Porn dehumanizes us

I have to say, at first I was simply a little surprised when I realized this was written by a man.
After a couple of seconds I admit surprise turned into confusion, even slight disturbance.
And now, after reading it again, I can definitely state the guy creeps me out a little.

What is it with people always trying to victimize female porn 'stars'? Why do they perceive porn as solely being designed for men? How come women are perceived as mere 'tools'?

I don't know, guys. I'm a woman and all I can say is that I don't have a problem with porn. Be it the hetero-sexual type or the pseudo-homosexual type, hey, whatever floats your boat. What I do have a problem with, however, is people trying to force women into the role of the victim, as soon as they take their clothes off in public or for the public. IMHO, that's a big friggin' complex in the minds of wanna-be caring males who are a little too much in touch with their feminine side. Now go ahead.. shoot me.

What does it say about a man when his normal response to sexual images - his own arousal and excitement - is not short-circuited by alarm or disgust over the dehumanizing treatment of women in most of today's porn?

I think it says that there is --generally--a clear distinction between fantasy and reality. By the author's argument, what does it say about those who enjoy movies with violence? Sure there are movies whose violence is disturbing enough to cause concern. I find it a bit disheartening that people enjoy the recent deluge of torture-based movies. And similarly, porn can be so extreme that the boundary between reality and fantasy doesn't protect the psyche from disgust.

But for the most part, pornography gratifies common fantasies. To answer the author's question, what it says about most men is that they fantasize about emotionally detached sex, control, and beautiful women. This isn't a surprise or a concern. Psychologically healthy people--that is, most people--can separate their fantasies from their behaviors.

Give me a break.

The author is some idealistic college student who probably has several GBs of porn on the very laptop he wrote that from. With that said, I think he has a point. Not when it comes to high-budget, mainstream pornstars like the Jenna Jamesons of the world, but the porn industry does not cater to women viewers, probably never will, and frankly never has to. Angie (first comment above) has probably never seen the kind of sick @!$%# that the author is addressing. The girls in there are used like nothing less than a set of orifices. They don't leave the shoot with a sense of empowerment or sexual liberation; they leave it limping and abused. It's true that the people that feel dehumanized by WATCHING porn would find some other vice to debase themselves. But in the words of Seagate's CEO "We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." The mainstreaming of porn from VHS to DVD to "C:/MyDocuments/My eBooks/Winter 2005/boring" is undeniable...and probably has cheapened the whole thing.

Fight Club is not football on television. You aren't watching a bunch of guys you don't know beating on each other halfway around the world via satellite with a two minute delay, commercials pitching beer every three minutes and a pause now and then for station identification. After fight club, watching football on television was like watching pornography when you could be having great sex. -The Narrator in Fight Club (written by Chuck Palahniuk)

FYI

The porn industry makes more annually than Hollywood and the NFL combined.

I daresay a man on the net, (myself included) has not struggled with this issue. It is destructive, and warps a mind. I prefer to fantasize about my wife, and not be distracted by an imaginary 'friend'.

BTW- Maritial sex is wonderful, premarital lust is not. I have tasted both.

LOLOLOL first the oldest porn is as old as our oldest art.. and is featured in caves in germany.
WE have been drawing boobies and penises as soon as we saw we could mark a rock.
As for the 3 holes and 2 hands comment, he obviously is very limited in his knowledge of porn. There is quite a bit of porn that have the roles reversed. Where the man is just a couple of holes and a dick.

Porn humanizes us. Not dehumanizes... People act like this was invented by the net.. or some how isnt normal, when it is as human as speaking.(i don't recall any animals making their own porn.. well at least without human help)

A woman's main value in porn lies merely in what she can do for a man with those holes and hands, and in what she'll allow him to do with them.

Well, duh. It's porn!

What value is a woman (or a man, or a transexual, or any other 'player' in the medium) supposed to provide? A soliloquy on the human condition? Anybody wanting to achieve deep communion with the opposite sex had better not be looking for it either in Guttermouths No. 4 or in the latest Jenna Jameson gauzy-lens fest. It's not what they're for.

More "sex is evil" non-sense. I don't accept the core argument that it's dehumanizing at all. Only a few short million years ago our ancestors were committing violent rape to procreate. I think we've come a long way but those violent and predatory urges still exist to some degree in all men's brains. I'll even so far to agree that some men wan to act out those urges in real life. I draw the line between fiction and reality however. If a man is treating a women this way it's her responsibility to stand up for herself and put a stop to it. Also, FYI, I've known several women who were interested in some pretty disgusting pornography. I'm talking the nasty stuff too -- rape fantasy, gang bangs, etc. Don't put all the blame on men here. Why aren't we blaming the actresses who do porn? They have just as much free will and responsibility as the men who watch them.

