Adult Catholic Meditation.
This is an article considered important to you all.
I took it from Mercatornet.
It’s still true: the hand that rocks the cradle
rules the world
That is why
motherhood is under attack
Anyone who has thought about the fundamental role of the family in
society is aware by now that the basic social unit is in trouble. Many also
believe that the problem comes not only from neglect but from the deliberate
efforts of movements which see the family as an obstacle to social change and
newly-minted rights.
Among the latter
is Kimberly Ells, author of The Invincible Family: Why the
Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win. In it she
uses a wide-ranging analysis and experience as a policy adviser for Family
Watch International – a group with observer status at the United Nations – to
argue that motherhood is both the chief target of radical movements and the
reason why they will fail.
The following Q&A with Carolyn
Moynihan highlights her key ideas.
* * * * *
Your book is a
passionate defence of the family and, in particular, of motherhood. What
experiences made you take up this cause?
Two things drive my
passion for the family. First, I came to realize that mothers occupy the position
of greatest power in the world and that narrative needed to be told. Second, I
became acquainted with the children’s sexual rights movement which strikes at
the heart of the family, and I decided it would not exist in the world without
me fighting it.
The title speaks of
a “campaign to crush motherhood and fatherhood”. It is obvious that the family
– that is, the one founded on the lifelong marriage of a man and a woman – is
in trouble. But is there really an organised effort to crush it? Who is leading
the campaign and what methods are they using?
Yes! There is an
organized effort to legally and culturally crush the family. I didn’t fully
understand this until I went to the United Nations and saw it for myself. Some
of the major weapons being wielded against the family by United Nations
agencies and their partners are deceptive “gender equality” initiatives, the
global hijacking of education, comprehensive sexuality education programs, and
corrupted feminist ideology that pits women against their own children and
against the family itself.
If the family is
ultimately invincible, you suggest, it is because of the mother-child bond.
Your argument for this is quite original – could you summarise it for us?
When a baby is
born, it is always tethered to its mother by a cord—the umbilical cord. No
child is born without being attached to another person and that person is
always a woman. This tethering of mother to child establishes a relationship of
belonging and stewardship which is indelible and is most likely to foster the
condition we call love.
We take this situation
largely for granted, but the anatomy of women working in tandem with men is key
to the ordered functioning of free society. The preexisting and preeminent
biological connection of mother and child undergirds the political, economic,
and social structures of the world. If everything else in society is reduced to
rubble, society will be rebuilt by and through families.
Another key idea in
your book is that the mother’s “possessorship” of the child is the origin of
the right to private property, and the reason why society should be oriented to
the private sphere rather than collectivism. Doesn’t this analogy imply that
parents “own” their children?
Parents do not own
their children. Parents and children belong to each other in a most profound
and permanent sense. The belonging of a child to its mother at birth has been
recognized and honored in virtually every culture and in every age, which
strengthens people’s desire to claim and care for that which is most intimately
theirs: their children. This is the reason society is inescapably privately
oriented, and it is the reason why every effort to redesign society on
collectivist terms ultimately fails. If my child is “mine,” then collectivism
is already doomed and private possessorship is triumphant from the womb.
You identify
socialism as one of the forces undermining, if not outright warring against the
family and its rights. Apart from the remaining communist countries, where is
socialism exerting this power today?
Unfortunately,
there is a huge socialist presence in education that is threatening to raise up
the next generation to prize collectivism rather than individual rights and
responsibility. This movement originates at the global level and is steering
societies toward catastrophic collapse as I expose in the final section of the
book.
Feminism is
obsessed with the question of power. What is the movement missing in its quest
for women’s empowerment and equality? What is the real power of women?
Vladimir Lenin
said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will
never be uprooted.” If this is true, and I submit that it is, then the person
who gains the love and allegiance of children is in a prime position of
influence. Since the design of anatomy grants the children of the world
directly to women, this places women in a position to establish the
foundational beliefs of societies, nations, and the world one child at a time.
There is no greater power than this. Whatever else a woman does—and she can do
many things—her position as mother is perhaps the most dynamic and the most
enduring.
In Part III of your
book you sketch “the road to a non-biologically ordered society” – one littered
with new sexual rights and demands. What are the key victories of sexual
radicals?
Key victories that
erode and explode the family are extramarital sex, abortion, gender-neutral
marriage which undermines children’s rights to their biological parents, the
triumph of changeable gender over biological sex, and the children’s sexual
rights movement.
Some of your most
passionate language is directed at the international organisations – notably
the United Nations and the OECD – whose effect on the family you describe as a
“global onslaught”. This certainly seems the case where you describe sex education
programmes for children: What on earth are “children’s sexual rights”? What
does UNESCO have to do with them?
The global push for
children’s sexual rights is spearheaded by several entities including UNESCO
and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). The crux of the
movement—which I didn’t believe until I saw it myself—is that children have an
inherent right to sexual pleasure at all ages. For instance, UNESCO’s “International
Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education” published in January 2018 makes
these statements:
·
“[Young] people want and need sexuality and sexual health information as
early and comprehensively as possible.”
·
Children should have “agency in their own sexual practices and
relationships.”
·
Comprehensive Sexuality Education can “help children … form respectful
and healthy relationships with … sexual partners.”
As for IPPF,
its Exclaim! Young
People’s Guide to ‘Sexual Rights: An IPPF Declaration’, document says,
“Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important parts of being human for everyone
— no matter what age, no matter if you’re married or not and no matter if you
want to have children or not.” IPPF pushes this position because getting kids
to have sex early and often brings a steady line of customers seeking abortion,
contraception, and sexual disease testing right to their hideous doors.
Tell us about
“social and emotional learning” for schoolkids. What is the ideology behind it?
While “social and
emotional learning” (SEL) often sounds good and some programs may offer
benefits to some children, the global trend in SEL is subtly or overtly
anti-family and anti-freedom. It seeks to assess and shape not only children’s
emotional skills, but their attitudes about political, environmental, and
social issues.
Despite the odds
there is a solution, which you describe in the last part of your book. It takes
the form of a story about families in communist Hungary teaching their children
“in the cellar” each night to counteract the daily indoctrination at school.
Those who value the traditional family today don’t have to hide in the cellar –
yet – but what should mothers and fathers be doing to counteract indoctrination
of their children?
The story of these
passionate Hungarian parents is one of my favorites in all of history. Their
example is inspiring and relevant because they succeeded in preserving their
children’s character amid a climate of severe indoctrination. One concrete and
very do-able way we can follow their lead is by procuring books that tell the
stories and teach the truths we want our children to espouse, and helping our
children fall in love with those stories. Family libraries should include
fiction, non-fiction, classics, historical sources, and any other books that
fire our souls.
In terms of the
wider society you call on women to take the lead. What do you want them to do?
First and foremost,
mothers must deliberately and frequently teach their children what they believe
about sex, marriage, gender, and the family regardless of what is broadcast as
politically or socially correct. Second, mothers—in cooperation with fathers—must
position themselves as the unabashed experts on their children’s wellbeing and
refuse to buckle to pressures telling them that mothering is not “socially
productive work,” regardless of whether they work outside the home. Third,
women must influence policy makers at all levels to support the family as the
fundamental unit of society that deserves legal recognition and protection.
The mothers of the
world—over two billion strong—are the most influential world power. Now is the
time for mothers to rise up and joyfully speak, write, organize, and advocate
in favor of children, marriage, and the family.
