“The kids are alright”. While a popular title of a 2010 movie where the children of lesbian mothers, conceived by artificial insemination, bring their father into their family life, the kids may be anything but alright today. News of Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide after an alleged gang rape and the ongoing harassment at the finger tips of kids her age as they texted naked photos of her around the community, following on the heels as it was of other well publicized similar international incidents, seems to suggest something is afoul.
In this issue, Barbara Kay, weekly columnist for the National Post newspaper, argues that, “It is an infallible rule of human nature that appetites ungoverned by moral boundaries will feed on themselves and metastasize uncontrollably”. The result may very well be, among other things, the pervasiveness of pornography and the hook-up culture on university and college campuses that we hear so much about lately and that is reflected in the popular culture of today.
This theme is explored further in the book review of “The End of Men” by Kathryn Marshall, who points out how Rosin’s book argues that women have a newfound power and control in their sexual lives where they are free to date and “hook up” without the pressure of being nailed down to the institution of marriage or a relationship even.
The same feminist movements of the 1960s that Marshall’s book review explores, which pushed women out of the home and into the workplace, which has contributed in part to the breakdown in teenager morality as Barbara Kay would no doubt argue, is being institutionalized in law.
Lawyer Derek James From explores a recent seminal court decision that is lock step in line with the prevailing attitude that family and child rearing are responsibilities of society and not those of families themselves. Now, women (and men) have a right to a job that fit the time constraints of their personal family lives, while employers and co-workers are expected to shoulder some of the burden of what was previously seen to be the responsibility of individual families themselves. In short, From explores why it shouldn’t take a community to raise your kid and why the government won’t do anything about it.
All the while, the crumbling institution of marriage, subject to ever declining enrolment, was opened up to homosexual men and women in Canada and most recently in New Zealand. Many argue, including Simon Fraser University professor Doug Allen in this issue, that same sex marriage has changed the legal and social meaning of marriage in ways never anticipated. The results for Allen demonstrate that the children of same sex marriages are not doing as well in terms of education as children of opposite sex married parents. It may very well be time to revisit the “one size fits all” notion of marriage and allow marriages of the same sex variety to evolve on their own terms.
In this issue of C2C journal, all of these issues and others, are on the table. Even for the most liberal of readers, it promises to make you question whether in fact the kids are alright?
Chris Schafer, C2C Journal Issue Editor
