional probation time.
Moreover, federal and state privacy laws sharply limit what information schools can give out to relatives who are not a child’s legal guardians, and decades of intrafamily custody disputes have taught schools to be wary of allowing nonguardians to get involved in school.
“What happens for grandparents is if we don’t take legal custody of the children, it’s a privacy violation if [schools] even allow you to participate,” Ms. Newbanks said. “If the child needs special education, you can’t petition for those services; you can’t help plan for those; you can’t get any information on how the child is doing. They can’t do anything except allow you to bring the child to school.”
Michael Carter, the director of community engagement for the Baltimore district, said his office tries to work with grandparents who are in tricky custody situations. “When we know the child is living under that caregiver’s roof, we accord that person the same rights and support we would give any parent,” he said. “We’re not trying to put roadblocks in front of them.”
Mr. Carter noted, however, that families can be closemouthed about exact custody arrangements, particularly when a grandparent is caring for a child because the parents have personal or financial problems. “Families aren’t a lot of times willing to say, ‘I’m the grandparent raising my grandchild.’ Often they just say, ‘I’m the guardian; this is my child,’ ” he said.
FACES of Virginia Families has been lobbying the state legislature to allow grandparents to be considered guardians for educational purposes without requiring parents to give up custody of their children.
“Something has to be done to marry child welfare and education,” Ms. Newbanks said. “If we are going to try to keep families together, … we’ve got to come up with an approach that allows them to [stay together] without making it a tremendous burden.”
Providing Support
Beyond just allowing grandparents to participate in education, school and district administrators should rethink parent-involvement programs if they want to get grandparents engaged, according to Deborah M. Whitley, the director of the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren and an associate professor of social work at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
“Sometimes we have grandparents near their 80s trying to take care of toddlers,” she said. “When you have those aging issues overlaid with trying to take care of the educational needs of the grandchildren, extra supports may be needed.”
The way a school frames its parent-involvement message can influence whether grandparents get involved, Ms. Whitley said. For example, many schools advertise “Grandparents Day” celebrations in September and October, she said, but those often focus on bringing grandparents in for lunch or a party, rather than discussing academic topics with them.
By contrast, she said, administrators often advertise teacher conferences and sessions on how to help with homework under the banner “Parents’ Day.”
“Grandparents may think, ‘Well, that’s not for us,’ where they may be more engaged if it was called ‘Family Day,’ ” she said.
Moreover, it can be difficult, Ms. Whitley said, for grandparents to articulate their grandchildren’s needs, particularly after a traumatic transition.
“When these grandparents were raising their own kids, they never had to have special services, and now they are in a position where their grandchildren may need special services,” she said. “Sometimes grandparents are totally unaware of anything in that realm; they don’t know what to ask for, or how to monitor what should be delivered to their grandchildren.”
Mr. Carter agreed, recalling a recent phone call with a great-grandmother trying to navigate school requirements. “They were simple to me, but to an 81-year-old raising a teenage great-granddaughter, there were things difficult for her,” he said. “I told her I would be her legs, I would do the legwork for her.”
Jonea’s grandmother, Ms. Smith, said she had private guides to getting involved at her granddaughter’s school.
“I had three sisters who were teachers, so they let me know how to navigate the system,” Ms. Smith said. “I went right away to connect with all her teachers, and I’ve stayed up on all of her classes and homework.”
Still, even Ms. Smith has struggled to get support from the school. After repeatedly trying and failing to reach the school social worker when Jonea began to struggle with depression and academic problems, Ms. Smith found an outside tutor and a state-supported therapist, she said. The latter identified the girl to be tested for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Baltimore’s Grandfamilies group holds training for grandparents on how to work with teachers and their students on academic issues, and Ms. Martin said she gets to know new teachers as quickly as she can. “When I first go in, they think I’m the grandmother, but now they just treat me like any other parent,” she said.
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Here is MOVING FORWARD MYANMAR AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE----today's example of the stages of development and its affects on 99% of global citizens. Here in US we can see the exact societal stresses in MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
How can we make a living if we're not allowed to catch fish?
This is what MOVING FORWARD in US has as a goal---all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens along with our global 99% immigrant citizens will see FAMILIES BROKEN----FAMILIES DISSOLVED----societal ethos making family about the STATE/CORPORATE CAMPUS
MOVING FORWARD IS A DIRECT ATTACK ON 99% OF WOMEN------WE ARE THE CARETAKERS OF FAMILY.