The problem with porn is not the part where it's people having sex on camera. There's nothing inherently wrong with pornography, simply defined as nudity and sex designed to get people off.

Unfortunately, the porn that exists today is a product of the system that produces it. I have serious problems with the porn industry, but they aren't really problems different from those I have with most industries in a capitalist economy. Performers in porn are exploited to be sure, but not specifically because they have sex on camera. Capitalism requires there to be large numbers of people who have to do work they don't really want to do for wages; the problem with porn above other jobs is not that there should be anything degrading about sex work, but that people perceive it that way. Because society has defined sex work as degrading, those people who do it get the double-whammy of capitalist exploitation and social stigma.

So I am "against" porn in the same way I am against Wal-Mart; I don't hate clothes and I don't hate porn, I just hate the way they work in the world we live in. That said, there's a growing indie porn scene that's pretty rad.

If porn does have bad psychological effects, one would expect that anyone exposed to it would show those effects. However, a 1993 study of Canadian Customs agents, charged with interdicting pornography at the borders, shows no such effect.

A lot of women in society seem to be brought up to lie to themselves about how they really feel. "Projecting" and "self-esteem" issues are huge problems for women, hence the amount of self-help books and articles womem tend to read. I think that this "trait" is abused especially in the sex industry, which is why the majority of porn is exploitation.

Having watched a number of interviews and documentarys on porn stars I didnt find one who wasn't psychologically messed up. Even though on the surface they seemed so "in-control". The key element for a lot of women in western society is to feel wanted and popular. Alot of women feel that being wanted sexually equates to really being wanted as a human being. When 5 guys are taken turns to penetrate you definetely feel wanted. However, being interested in someone because you want to get off and actually being interested in them are totally different things. Which is why porn stars in documentarys often feel empty and alone because they are giving themselves to a cause that is not real.

The money that these girls earn is so low for 99% of the films that it cant just be about money. I really dont think there are any female porn stars out there who arent psychologically messed up,financially down, or drug dependent. Thats why it is explotative.

Porn is essentially dull and fiendishly boring.Porn is tolerated and exploited by those in power.It helps keep especially ordinary mens minds away from the evil and gross injustice that they should be fighting in government and the feminist dominated media.I know some of my comrades in the MRA are not bothered.I say that porn is a drug I have seen good men get really sick in the head with it.It degrades both sexes that includes MEN (as ever mens issues are disregarded - despite overwhelming evidence we are being "screwed" over in every area of our lives!!!) .Sex is a great thing it is a highly spiritual but yet it is based in the real world, porn is illusion and this is why many of us having seen it find it hilarious, what is presented is so ridiculous that it no longer has anything to with real sex.
I recommend MEN to avoid porn as it is a time wasting life sapping, go and do sports - anything is better than wasting your precious time on a sad empty passive and addictive drug that can damage you.

I liked Erica Jong's quote about watching porn: "after the first 10 minutes I wanted to have sex, by the end of the movie I never wanted to have sex again". The sad fact is that porn - that is the repeated depiction of various forms of sex or depiction of suggestive poses, is an artifact of our social norms, especially here in the US.

Since we have insisted on a hypocritical morality it will remain as a social factor for a long time. Until we get over repressing sexuality and nudity, the problem remains that both nudity and sexuality explicit material will have a forbidden attraction. The internet simply made it easier to access. Instead of, for example, secretly hoarding sex rags and video, or taking side trips to truckstops for the ubiquitous adult store fodder. Its worse because our leadership panders directly to the moralistic right/religiously conservative factions to legitimize control and build a facade of moralistic values, all the while pursuing extra-marital relationships, promiscuity and so forth, embracing an obvious double-standard. Until we get over this taboo about nudity and sexuality, this will go on.

"Now give me a break. What nonsense. "
.........predictable female response....LOL ...Every man I speak to on forums will tell this is standard or
shaming language "you are a misogynist ....blah blah!"
You are shocked and threatened to find men alert to female treachery
so rampant these days. Female porn stars are like hookers - too lazy to do anything else.
No one can stop porn now its massive and women do buy it and produce it.Who cares? I warn men away from it. I warn men away from women - period. LOL!!!!

