Carolyn Moynihan
 Carolyn Moynihan is an Auckland (New Zealand) journalist with a special interest in family issues. She is Deputy Editor of MercatorNet and editor of Family Edge. |
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Carolyn Moynihan
Every Family Matters: A major British report on marriageCarolyn Moynihan | 15 Jul 2009Despite what we have said recently on this blog, some Brits do get it about things to do with family life, and some of them are pretty important people. There is, for example, the former Conservative Party leader and current MP Iain Duncan Smith, who heads a very influential think tank called the Centre for Social Justice. This independent policy group has just published a major report calling for legal changes to support marriage as the basis of stable family life.Mother-daughter, father-son links in obesityCarolyn Moynihan | 14 Jul 2009The problem of obesity continues to haunt governments while scientists come up with conflicting ideas about the causes. (If you thought it was simply a matter of over-eating, you are sadly out of date.) The theory that it all comes down to genetics has just taken a knock from British researchers who find strong evidence that parental role models are the real problem.‘The doctor made you in a dish and put you in someone else’s tummy’Carolyn Moynihan | 13 Jul 2009There can’t be too many parents around these days who fumble the answer to their children’s “Where did I come from?” question. But there are now thousands in the United States -- and elsewhere -- who have to put a lot more thought than the average parent into their replies. Those are the steadily growing numbers who are using surrogate mothers to provide them with babies.Where teen pregnancies come from - the Brits still don’t get itCarolyn Moynihan | 10 Jul 2009A programme launched by the British government in 2004 to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies in the UK has had the opposite effect, a study published in the British Medical Journal shows. Young girls who followed the programme were nearly three times as likely to become pregnant, about 1.75 times more likely to have sex and were also more likely to expect to be a teenage parent. The only good news is that the government is going to ditch the programme.Pope's letter calls for openness to human lifeCarolyn Moynihan | 8 Jul 2009Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical letter, “On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth”, discusses a wide spectrum of social realities, among them the need for openness to new human life, which, he says, “is at the centre of true development”, and protection of the family founded on “marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society”.A family-friendly White House?Carolyn Moynihan | 7 Jul 2009American first couple Barack and Michelle Obama are trying to keep some balance between their hugely demanding jobs and family life. They have also promised a family-friendly workplace for their staff. How well are they doing?Drink! Drink! Drink! Students keep bingeing during general declineCarolyn Moynihan | 2 Jul 2009Good news and bad news about young people and binge drinking: in the United States, anyway, reckless drinking is down over all, but not among college students. Among 18- to 20-year-old men who did not attend college, binge drinking declined more than 30 per cent between 1979 and 2006. But among male students it remained at a steady and significant level, while among female students -- and this is the really bad news -- it went up.Can you talk yourself into feeling loveable?Carolyn Moynihan | 1 Jul 2009One of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century was summedup in the title of Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of PositiveThinking, published in 1952. “It is of practical value to learn to likeyourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might aswell get some satisfaction out of the relationship,” Peale is quoted assaying. Now some Canadian researchers are saying it doesn’t work -- forthe people who need it most.Disney world 'too heterosexual' for children's goodCarolyn Moynihan | 29 Jun 2009Many experts are concerned about the effects on children of their being immersed in electronic media from a tender age. They worry largely about the things they are not doing while watching TV or videos: developing their vocabulary through talking to their parents; listening to or reading books; going to the park for healthy exercise and social activities. But two sociologists have come up with a novel reason for fretting about kids’ exposure to media: the risk of seeing heterosexuality as normal and desirable.Young people quiz their peers on YouTube use and abuseCarolyn Moynihan | 26 Jun 2009A survey of teenage use of the popular video-sharing website YouTube confirms that it is very easy for minors to give their age as 18 or over when creating an account on the site, and therefore to access objectionable material. Parents need to advise their children against looking for R18 videos and YouTube needs to make its safety features more prominent, a new report suggests.free updates
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