“How can we make a living if we’re not allowed to catch fish?” said Nyein Aye, who bought a bigger boat just four months ago but now says his income has dropped by two-thirds due to a decreased catch resulting from restrictions on when and where he can fish. Last month he joined more than 100 people in a protest demanding compensation from pipeline operator Petrochina'.
'But villagers in Kyauk Pyu say they fear the project would not contribute to the development of the area because the operating companies employ mostly Chinese workers'.
#Business News
June 8, 2017 / 7:07 PM / 6 months ago
China's $10 billion strategic project in Myanmar sparks local ire
Yimou Lee, Wa Lone
KYAUK PYU, Myanmar (Reuters) - Days before the first supertanker carrying 140,000 tonnes of Chinese-bound crude oil arrived in Myanmar’s Kyauk Pyu port, local officials confiscated Nyein Aye’s fishing nets.
The 36-year-old fisherman was among hundreds banned from fishing a stretch of water near the entry point for a pipeline that pumps oil 770 km (480 miles) across Myanmar to southwest China and forms a crucial part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” project to deepen its economic links with Asia and beyond.
“How can we make a living if we’re not allowed to catch fish?” said Nyein Aye, who bought a bigger boat just four months ago but now says his income has dropped by two-thirds due to a decreased catch resulting from restrictions on when and where he can fish. Last month he joined more than 100 people in a protest demanding compensation from pipeline operator Petrochina.
The pipeline is part of the nearly $10 billion Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone, a scheme at the heart of fast-warming Myanmar-China relations and whose success is crucial for the Southeast Asian nation’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Embattled Suu Kyi needs a big economic win to stem criticism that her first year in office has seen little progress on reform. China’s support is also key to stabilizing their shared border, where a spike in fighting with ethnic armed groups threatens the peace process Suu Kyi says is her top priority.
China’s state-run CITIC Group [CITIC.UL], the main developer of the Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone, says it will create 100,000 jobs in the northwestern state of Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest regions.
But many local people say the project is being rushed through without consultation or regard for their way of life.
Suspicion of China runs deep in Myanmar, and public hostility due to environmental and other concerns has delayed or derailed Chinese mega-projects in the country in the past.
China says the Kyauk Pyu development is based on “win-win” co-operation between the two countries.
“AVOIDING PANIC”
Since Beijing signaled it may abandon the huge Myitsone Dam hydroelectric project in Myanmar earlier this year, it has pushed for concessions on other strategic undertakings - including the Bay of Bengal port at Kyauk Pyu, which gives it an alternative route for energy imports from the Middle East.
Internal planning documents reviewed by Reuters and more than two dozen interviews with officials show work on contracts and land acquisition has already begun before the completion of studies on the impact on local people and the environment, which legal experts said could breach development laws.
The Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone will cover more than 4,200 acres (17 sq km). It includes the $7.3 billion deep sea port and a $2.3 billion industrial park, with plans to attract industries such as textiles and oil refining.
A Reuters’ tally based on internal planning documents and census data suggests 20,000 villagers, most of whom now depend on agriculture and fishing, are at risk of being relocated to make way for the project.
“There will be a huge project in the zone and many buildings will be built, so people who live in the area will be relocated,” said Than Htut Oo, administrator of Kyauk Pyu, who also sits on the management committee of the economic zone.
He said the government has not publicly announced the plan, because it didn’t want to “create panic” while it was still negotiating with the Chinese developer.
AMBITIOUS DEADLINE
In April, Myanmar’s President Htin Kyaw signed two agreements on the pipeline and the Kyauk Pyu port with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as Beijing pushed to revive a project that had stalled since its inception in 2009.
While the studies are expected to take up to 15 months and have not yet started, CITIC has asked Myanmar to finalize contract terms by the end of this year so that the construction can start in 2018, said Soe Win, who leads the Myanmar management committee of the zone.
Such a schedule has alarmed experts who fear the project is being rushed.
“The environmental and social preparations for a project of these dimensions take years to complete and not months,” said Vicky Bowman, head of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business and a former British ambassador to the country.
CITIC said in an email to Reuters it would engage “a world-renowned consulting firm” to carry out assessments.