I dont expect women to ever heed what men say.Females only see their own side.Few ever get beyond their myopic one way communication.
Fundamentally modern females are selfish arrogant entitlement princesses with a victim complex about everything.I agree with your revulsion of men in touch with their feminine side.
Thats why I favour competitive sports and working out over porn.Many men could do with getting in touch with their machismo side.VIVA MACHO REVIVAL!!!

angie refers to angie
angie writes angie reads angie
angie only sees angie
I me and angie is my world
angie loves angie only talks to and about me
-angie
You're dismissed angie Subject closed

Well for the sarcastic conformist named Jimmy Havok, who wanted a page full of stats regarding the breakdown in the relationship between men and women since feminism hit, I did point out that it could be found in my valentine's article - which he did not take the time to peruse of course.

Here it is then in its entirety: (oh and for brevity, please note that many more pages could have been filled detailing the same phenomenon in feminized nations around the globe - I simply felt that this would suffice)

To all the young lovers in the world: happy Valentine's day – may you find all the love and richness that is life, exploring yourselves and getting lost in one another. Let go of the hateful feelings of the 'us versus them' feminist mentality, and share in the together that we were designed for.

But for those of us who sit bitterly in front of empty chocolate boxes, waiting for valentines and flowers which will never come - those who have had the essence and meaning of life robbed from them by social engineering. For those of us who live day in day out alone, knowing, or at least firmly believing, that this is our ONLY realistic option – this one's for you. You deserve to know what is happening and why.

What has robbed you of your birthright you might ask? What force on this earth would be so evil, so manipulative, so outright destructive, as to try to break down the loving relationship between men and women? In a word that evil is feminism. I'll show you what I mean.

In the past the vast majority of singles could look forward to finding that special someone to marry and start a family with. This is no longer true. Not only are more and more people getting divorced, but fewer and fewer people are even choosing to get married in the first place. Relationships have become far less committed, and much more transient since feminism set in. When people do find that "special someone" to celebrate Valentine's day with, they usually find them when they are older on average, and spend far fewer moments together – as both men and women are working in modern relationships, often full time. So, even if you do happen to be one of the lucky ones, you'll be lucky less of the time, than you would have been in the past.

Here in Canada, in 1981, 65% of both men and women could hope to find their special someone and marry before age 50. By 2004, (and this trend is steadily worsening), only 51% of women and 48% of men could still even hope to be married by age 50! (INDEPTH: MARRIAGE By the numbers: (Canadian Families. CBC News Online | November 30, 2004, According to Vanier study). What this means is, that even getting married in the first place in Canada, (and again this is by age 50!! which is by no means a spring chicken), can now be relegated to a coin toss. I should point out that prior to 1981, the numbers, at times, approached the mid to high 90's, and fell most sharply following the advent of feminism in the 1960's. Back to the coin toss though, keep in mind that you have to toss the coin once to determine if you will get married, (by age 50!!!) and then a second time to determine whether or not you'll be getting a divorce. Then you take an inventory of everything you own, and toss the coin up for each item to see if you get to keep it after the divorce. Don't bother tossing for the kids – the mother almost always gets those.

The situation is the same the feminized world over. There has also been a large increase in the U.S. divorce rate, which accelerated in the 1960's (the birthing years of the feminist beast) and peaked in 1981; it has leveled off in the last decade and even slightly declined. In 1970, 4% of the total adult population was divorced, but by 1992 11% were divorced — a 266% increase in 22 years". (Saluter, A.F. (1992). Marital status and living arrangements. March 1992, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports. Population Characteristics, Series P20-468, December 1992.). The slight decline in the divorce rate in the last decade is somewhat encouraging, but many attribute this to the decline in the U.S. marriage rate, which has gone down steadily over the last 25 years. In 1970, 72% of the adult population was married; it was 61 in 1992. Among women in their late twenties and early thirties, the proportion who have never married tripled between 1970 and 1992, from 11% to 33% for ages 25 to 29, and from 6% to 19% for ages 30 to 34. Also the number of unmarried couple households was 3.3 million in 1992, twice the 1980 number. (For these statistics, see A.F. Saluter, 1992; Christensen, B.J. (ed.) (1990). The Retreat from Marriage, Lanham, MD: University Press of America..) [above paragraph from Family Decline: The Findings of Social Science PAUL C. VITZ, which I highly recommend as it details the slow destruction of American families since feminism.]

