No Joke: Marriage is Good for You!

By Frank Vascellaro
WCCO News, Minnesapolis

Dr. William Doherty, a professor at the University of Minnesota, says that in marriage, good enough is good.

When you got married, you probably heard a few ball-and-chain remarks, but those are just jokes. The reality is that marriage is good for you.

We asked three couples to tell us the favorite things their spouses do for them. Rich Goldsmith says his wife gives a pretty amazing scalp massage.

"She'll just kind of rub my head and it's like, oh, it just kind of caps off my day, makes it nice and takes some of the stress away," He said.

Kari Anderson Slade tried to tell us about her husband Mark's great bear hugs, but her daughter interrupted her.

"And that answers the question," said Kari with a laugh. "We don't do anything for each other anymore because we have her."

Tony Richardson loves something his wife Bridget does every weekend.

"She lets me sleep late on Saturdays," he said.

Their marriages might not be perfect, but they don't have to be.

William Doherty, a professor at the University of Minnesota, says that in marriage, good enough is good.

"A pretty good, a good enough marriage, is something that gives people a sense of stability, a security," he explained. "It's good for us. We kind of know that by common sense, but the research also supports it."

Doherty showed us a long list of the benefits of marriage, complete with citations. Married people have more money. They're happier. They're healthier. They live longer. And their kids do better.

Doherty, who's been married to his wife Leah for 38 years, has a theory about the health benefits of marriage. It's not molecular theory, but a mole theory. He says it's not just that your wife "has your back." She sees it, too.

"Who else except somebody you're married to you sees moles on your back than your spouse, and your spouse may say, 'That looks suspicious, you should have the doctor see that,'" said Doherty. "First of all, it's somebody you're married to who saw it, and secondly it's someone who's going to nag you to go to the doctor."

See the video clip of this news report by clicking here. Read More.....

Sick of the Lies

For years now, photoshop and other programs have been used to bring normal models to barbie like proportions and out-of-this-world unattainable beauty. I thought I had seen it all, like the slimming of waists, filling out of breasts, and the removing of wrinkles. Take for instance the images of Jessica Alba below. The left is the original, and the right is after the airbrushing.

But the airbrushing has now gone to new levels. I recently received a link to an article called "Image of ultra-thin Ralph Lauren model sparks outrage." The image is incredibly disturbing. The model's body has been distorted using technology, but goes way beyond "trimming and slimming" to the point of making her look like an anorexic.

Here is how the article from Yahoo put it, "The latest such image to cause an uproar is one featured in a new Ralph Lauren advertisement that shows a model, Filippa Hamilton, so emaciated that her waist actually appears to be smaller than her head." Here is the image...brace yourself!

Crazy huh? And we wonder why our young girls have such a distorted picture of beauty! Despite all the bad messages out there, we are lucky to have a few individuals and a few organizations that care enough to stand up and say something. Here are a few that I would recommend:

1. America the Beautiful. A new documentary due out on DVD this fall that asks the question: "Is America obsessed with beauty?" Click the link to watch the trailer and find out how you can get your copy!
2. Operation Beautiful. An organization who hosts a wonderful blog with a simple mission: to post anonymous notes in public places for other women to find. The point is that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL. You are enough... just the way you are!
3. Campaign for Real Beauty. Hosted by Dove, this campaign uses video clips and advertising to show young girls what real beauty is about. Below is one of their fantastic videos. Pass it on!

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A Local Erie College discusses "Hooking Up and Breaking Down: the Missing Links in Relationships"

It's been a few days since we last published a post.  Why?  Because we've been too busy!!  What a great problem to have.  We love interacting with teens and college students.  Here is a recent article written by a college student after attending one of our events...

Rappers discuss hook ups, college life
By: Krista Mershimer, staff writer for Gannon Knight News
Gannon University, Erie PA
 
College is a period of discovery, whether it is educational, spiritual or political. It can also be sexual, a difficult subject to talk about when perceptions about sex and relationships conflict.


This was the topic of discussion in Club LaRiccia Tuesday night: “Hooking Up and Breaking Down: The Missing Link in Relationships.” Sponsored by the Gannon Social Work Club, Students for Life and Student Health Services, the discussion brought together representatives from WC2 ed, a division of the Women’s Care Center, and hip hop artist/speaker Los 1 to reinforce the need for healthy relationships.

Presentation specialist Patty Fitzgerald said that her college experience was important for her personal growth.

“College was a time to make or break me – a defining time,” she said. “Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to healthy relationships.”

The discussion emphasized the four C’s of dating and relationships: communication, cohabitation, consequences and commitment – topics that are often taboo in many relationships. Students were encouraged to interact (pictured below - Katie Cogswell/ Knight) with a panel of their peers and with married couples who discussed issues ranging from first impressions and true love to separation and divorce.

