Em-URGE-ing Voices

Posts Tagged: families

What About the Families?

One of my professors used to always say “If they start asking ‘What about the children,’ you know they don’t care about the children.” We often see folks in power talk about how they care about families and children. But why not put their money where their mouth is? A recently published study called “Baby’s First Years” says that providing low-income gestational parents with no strings attached money for a year affected the brain activity of their children in ways that could lead to better development of their brains. The study gave random amounts of money to the gestational parents every month after giving birth. Researchers conducting the study found that the children of parents who had received larger amounts of money had better brain development than children whose parents… Read more »

On Family Politics After Marriage Equality

This week a lesbian couple in Utah had a child taken away from them in the foster care system because and placed with a heterosexual couple for the child’s well-being. There isn’t any evidence the couple was abusive or negligent to the child at this point. The couple passed the screening to be foster parents. The couple has been raising this child for three months and in a week she was taken away from them. This is not the first time a couple had to go through issues like this, there is a common stigma that gay and lesbian couples can’t raise children or that it is unhealthy for the child. Last summer the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal and it was a historic moment, but the next… Read more »