In England, things are even worse. With a more pronounced affliction of feminism than other major nations, England is now reporting, for the first time since a major world war, that married women have become the minority.

Article (snippets):

From the Daily Mail
Single women outnumber their married counterparts
By STEVE DOUGHTY Last updated at 22:00pm on 17th December 2006

…Yesterday's breakdown of the decline of marriage showed that fewer than one in three women in their late 20s is married, and among those aged between 20 and 24 the proportion who are married is under one in ten.

In the early 1970s 85 per cent of women were married before their 30th birthday. Six out of ten had married before the age of 25.

In 2003 there were 11,000,000 wives and 10,892,000 single, divorced or widowed women. In 1971, nearly two out of three adult women were married.

But in the following year the number of married women was 10,935,000, the ONS analysis said. There were 11,090,000 who were single, divorced or widowed.

The minority status of wives is likely to be unprecedented in peacetime in history… … Decline in marriage began in the late 1970s - at a time when welfare benefits for single parents were beginning to increase - and accelerated through the 1980s and 90s.

During this period married couples began to be taxed separately and the value of a key tax break, Married Couples Allowance, began to be eroded.

Numbers of divorced women have soared nearly tenfold since 1971 to 2.15 million in 2004, a process quickened by reforms which made divorce easier.

Mr Blair's Government has taken its attitude to marriage from its feminist wing. One key figure, Patricia Hewitt, now Health Secretary, declared in 1996 that the rise in cohabitation meant that legal marriage 'doesn't fit any longer, particularly not in Britain.' … end quote.

A couple of long standing feminist attitudes based in fem-fantasy and not reality:

1.) I'm an empowered, high-heeled executive with a three figure salary – I'll get married and have kids when I'm good and ready and when it suits me.

FACT: Ann Hewlett, an economist and the author of /"Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children,"/ (2002) found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women were childless. Forty seven per cent of 40-something women with professional degrees have no children. Only 14% of these women said they didn't want children.

2.) Sure marriage is good for men's health! They have everything to gain keeping their wives as pregnant slaves shackled to a stove somewhere (presumably barefoot as well).

FACT: A study by Aanson (1988) of 20,000 American white women aged 18 to 55 found that single women were far more prone to physical illness. Indeed, this study showed that being married was more important to one's health than such factors as age, education or family income. Single women had more chronic diseases and spent more days in bed. However, as Larson, Larson and Gartner (1990) note: "Women who were living with persons unrelated to them also had poorer health than married women living with spouses, although their health was better than the health of single women living alone." (Larson, D.B., Larson, S.S. and Gartner, J. (1990). Families, relationships and health. In D. Wedding (Ed.)Behavior and Medicine. St. Louis: Mosby-Yearbook. 135-147.)

Married people also have less depression and anxiety (Pearlin, L.I. and Johnson, J.S. (1977). Marital status, life strains and depression. American Sociological Review, 42, 707-715.; Thoits, PA. (1987). Gender and marital status differences in control and distress: Common stress vs. unique stress explanations. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 28, 7 – 22.) even though Thoits noted that married people reported experiencing more potentially stressful events than did the unmarried. The social support of marriage and family networks apparently counteract the effects of stress. (For the now considerable evidence on the positive effects of social support on health, see House JS, Landis KR, Umberson D. 1988. Social relationships and health. Science 241:540-45.; also Hu, Y.-H. (1988). Family roles and female mortality: Differentials across cultures: An inquiry of cultural adaptation in industrialization. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 18, 57-78.; Wolf, S. and Bruhn, J.G. (1993). The Power of the Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.).

When you add in that men make up about forty percent of college and university attendance, virtually around the globe, and that women tend to "marry up" sociologically speaking, singlehood, already a fact of life for many, will continue to be a growing phenomenon. Sadly, a half dozen empty boxes err… I mean an empty box of chocolate, is all that many of us have to look forward to each February the 14th. Will women ever decide to put aside careers for love and family again, or will the lust for material wealth continue to drive Valentine Day card sales through the floor? Only time and a last ditch appeal to sanity will tell. With birth rates falling right along side Valentine card sales though, we're in for a rocky road if we choose to stay the course.

The disparity men face within the educational systems of the world, and our collapsing birthrates worldwide, however, will be discussed in subsequent articles! Tune in next time when we expose the feminization of the educational system – The boys aren't doing poorly because they're stupid stupid!