In between role-playing activities, the powerful lyrics of Los 1’s “LifeSkills” CD permeated the room speaking to students about having a positive self-image, making good choices and respecting themselves. Trained to teach lessons on character and sexual purity to teens, the Brooklyn native uses his music to reinforce learning as he travels from school to school across America.

Los 1 (pictured above - Katie Cogswell/ Knight) said the main issue is perception.

“Kids today see sex in the media, on TV, in music, in school and they need a way to navigate through all of it,” he said. “We need to teach these kids to care about themselves.”

Social Work Club President Chris Frye said that sex and relationships need to be discussed.

“It’s real-life stuff and it’s not to be played with,” the senior social work major said. “Having advice from professionals instead of friends can help students make better choices in their relationships.”

Sophomore nursing major Katie Bauer said that the most important thing couples can have in a relationship is compatibility.

“Know your values and stick to them,” Bauer said. “Know what you want out of the relationship and figure out your boundaries early on.”

Sophomore occupational therapy major Maria Crawford said that couples should also be able to trust their partners in any situation.

According to its Web site, the Women’s Care Center in Erie’s motto says it strives to faithfully empower teens to make the best decisions for their future by teaching values of character, healthy relationships and marriage.

“Our goal is to help these youth achieve optimal health and the best life advantage,” Fitzgerald said.

“Prevention is key because that’s how we avoid becoming just another statistic. Its never easy, but it’s common sense: anything worth having is worth working for.”

For more information about the Women’s Care Center, go to http://www.wc2ed.org/.  Music from Los 1 can be found at http://www.los1.com/ or at www.myspace.com/los1music

KRISTA MERSHIMER
mershime001@gannon.edu Read More.....

You Can End Child Poverty...HOW?!

Yesterday I was on the internet when an ad entitled “Obama wants mothers to go back to school” popped up. While I understand how educating single-parent mothers is important, however if we are striving to decrease child poverty the mothers’ education alone is not the answer. You might be asking, how can that be? What else could decrease poverty besides education? Try M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E. Don’t believe me? Read the research below… August 2, 2002 The Effects of Marriage and Maternal Education in Reducing Child Poverty by Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D. Maternal education without marriage is generally ineffective in reducing child poverty. The poverty levels of children raised by never-married mothers remain high even if the mother has a high-school or college degree. Specifically, the analysis reveals the following facts:

• On average, a child raised by a never-married mother is nine times more likely to live in poverty than a child born and raised by two parents in an intact marriage. (see graph below and click to enlarge)

• Overall, nearly 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs to children raised in some type of broken family or by a parent who never married.
• Raising a child in an intact marriage is roughly two and a half times more effective than adding four years to a mother's education in reducing child poverty. (see graph below and click to enlarge)

• On average, a child raised by a never-married mother with a four-year college degree is three and a half times more likely to be poor than is a child born and raised in an intact married family by a mother who has only a high-school education.
• Children raised in intact married families whose mothers are high-school dropouts spend about the same amount of time in poverty as children raised by never-married mothers who have a four-year college degree.
• Marriage has a significant effect in reducing child poverty, even if the marriage does not last throughout a boy's or girl's entire childhood. Being raised in a married two-parent family for just half of one's childhood reduces poverty as much as adding four years to a mother's education does.

In conclusion the authors note that: the current analysis indicates that, operating together, both marriage and maternal education can play a significant role in reducing child poverty.

The most effective public policy to reduce child poverty would encourage young women both to complete high school and enter into a healthy marriage before they have children. By contrast, a policy that focuses on maternal education exclusively and is indifferent or hostile to marriage is not likely to be successful.

Has anyone told President Obama this? To read the study in full, http://www.heritage.org/research/family/cda02-05.cfm Read More.....

Join us on Sept 19 for the Celebrate Life Banquet!

This year, the Women's Care Center of Erie County, Inc (our main office)

is hosting a Celebrate Life Banquet.

We'd love to have you attend on Saturday September 19th at 7pm.

Be our guest and enjoy a wonderful, elegant evening at the Courtyard Marriott with...

...special guest and three time Grammy nominee Michele Pillar.

Michele's has a beautiful voice, compared to that of an angel, but an even more beautiful life story.

Join us for a evening you'll not soon forget. You'll be glad you did!

Click here for more information or to register.

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A Valentine's Day Message Good for Today

Evenings come to an end. But mistakes last forever.

Powerful, isn't it? This poster was created by the Anscombe Society at Princeton University. The society is a group of students "dedicated to affirming the importance of the family, marriage, and a proper understanding for the role of sex and sexuality."