Although large-scale land demarcation for the project has not yet started, 26 families have been displaced from farmland due to acquisitions that took place in 2014 for the construction of two dams, according to land documents and the land owners.
Slideshow (12 Images)Experts say this violates Myanmar’s environmental laws.
“Carrying out land acquisition before completing environmental impact assessments and resettlement plans is incompatible with national law,” said Sean Bain, Myanmar-based legal consultant for human rights watchdog International Commission of Jurists.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES?
CITIC says it will build a vocational school to provide training for skills needed by companies in the economic zone. It has given $1.5 million to local villages to develop businesses.
Reuters spoke to several villagers who had borrowed small sums from the village funds set up with this money.
“The CITIC money was very useful for us because most people in the village need money,” said fisherman Thar Sai Aung, who borrowed $66 to buy new nets.
Chinese investors say they also plan to spend $1 million during the first five years of the development, and $500,000 per year thereafter to improve local living standards.
But villagers in Kyauk Pyu say they fear the project would not contribute to the development of the area because the operating companies employ mostly Chinese workers.
From more than 3,000 people living on the Maday island, the entry point for the oil pipeline, only 47 have landed a job with the Petrochina, while the number of Chinese workers stood at more than double that number, data from labor authorities showed.
Petrochina did not respond to requests for comment. In a recent report it said Myanmar citizens made up 72 percent of its workforce in the country overall and it would continue to hire locally.
“I don’t think there’s hope for me to get a job at the zone,” said fisherman Nyein Aye. He had been turned down 12 times for job applications with the pipeline operator.
“Chinese companies said they would develop our village and improve our livelihoods, but it turned out we are suffering every day.”
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Here we see the same societal breakdown after these several decades of global 1% naked capitalist neo-liberalism tied to far-right extreme wealth extreme poverty MARXISM------Chinese men sent off as global 99% labor pool-----Chinese mothers pushed into global corporate factories------Chinese families with ancient land rights pushed off land to become dependent on food and housing charity.
'Of the world’s 2.3 billion children 14 percent – or 320 million – are living in single-parent households, most often headed by single mothers. Those children aged 0 to 17 years and their single mothers and single fathers face special challenges, including economic hardships, social stigma and personal difficulties, that require society’s attention and assistance'.
The American people MUST STAND UP to stop MOVING FORWARD or our entire societal structure around family -----not even to think of a strong first world freedom, liberty, justice, and pursuit of happiness climbing the income ladder families-----ARE GOING UNDER THE BUS.
IT WILL BE OUR 99% OF US WOMEN BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN WOMEN AND 99% OF GLOBAL LABOR POOL WOMEN WHO LEAD ------GET RID OF THOSE 5% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.
We see our LATIN AMERICAN nations hit earliest by REAGAN/CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----highest--------
'The highest rates of non-marital childbearing occur in Latin America, including Columbia (74 percent), Peru (69 percent) and Chile (68 percent). Other countries outside that region with high rates of non-marital childbearing are Iceland (68 percent), South Africa (59 percent), France (56 percent), Sweden (55 percent) and the United States (40 percent)'.
These developing nations have had decades of their 99% men killed in civil wars and unrest and pushed into being global labor pool -----same MOVING FORWARD these few decades in US. Women without families---women left behind to handle all duties of families---women feeling they must make their own families.
Featured, Gender, Headlines, Population, Poverty & SDGs | Analysis | Opinion
320 Million Children in Single-Parent Families
By Joseph Chamie
Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division.
Lone mothers typically head more than 80 percent of single-parent households.
File Image. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS
NEW YORK, Oct 15 2016 (IPS) - Of the world’s 2.3 billion children 14 percent – or 320 million – are living in single-parent households, most often headed by single mothers. Those children aged 0 to 17 years and their single mothers and single fathers face special challenges, including economic hardships, social stigma and personal difficulties, that require society’s attention and assistance.
While raising children is a major responsibility and protracted undertaking for couples, it becomes markedly more demanding and often onerous for lone parents. Children raised in single-parent households generally do not have the same financial means, personal care and parental support available to them as those brought up in two-parent families. Consequently, children in single-parent families are frequently disadvantaged due to comparatively high levels of unemployment, poverty and poor health among such households.