TheSharpenedPen
"If the pen is mightier than the sword, best keep it sharp."
For biting commentary, check out the honor network - a website devoted to men's rights issues.

If feminism is not to blame for the rift between men and women, then would you please share your somewhat limitless knowledge as to why every nation that adopted feminism, has seen declines in marriage, declines in the permanency of relationships,and below replacement levels of population growth? I'm insecure about my masculinity? Oh give me a break and get over yourself already! LOL
The facts are the facts, no matter how you try to deny them or cloud them over. Men and women are going in different directions, and the timeline follows feminism perfectly.

Correlation does not equal causality? Oh once again give me a flipping break! If you people were any more brainwashed, I'd be hearing your whiney passivity on the nightly news.

If femism is not to blame for the state that we are in, then what other major societal change are we talking about - take in mind, it had to happen precisely when feminism did, and it had to happen in every westernized nation around the globe, like feminism did, it had to be a profound change to produce the wide ranging effects of divorce, infidelity, increasing singlehood, decreasing parenthood, and rapidly declining populations, it had to be continued up to and including the present day and well quite frankly - you're in denial.

Quote from Jimmy Braindead:
"Perhaps feminism simply allows women to admit to the rift that lies between some men and some women, instead of passively accepting it.

Perhaps you can't get laid because you're an ass, rather than because of feminism. "

Admit to the rift that exists between men and women? Where do you get this garbage? It's a rift that has been created by society itself, it is not some underlying conflict!

Perhaps I can't get laid because I'm an ass - well there's a statement from one if I ever heard one. Simply put, any ass can get laid, in fact, given that women view many of these "asses" as the alpha dominant apes, it is more likely that someone who is really and truly an ass WILL get laid. Then he'll screw around on her and leave her with two or three kids. Nevertheless, for your information dickhead, and given that you don't think via any other organ I think the name is quite befitting, I could get laid if I so choose, which I do not. Moreover, I do NOT hate women - I love them in fact. It's feminism I hate, and what it's doing to society.

Feminism labeled a 'society killer'

By Chad Groening and Jody Brown
February 22, 2007

A pro-family organization says it's "sad world" when countries have to pay women to have children in order for a society to survive. Unfortunately, says a spokesman for Population Research Institute, that is what is happening in countries like Italy where birth rates have sunk to below-replacement level.

Over the past several decades, feminist leaders like the late Betty Friedan, who was a founder of the National Organization for Women, and Gloria Steinem of Ms. magazine fame have decried the roles of women as mothers and housewives, suggesting they are forms of sexual exploitation. The modern feminist movement, as a result, has placed a higher value on women's place in the working world — and its influence has had far-reaching consequences.

For example, Joseph D'Agostino, vice president for communications at the Population Research Institute, sees feminism's influence on nations' birth rates. He notes that modern societies now are organized around economic production, not the production of the next generation of human beings. The result ? D'Agostino says feminism "destroys" every single society it touches.

"It is the most socially destructive movement perhaps in the history of the world — and I mean that in the scientific sense," he emphasizes. "Every single culture, every single nation that's adopted feminism [as a dominant philosophy] is now dying out. Feminism means death."

D'Agostino asserts that feminism has coerced women into going into the workplace in order to maintain middle-class lifestyles. As a result, he says some countries are now offering incentives and even outright cash for women to have children so a society can survive.

"I think that indicates that feminism has already really spiritually killed your society," he says, adding that every single society or subculture in the world that has adopted feminism now has a below-replacement birth rate. "If you now have to pay women to have children, you've really reached the point of no return and it's just not going to work. In fact, lots of countries now are paying women to have children ...."

Evidently that approach is not working. According to the Institute spokesman, none of those countries have been able to get their birth rates back up to replacement levels.

D'Agostino says while Islamic Jihad and "global warming" are often presented as the most dangerous threats to the Western world today, they pale in comparison to the demographic crisis — because without people, nothing else matters.

© 2007 AgapePress all rights reserved.

Sunday Tasmanian

26 May 2002, Page 11
Nowadays the vow is not to tie the knot

By Gerard McManus

Australian men are avoiding marriage because of the financial ruin marital break-ups bring.

New figures show that a quarter of all women will never be proposed to as men opt for no-strings-attached casual relationships.

Today 29 per cent of men are likely never to marry and the trend is rising.

And recent Family Court rulings which force men to pay for child support for children that are not their own have only reinforced widespread perceptions of anti-male bias by the court.