The Society grew out of the desire some students sensed for something better than the sexually drenched college culture.

Here is the perspective of one student:

"I remember my freshman year, in my hallway at Forbes, we went to our residential adviser for our study break, and there with the soda pop and the chips was a bowl with flavored condoms," said Joan Claire Krautmann, a senior from Salem, Ore. "So immediately, when you get on campus, you're just bombarded with sexual material."

So here's to a Valentine's Day message that we can use on campus - and everywhere - TODAY.

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College Event Designed to Dispel Myths and Meet Needs of Local Students

Yesterday I had the opportunity, along with some fellow coworkers, to go and discuss with college juniors and seniors ideas for an upcoming event we hope to have on a local college campus.

When we asked questions about the college climate as it relates to the dating and hookup world, these students answered honestly.  Here are some examples:

"Some people just hookup at a party and then they see if a relationship develops."
"Others come to college with girlfriends, but you never know how long it lasts and what they're up to."

When we asked them what they'd like to know and have us talk about, the following topics were brought up:

• Commitment - Like, how do you know if this person is the one?  How do you commit?  How do you escape divorce?
• Cohabitation - Should we live together after college?  Are we already living together if we have two separate places, but he often stays the night?  Is that wrong?
• Communication - How do you communicate between the genders?  And what's with all the texting and breaking up on facebook?  And are people really talking before they have sex, like "Are we ready to have a baby?  If not, then why are we doing this?!"

Great ideas, huh?  It also gave us a clear picture of the needs of these students and how we can address their questions with our event.

As I was thinking about which topics to highlight in the event, I stumbled upon an article entitled, "Marriage Conference Dispels Myths" published today on Cathnews.com.

Dr. William Doherty is a marriage expert and was a speaker on the panel during the conference.  His assessment is that "we need to dispel the myths about marriage in society today."  So, what are some of those modern myths about marriage?  And are any of the myths evident among the college students we spoke to?

Dr. Doherty highlights five common myths:

1. It's foolish to get married without cohabiting
2. It's best to wait to get married when you are financially secure
3. If a marriage gets rotten it never gets ripe again
4. If your marriage fails your children really want you to find another romantic relationship because they want you to be happy
5. Men aren't interested in relationships

We can't wait to further develop this college event and incoporate some of the above myths.  We'll keep you posted with more details!

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Just Guys: Understand and Escaping "Guyland"

Fuller Youth Institute Brad Griffin and Kara Powell August 31, 2009 What’s the deal with guys? Recent research warns of the chronic underachieving, emotionally drifting, and irresponsible “Guyland” of male adolescence... Excuses and Fears Much of our culture’s collective anxiety about adolescent guys is caught up in various excuses and fears. Excuses like “boys will be boys” or “it’s a guy thing” have become cultural blankets to cover all sorts of irresponsible and destructive behaviors from young boyhood through adulthood. Meanwhile we’re overwhelmed by the fears that arise from the behaviors that prompt these excuses in the first place: boys are emotionally closed off, spend too much time playing video games and hanging out online, are too sex-obsessed, lack motivation, and often drift into adulthood with little direction. More than a few of these fears are valid, but we struggle to find reliable lenses through which to interpret what’s going on with guys. We should say up front that not every boy is the same (thank goodness!) and not every boy lives by the excuses and fears we describe below. But these research trends are worth taking time to understand and respond to, for the sake of the guys—and the girls—in our ministries. Guyland: The Secret Underworld According to sociologist and gender studies expert Michael Kimmel, young men ages 16-26 live in a secret world of Guyland that resembles an uncertain holding tank.2 His interviews with over 400 guys led Kimmel to conclude:

Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life.3

Similar to the research of our Fuller Seminary colleague Chap Clark,4 most of the guys in Kimmel’s study believe that they are completely on their own to chart a path through Guyland. By the time they hit high school, they can’t trust their parents or other adults—and most feel like they can’t trust each other either. This is in large part because of the “Guy Code,” learned in boyhood and expanded in adolescence.

The number one rule in the Guy Code is, you guessed it, “Boys don’t cry.” Kimmel observes, “Masculinity is largely a ‘homosocial’ experience: performed for, and judged by, other men.”5 And it’s driven by homophobia—defined in Guyland code as the fear that others might think you’re gay. “That’s so gay” is one of the most common put-down guys use in high school, and it can refer to anything—something you say, wear, or do. So guys spend a lot of their energy attempting to prove (primarily to other guys) that they aren’t gay, that they are masculine enough to warrant independence in the “real man’s” territory. In other words, while many maintain that our version of masculinity is simply hardwired by biology, few account for the way the masculine code is “coerced and policed relentlessly by other guys.”6

To read more of the article: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2009/08/just-guys

References 2. Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (San Francisco: Harper, 2008). 3. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 4. 4. See Chap Clark, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). 5. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 47. 6. Michael Kimmel, Guyland, 51. Read More.....