The primary cause of single-parent households in the distant past was parental death due to disease, war, maternal mortality and accidents. As a result of those high adult mortality rates, it is estimated that at least one-third of the children had lost a parent during childhood.
Today in addition to parental death, which fortunately has declined markedly over the past century, socio-cultural factors have arisen as the primary causes for single-parent households. Divorce, separation and abandonment are now major reasons for single-parent families globally. In addition, unplanned pregnancy, intended pregnancy and adoption by those who are unmarried and without partners are among the causes of single-parent households in many Western societies.
The proportion of children living in single-parent households varies considerably across countries. At the lowest levels where 10 percent or less of the children live in single-parent families are three dozen mainly developing countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan and Turkey. However, due to their large population size, those countries together account for close to one-third of all children living in single-parent households worldwide (Figure 1).
At the other end of the spectrum with more than 25 percent of the children living in single-parent households are also close to three dozen countries, all of which are developing nations except for Latvia (31 percent) and the United States (28 percent). A particularly high level of single-parent families is in South Africa where close to 40 percent of the children live with their mothers only and about 4 percent live with their fathers only. Other countries with high levels of children in single-parent households include Mozambique (36 percent), Dominican Republic (35 percent), Liberia (31 percent) and Kenya (30 percent). Together the high level countries account for approximately one-quarter of all children living in single-parent households.
The levels for the remaining 129 countries fall between 11 to 24 percent of children living in single-parent households. Most OECD countries fall within this range, with Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom having no less than one-fifth of their children living with a single parent, again typically a lone mother.
Over the recent past the incidence of single-parent families has by and large increased worldwide, with the largest increases occurring in industrialized countries. Between 1980 and 2005, for example, the proportion of single-parent households doubled for many developed countries, including France, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States (Figure 2). During the last few years, however, the levels of single-parent households have generally stabilized and some have even declined slightly.
In virtually every country most single-parent households consist of mothers and their children. Lone mothers typically head more than 80 percent of single-parent households. Besides fathers abandoning or separating from their families, divorce courts generally award child custody, especially young children, to the divorced mother.
In addition to differences across countries, the levels of single-parent households may vary considerably within countries. In the United States, for example, significant differences exist among the major ethnic groups. Whereas the proportion of children in the US living in single-parent households is 13 percent for Asians and 19 percent for non-Hispanic Whites, the proportion for Hispanics and Blacks is 29 percent and 53 percent, respectively (Figure 3). Similar large differences in the proportion of single-parent households are observed among major ethnic groups in the United Kingdom, with Caribbean and African families having approximately triple the levels of Asian families.
While parental death continues to be an important cause of single-parent households, especially among high-mortality countries, most single-parent families are the result of divorce, separation and abandonment, which have increased markedly over the past half-century. Also, the increasing incidence of cohabitation and non-marital childbearing particularly noteworthy in most Western countries has made breakups, separations and abandonments easier, generally placing them outside normal channels of legal recourse and state jurisdiction. Consequently, cohabiting family households are disrupted or dissolved more frequently than married family households.
The regions where children are least likely to be reared in single-parent households are Asia and the Middle East, where cohabitation and non-marital childbearing are rare. For example, less than 1 percent of children are born out of wedlock in China, Egypt, India and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
The highest rates of non-marital childbearing occur in Latin America, including Columbia (74 percent), Peru (69 percent) and Chile (68 percent). Other countries outside that region with high rates of non-marital childbearing are Iceland (68 percent), South Africa (59 percent), France (56 percent), Sweden (55 percent) and the United States (40 percent).
It is important to note that a woman having a non-marital birth does not necessarily translate into a single-parent household. Often non-marital births occur to cohabiting couples. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United States, for example, more than half of non-marital births are to women in cohabiting relationships.
Although relatively small, growing numbers of women in developed countries, especially those who are professional and older, are becoming single mothers by choice. Concerned about their reproductive clock ticking and the lack of a suitable partner, some of those single women have turned to sperm donors in order to have a baby and establish a family.
Other single women, and to a lesser extent single men, are increasingly choosing to adopt and raise a child in a one-parent household. In the United Kingdom 10 percent of all adoptions between 2012 and 2013 were done by single persons. Also in the United States it estimated that in the last few years approximately 25 percent of special needs adoption and 5 percent of adoptions were by single parents. Again, it is important to note that a child adopted by a single parent is likely to be better off than not having been adopted at all.