There are now more than two million Australian men and women in the lonely hearts club - those 45 years and under who have never married. On current trends the club is likely to double over the next 15 years.

Men are opting for relationships where there is no commitment, no offspring and most of all no danger of long-term financial loss from divorce.

And statistics also show that if a woman wants to marry the worst thing she can do is get a university degree, which pushes out the marriage age and lengthens the odds of never marrying.

University degrees produce the most old maids (almost twice as many women with university degrees are not married at 45 compared with women with no qualifications at all).

Women with diplomas fare almost as badly, ahead of women with basic certificates and those with no qualifications at all.

Women with trade certificates appear to have the best prospects of getting married. Just 5 per cent of tradeswomen aged 45 are not married.

"I think it is wonderful that men are starting to wake up," family law reform campaigner Sylvia Smith said last week. "Why would a young man with a lucrative career risk losing 70 to 80 per cent of his assets by getting married?

"Property settlements are meant to be 50/50 but in the vast majority of cases the result is more like 80/20 towards women."

The Full Bench of the Family Court recently ruled that it had no power to force the Child Support Agency to refund $4290 in overpayments to a Victorian man who discovered by DNA tests that he was not the father of his wife's child.

In another case currently before the Family Court, also in Victoria, a man is seeking repayment of about $40,000 in child support payments after he also discovered that two of the three children he had been supporting for 8 1/2 years turned out through DNA testing not to be his.

The Child Support Agency insists it has no power to refund the money, and Children and Youth Affairs Minister Larry Anthony says he is seeking advice on the matter.

The Family Law Act of 1975 ushered in not only the era of no-fault divorce and high dissolution rates (currently running 46 per cent), but a corresponding trend of an increasing reluctance to marry.

Since 1975 there has been a five-fold growth in the number of men who have never married.

In 1975, 4 per cent or about one in 25 women had never married by the time they reached 45 years of age.

According to the 1996 Census (the 2001 Census figures are due to be released soon), more than one in four women had never married by the age of 45, and this figure is continuing to rise.

Between 1986 and 1996 there was a rise in the number of women living in de facto relationships from 7 per cent to 12 per cent in the 25- to 29-year age group.

However, the proportion of married women fell by 15 per cent so that the proportion of women in 1996 who were coupled in any type of live-in union fell from 67 per cent to 57 per cent.

The number of people getting married is also falling, despite the increasing population. In 2000 there was a decrease of 900 marriages compared with the previous year.

Men and women are also delaying getting married, with the average age of men getting married now 30, and women almost 28.

In 1971 an extraordinary 62 per cent of women aged between 20 and 24 were married. By 1997 this figure had fallen to 13 per cent.

The Price of Day Care Can Be High
(The New York Times, 2006-06-20)

THERE is one place in North America where parents of young children don't have to worry about child care. In Quebec, full-time day care costs just $7 a day — Canadian dollars, at that — thanks to a government program aimed at one of the thorniest problems that workers in their 20's, 30's and 40's face.

Starting in 1997, the Quebec Family Policy subsidized day care for 4-year-olds at government-approved centers around the province. By 2000, the program had expanded to cover any child not old enough for kindergarten, all the way down to infants. This is universal day care, an audacious idea that recognizes the revolution in women's work over the last 30 years.

Judging by the response of parents, the program has been a hit. Centers from downtown Montreal to Hudson Bay were flooded with applications, and the number of children in day care rose almost 50 percent. Mothers who suddenly had an affordable way to return to work did so in droves and gave the economy a lift. Canada's Liberal Party holds up Quebec's program as a model for the rest of the country.

Almost a decade after the family policy started, however, there was still a big mystery about it. Nobody had done the work to find out how it had affected children. The province was spending $1.4 billion a year on a grand social experiment, yet no one had bothered to look at the results.

So three economists took up the challenge a few years ago, realizing that the program offered an excellent way to examine a much-debated topic. The three — Michael Baker and Kevin Milligan, who are Canadian, and Jonathan Gruber, an American — collected data, looked at various measures of well-being since the program started and compared Quebec with the rest of Canada over the same period.

When they finished last year, the answer seemed clear. "Across almost everything we looked at," said Mr. Gruber, an M.I.T., professor, "the policy led to much worse outcomes for kids."

Young children in Quebec are more anxious and aggressive than they were a decade ago, even though children elsewhere in Canada did not show big changes. Quebec children also learn to use a toilet, climb stairs and count to three at later ages, on average, than they once did. The effects weren't so great for parents, either. More of them reported being depressed, and they were less satisfied with their marriages — which also didn't happen in other provinces.