Disney's Ladies and the Tramps

Washington Times Monday, August 24, 2009 by Rebecca Hagelin Culture challenge of the week: Disney's decline I'll always remember how magical it was to see Tinker Bell flitter across the TV screen. She would touch the top of Cinderella's castle with her magic wand and release a million tiny sparkles that cascaded down the television screen and seemingly into my living room. Since our family normally attended church on Sunday evenings, it was a rare treat to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney." On that occasion when I was home and could steal away and turn on the TV, I was instantly transported into a world of fairy tales and dreams. Disney was synonymous with innocence, happiness and hope; with Mickey Mouse, virtuous damsels and handsome heroes. The Disney girls, such as Snow White and Cinderella, were always so innocent, beautiful and kind. They taught little girls that we, too, should be generous and gracious - that our lives should be marked by goodness and virtue. The Disney message was clear: Regardless of your circumstances, you can be lovely and thoughtful, and - if your heart is pure and with a little help from your fairy godmother - you might also find your handsome prince and live happily ever after. My, how times have changed. This is not your mamma's Disney. The lifestyles and fantasies they are selling our young women are anything but wholesome. Disney has deliberately and successfully transformed its brand from one of innocence and family entertainment to a purveyor of promiscuity. A recent case in point is Disney star Miley Cyrus. Last week, I wrote in this column how, once again, Disney created a heroine with a young, innocent image and then morphed it into a trampy one. (Is Miley acting trampy in real life? I don't know. But she has agreed to be packaged as one.) The larger point is that Disney itself also has morphed. They've gone from selling just childhood fantasies into also selling sexual ones. This new corporate image was missed by many adults, but to my surprise, it seems that some teens recognize - and are beginning to reject - the newer, uglier Disney. After Miley's now infamous pole-dancing routine before a nation of teeny-boppers, I remarked to my 17-year-old daughter, "Kristin, it looks like Miley has gone trampy on us." "Of course," she responded, matter-of-factly. Surprised by her immediate and total agreement, I asked, "Why do you say 'of course?' " "Because she's Disney," Kristin said simply. Wow. I was stunned that my daughter knew what Disney had been up to. "Who else has Disney turned into a tramp?" I asked. "Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, the girls from 'High School Musical' - lots of others," she sighed. The funny thing is that Kristin doesn't even watch the programming. But the characters are such a pervasive part of teen culture, she can't escape them. How to save your family (and yourself) from being duped. So what's my point here? Don't blindly trust the brands you have come to rely on. Today's marketers have become so savvy that they know how to skillfully present themselves to parents in one way, but be something radically different to the teenage population that now wields tremendous purchasing power. While Disney still sells the childhood characters of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to new moms, it is selling sexuality to our pre-teen girls. When you hear about a new Disney flick, for instance, check out a reliable movie review before checking out the DVD. The best movie reviews I know are at http://www.pluggedinonline.com/. And don't let your children become enamored of any media star. Teach them that pop stars are packaged products subject to manipulation by crass marketers. Remind them that young pop icons and their agents are always looking for the next role that will maintain their superstar status, and that they are likely to make mistakes along the way. You can take heart that Tinker Bell and Cinderella will never change. It's too bad I can't say the same for Disney or their modern heroines. • Rebecca Hagelin is a family advocate and the author of the best-seller "30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family." For more family tips, visit HowToSaveYourFamily.com Read More.....

The Ugly Truth Revealed. Hollywood is not the Answer

Over the weekend I saw that the movie TheUglyTruth was playing at a nearby theater. Although the movie came out in late July, this was my first time seeing it advertised. Just look at the cover. No need to watch the movie, we already know what it’s about! The placement of the hearts hints at the saying that...

Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.

In the classroom, we describe it like this. Sexually speaking, men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots. This analogy highlights that men get stimulated more easily than women because of their visual nature, while women take longer because they respond when they feel connected and romanced. So while the movie may highlight some truth, the use of this truth to ‘rope’ a man by wearing low seductive tops and short skirts is not the answer. In addition, the movie hints that men are only after ‘one thing’ and care nothing of the female’s interests or personality. This paints a rather animalistic view of males which I believe to be unfair. The point of highlighting the microwave and crockpot truth is to teach teens how to dress modestly and to not arouse or manipulate their date. In addition, we stress the need for self-control for both parties and the importance of getting to know each other before getting physical. And so, we find TheUglyTruth to rather be that Hollywood is NOT the source for romantic advice and certainly NOT the model for healthy and long-lasting relationships. Read More.....