Marriage, the relationships of couples and childbearing are widely recognized as private matters for individuals to decide and manage largely on their own. However, considerable research finds that not all family structures produce equally beneficial outcomes for children. In addition, the growth of families with a single parent has important economic, social and political consequences for societies.
Children brought up in single-parent households typically do not have the same economic, social and human resources available to them as children reared in two-parent families. Consequently, children in single-parent families are generally more likely to experience poverty, drop out of school and have social, emotional and behavioral difficulties than those in two-parent families.
Worldwide nearly one in every seven children under age 18 years – or 320 million children – is living in a single-parent household, mostly in mother-only families. Governments and civil society need to adopt policies and establish programs providing the necessary assistance, support and opportunities to ensure that children in single-parent families are not penalized or disadvantaged, but can lead lives permitting them to develop successfully to their full potential, and thereby contribute meaningfully to overall societal wellbeing.
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It has only been ONE CENTURY that US women fought and won our rights of CITIZENSHIP. Fast forward these few decades of CAPTURED, RIGGED, AND FRAUDULENT elections tied to installing ROBBER BARON 5% pols and players-----and we have LOST OUR 99% OF WOMEN ENFRANCHISEMENT at the hands of women's organizations PRETENDING TO SUPPORT VOTING RIGHTS.
The Bush family are central in corrupting US elections these few decades but no one killed our left social progressive DEMOCRATIC PARTY bringing it FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POWER neo-liberal than BILL AND HILLARY.
'Can the 2016 election be rigged? You bet
| TheHill
thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/291534-can-the-2016-election-be-rigged-you-bet
Aug 16, 2016 ... The issue here is both voter fraud, which is limited but does happen, and election theft through the manipulation of the computerized voting machines, particularly the ... Today, the polling industry has been reported to be “in a state of crisis” because they are altering their samples to favor Hillary'.
There is no more important public policy issue for 99% of US WOMEN than regaining our ENFRANCHISEMENT----fixing elections to be able to install our own left social progressive EQUAL RIGHTS EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER LAW----means getting rid of global 5% to the 1% Hillary nasty ladies.
'Suffrage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Enfranchisement)
Suffrage universel dédié à Ledru-Rollin, Frédéric Sorrieu, 1850
Not to be confused with Suffering.
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote).[1][2][3] The right to run for office is sometimes called candidate eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full suffrage.[4] In many languages, the right to vote is called the active right to vote and the right to run for office is called the passive right to vote. In English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage'.
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Looking locally at the same----all media outlets are controlled by far-right wing global 1% neo-con/neo-liberal and Baltimore has not had REAL JOURNALISM in a very long time.
Here are two TOP GUN GLOBAL 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% POLS----you can bet they want to keep MEDIA out of community development that has a goal of more and more and more Baltimore families black, white, and brown 99% of citizens unemployed, impoverished, and pushed out as global corporate campuses and global factories replace our surrounding Baltimore communities....MOVING FORWARD SAYS JACK YOUNG CATHERINE PUGH NOT PRETTY FOR WOMEN, CHILDREN, FAMILIES.
The Baltimore Spectator
22 hrs · “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” City Council President Jack Young said, at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night'
The Drip
by Fern Shen10:00 amDec 13, 201711
Council President Young denounces the press at community meeting“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” Jack Young tells West Baltimore audience
Above: Jack Young with Mayor Catherine Pugh at Carver Vocational-Technical High School last night.
Standing besides Mayor Catherine Pugh at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night, City Council President praised the mayor for her leadership (“I’m glad that she’s my partner”) before taking a swipe at the press.
“I’m working along with my Council colleagues – I see Councilman Bullock in the back. We’re just like any other family, you know? We’re a family at City Hall. We have our little disagreements,” Young said, speaking at Carver Vocational-Technical High School to an audience of about 30 residents and many more agency heads and staffers.
“But we don’t want the news media – you can, um, tweet this – to determine how we respond to one another in city government,” he continued. “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city.”
“So, Madam Mayor, I’m willing to work with you. Yeah, I said it,” he concluded, handing the podium back to Pugh. “I’m willing to work with you to move this city forward.”
Asked this morning for some context for Young’s remarks and what might have sparked his criticism, his spokesman, Lester Davis, has not responded.
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