Before you dismiss the researchers as just three more men starting a new assault in the mommy wars, listen to Jane Waldfogel, a leading child-policy researcher and the author of the book, "What Children Need" (Harvard University Press). "This is a very high-quality paper by high-quality guys," she said. "They're very careful. This is a paper that's going to stand."

At its root, the Quebec policy is an admirable effort to deal with an enormous economic shift that has taken place across the Western world and that American companies and politicians have pretty much ignored. Today, almost two-thirds of children younger than 6 in the United States don't have a parent at home with them during the day, up from a third just 35 years ago.

Yet laws and workplace policies have changed only marginally. (The right of workers at large companies to take unpaid family leave, as a much-celebrated 1993 law guarantees, is nice but hardly revolutionary.) Instead, many women, and the occasional man, have been left with the burden of doing two full-time jobs at once.

Their efforts are often heroic, but many end up feeling guilty that they are neglecting their careers, their families or both.

Meanwhile, the polite thing to say about work and family is that children are resilient little creatures who will end up doing just as well in one situation as another. And obviously a lot of children are thriving in full-time day care, as their parents can attest.

But there is now overwhelming evidence that — at least in the first year of life — most young children are not well served by spending long hours away from their parents. They will have more behavior problems on average and won't learn as quickly, according to various studies done over the last decade.

As Ms. Waldfogel, a Columbia professor who has been a working mother, said, "I didn't set out to find effects on the kids of parents who are working in the first year." In fact, she said she had "tried really hard to kill off the effects" by looking for other variables that could have been the real culprits. "But the effects are there," she said.

The picture is murkier for toddlers and preschoolers. The stimulation they get at day care tends to make them better prepared for school than children who are home with a parent full time. Yet those who spend too many hours in day care or attend poor-quality programs also seem to be at greater risk of obesity and behavior problems.

This probably explains Quebec, where teacher-child ratios were on the high side and an audit found the programs' educational content to be mediocre. The policy has also discouraged parents who want to put their children in day care only part time by giving preference to families looking for eight hours of care a day.

The big lesson from Quebec is that parents really do need more support, but they need the kind of support that allows them to choose what is best for their family. Mothers and fathers should get paid time off after a baby is born, and the money should come from a government insurance program, as it does in Canada, England and other countries. Companies need to be given incentives to create more part-time jobs that don't derail careers — and then find some up-and-coming men who want those jobs. High-quality preschool programs should be available for every low-income child and perhaps universally.

Yes, this would cost money, and not a little bit. Some taxes would have to be increased, and other spending would have to be cut. (My first candidate: raise the age for Social Security retirement eligibility. Two-year-olds need more help than 66-year-olds do. But that's a column for another day.)

Fortunately, research shows that these investments can produce a nice return. They create a better-educated, healthier work force to compete with other countries over the next century.

But I prefer a much more basic argument. Why don't we just decide that our children are worth it?

Psychiatric Drug Use In Toddlers Soars -- More Kids Ages 2 to 4 On Ritalin, Antidepressants

Young children are often prescribed psychotropic drugs for pain relief, anxiety, bed wetting and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder. The number of preschoolers in the United States being prescribed antidepressants and stimulants soared 50 percent between 1991 and 1995s, despite limited knowledge about the effects of such drugs on young children.

The number of 2- to 4-year-olds on psychiatric drugs including Ritalin and antidepressants like Prozac jumped 50 percent between 1991 and 1995, in a study of more than 200,000 preschool-age children.

UNKNOWN EFFECTS

Experts said they are troubled by the findings because the effects of such drugs in children so young are largely unknown. Some doctors worry that such powerful drugs could be dangerous for children's development. Unresolved questions involve the long-term safety of psychotropic medications, particularly in light of earlier ages of initiation and longer durations of treatment. While it is reassuring that anecdotal reports have rarely documented these problems, the possibility of adverse effects on the developing brain cannot be ruled out.

The reasons for prescribing such medications in young children include pain relief, anxiety associated with medical, pre-surgery and dental procedures, bed wetting and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in kids 3 years and older.

Although the study did not examine reasons for the increases, it suggested a few possibilities. With an increasing number of children attending day care, parents may feel pressured to have their children conform in their behavior. There is a much greater acceptance in the 1990s of psychoactive drugs. Itís become a quick fix.

