Here is a quote by Barbara Bush, the mother of president George W. Bush, from her commencement address to Wellesley College Graduates in 1990.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. Fathers and mothers, if you have children … they must come first. You must read to your children, you must hug your children, you must love your children. Your success as a family … our success as a society … depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

I ran across a couple of articles discussing children over the weekend. First up, an article from The Australian reporting on a paper from the Optimum Population Trust arguing that children are bad for the environment. The OPT paper suggests that “having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags.” According to John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London,

The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.

Meanwhile, Josh Sowin at Fire and Knowledge excerpts some paragraphs from Bill McKibben’s book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. McKibben warns that genetic engineering in the future could cause some parents to begin viewing their children as products rather than people.

[Genetically engineered] children will, in effect, be assigned a goal by their programmers: “intelligence,” “even temper,” “athleticism.”

… Now two possibilities arise. Perhaps the programming doesn’t work very well, and your kid spells poorly, or turns moody, or can’t hit the inside fastball. In the present world, you just tell yourself that’s who he is. But in the coming world, he’ll be, in essence, a defective product. Do you still accept him unconditionally? …

The other outcome—that the genetic engineering works just as you had hoped—seems at least as bad. Now your child is a product … And what can she take pride in? Her good grades? She may have worked hard, but she’ll always know that she was specced for good grades. Her kindness to others? Well, yes, it’s good to be kind—but perhaps it’s not much of an accomplishment once the various genes with some link to sociability have been catalogued and manipulated.

I like God’s perspective on all this so much better. According to the Bible, children are neither pollutants to be controlled nor products to be evaluated; rather, children are a blessing from the Lord to be loved, cared for and raised to know God.

Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. (Psalm 127:3,5)

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Elle, at A Complete Thought, has written two very moving posts about her firstborn son, James, who died at age 2 1/2 after two years of illness and extended hospital stays. James was born on April 3, Easter Sunday, 1994.

The first post is a letter written to her son this year on what would have been his thirteenth birthday. In the second post, written on Easter of this year, Elle shares openly about her own struggle with faith following James’ death, along with the added difficulty of learning how to celebrate Easter once again, which now represented not only the resurrection of her Lord but also the birthday of the son she had lost.

I pray that these two posts will minister to others who have lost children as well as deepen the hearts and understanding of those who have never experienced such a loss. Thank you, Elle, for sharing personally and from your heart. May God continue to comfort you and your husband with his strong hand of love.

Today is the last day to take the TV survey (for Christian parents). It is free, it is easy, it only takes a few minutes of your time, it will help out a graduate student with her research, and there are cool prizes involved. Plus, the graduate student just happens to be my niece. So if you have not already done so, click here for more information and take the survey today.

My niece, Kathryn Post, is a graduate student at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania where she is currently conducting research for her masters thesis. Kathryn is studying the television perspectives of Christian parents and needs Christian parents to volunteer to take a brief survey online.

By taking part in her study, you will be supporting Christian research and helping a graduate student. As a thank you for participating, you will be entered in a drawing for one of four $25.00 gift cards.

The survey can be completed between now and May 1st. Click this link to go to the survey: Parent Survey

Thank you for your support!

The Dallas Morning News recently conducted a Q&A with Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas in Austin. Regnerus helped lead a multi-year research project on teens, religion and sex, the results of which appear in his new book, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teens.

Here are some excerpts:

One of the arguments in your book is that religion makes a difference in the lives of American teens. What difference does religion make?

Simply being Presbyterian or Catholic or evangelical is not as important as internalizing the faith. Kids for whom Christianity is a central identity – not just another aspect of their lives – tend to make more thoughtful and mature decisions about sex. But this is rarer than most people think: Less than 10 percent of all youth do this.

In the book, you write about surprising findings concerning evangelical teens. What were they?

Evangelical teens express conservative attitudes about sex, but they are very average in their actual behavior. Why? Because evangelical kids live in two worlds. The new world tells them to value career, self-fulfillment, happiness and entertainment – and this is what adults and parents model for them. But the old world – to which evangelicals still pay deference – values keeping commitments, God, marriage and delaying pleasure.

Most American kids only live in the new world. Evangelicals still inhabit both. The result is conflict and compromise: old world values but new world actions.

Parents and adults, did you get that? Unless we model what we believe, our teens are less likely to follow through on what they believe. We teach with our lives as much if not more than with our words.

HT: The Evangelical Outpost

Here is a neat online Christian radio station for kids at HisKids.net. Great music and format. They even offer a Wi-Fi Family Radio and Media Player for listening around the house.

This is a must-read post from Joe Carter on the subject of visiting fathers. Dads, if you are thinking of leaving your family or even in the midst of divorce proceedings, you need to stop and read this article. Thank you, Joe, for sharing honestly from your experience and from your heart.

Here is a clip from the post, but I encourage you to visit Joe’s site and read the whole thing.

Over the past twelve years I’ve learned being a part-time dad is not enough. Our children always need more.

That is why I want to address a specific, narrow audience with the rest of this post. I want to address those fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.

I want to start with a basic premise: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, then you can stop reading now. The rest of what I say will only make sense to those who understand that this is the foundation of fatherhood . . . [Your children] need you at home. If you’re a man and aspire to being a dad, that is all you need to know . . .

I couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful, accommodating woman to be my former spouse. But as hard as we work to make it easier on our daughter, everything we can do is not enough. At the end of the day, my child lives in a house where one of her parents is missing. Divorce doesn’t just end a marriage, it ends a family.

My wife, Rose, lives in a house full of men. So, when I saw this article, The Daughter I Never Had, I immediately thought of her. Honestly, I don’t know how she puts up with us at times. Even one of our dogs is a boy.

Of course, I would love to have a daughter. But I would not trade our family of three boys. Neither would Rose. Our family of all boys is full of high energy, lots of laughter, lots of Star Wars, lots of competition, lots of fun.

There is something special about every family – whether it is all boys, all girls, one child, or any mixture of the two. As someone once said to me when Rose was expecting, “It doesn’t matter if it is a boy or a girl, as long as it’s wealthy!”

What is your family like? Do you have any thoughts on the makeup of different families?

Here is a great new resource for families. Seeds Family Worship has produced four new CDs with songs taken directly from Scripture. Each CD contains 12 passages of Scripture focusing on a certain topic, such as Praise, Faith, Purpose or Courage. The music is modern and upbeat, and you can listen to samples before you buy.

Music is a great way for kids (and adults) to memorize Scripture. The website is offering a special Seeds of Easter sampler CD for only $2.99. This 5-song CD with songs from Seeds of Courage and Seeds of Faith is intended as an introduction to the series or as give-aways to children and guests on Easter. (Note: You must order by Monday, March 26 to guarantee delivery by April 6.)

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