STUDY DETAILS

The authors reviewed Medicaid prescription records from 1991, 1993 and 1995 for preschoolers from a Midwestern state and a mid-Atlantic state; and for those in an HMO in the Northwest. Use of stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics and clonidine - a drug used in adults to treat high blood pressure and increasingly for insomnia in hyperactive children - were examined. Substantial increases were seen in every category except antipsychotics, though in some cases the actual number of prescriptions was quite small.

The number of children getting any of the drugs totaled about 100,000 in 1991, and jumped 50 percent to 150,000 in 1995. That year, 60 percent of the youngsters on drugs were age 4, 30 percent were 3 and 10 percent were 2-year-olds.

The use of clonidine skyrocketed in all three groups. Although the numbers were small, the researchers said the clonidine increases were particularly remarkable because its use for attention disorders is new and largely uncharted. They noted that slowed heart beat and fainting have been reported in children who use clonidine with other medications for attention disorders.
Since the effects of these medications on such young children are largely unknown, both epidemiological and clinical studies are needed. The researchers state that these findings are remarkable in light of the limited knowledge base that underlies psychotropic medication use in very young children.

Overall, the use of stimulants increased about 3-fold. The majority of stimulant prescriptions were for Ritalin, but there was a modest but consistent decrease in the proportion of methylphenidate use relative to other stimulants across the three time periods. There was a "dramatic" increase in prescriptions for clonidine during the study period. This finding is "notable because its increased prescribing is occurring without the benefit of rigorous data to support it as a safe and effective treatment for attentional disorders.

The Harvard Medical School physician who wrote the editorial to the study states that it appears that behaviorally disturbed children are now increasingly subjected to quick and inexpensive pharmacologic fixes as opposed to informed multimodal therapy associated with optimal outcomes. These disturbing prescription practices suggest a growing crisis in mental health services to children and demand more thorough investigation.

JAMA February 23, 2000;283:1025-1030,1059-1060 (Journal of the American Medical Association)

This has been the main premise of thinkers from British historian J. D. Unwin to Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin who have studied civilizations that have collapsed. In his book Our Dance Has Turned to Death, Carl Wilson identifies the common pattern of family decline in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Notice how these seven stages parallel what is happening in our nation today. In the first stage, men ceased to lead their families in worship. Spiritual and moral development became secondary. Their view of God became naturalistic, mathematical, and mechanical.

In the second stage, men selfishly neglected care of their wives and children to pursue material wealth, political and military power, and cultural development. Material values began to dominate thought, and the man began to exalt his own role as an individual. The third stage involved a change in men's sexual values. Men who were preoccupied with business or war either neglected their wives sexually or became involved with lower-class women or with homosexuality. Ultimately, a double standard of morality developed. The fourth stage affected women. The role of women at home and with children lost value and status. Women were neglected and their roles devalued. Soon they revolted to gain access to material wealth and also freedom for sex outside marriage. Women also began to minimize having sex relations to conceive children, and the emphasis became sex for pleasure. Marriage laws were changed to make divorce easy.

In the fifth stage, husbands and wives competed against each other for money, home leadership, and the affection of their children. This resulted in hostility and frustration and possible homosexuality in the children. Many marriages ended in separation and divorce.

Many children were unwanted, aborted, abandoned, molested, and undisciplined. The more undisciplined children became, the more social pressure there was not to have children. The breakdown of the home produced anarchy.

In the sixth stage, selfish individualism grew and carried over into society, fragmenting it into smaller and smaller group loyalties. The nation was thus weakened by internal conflict. The decrease in the birthrate produced an older population that had less ability to defend itself and less will to do so, making the nation more vulnerable to its enemies.

Finally, unbelief in God became more complete, parental authority diminished, and ethical and moral principles disappeared, affecting the economy and government. Thus, by internal weakness and fragmentation the societies came apart. There was no way to save them except by a dictator who arose from within or by barbarians who invaded from without.

Although this is an ancient pattern of decline found in Greece and Rome, it is relevant today. Families are the foundation of a nation. When the family crumbles, the nation falls because nations are built upon family units. They are the true driving social force. A nation will not be strong unless the family is strong. That was true in the ancient world and it is true today.

Social commentator Michael Novak, writing on the importance of the family, said:

One unforgettable law has been learned through all the disasters and injustices of the last thousand years: If things go well with the family, life is worth living; when the family falters, life falls apart.