New Mexico:

On the surface, Steve Barreras looked like another deadbeat dad.

He'd been hauled into court and had his wages garnisheed. He and his new wife had lost their 2003 tax refund to pay child support. He had been peppered with threats and demands for money for a child he supposedly fathered five year ago.

But this legal case had one big problem. Last week, a judge ruled the child does not exist— even though Barreras had already paid $20,000 in support.

In what was apparently an elaborate ruse, the alleged mother orchestrated fake DNA evidence and forged a Social Security number and birth and baptismal certificates, court records show.

In the strangest twist of all, Viola Trevino on Monday brought a stranger's child to court, alleging it was her daughter. Under consideration in Judge Linda Vanzi's courtroom was a motion filed in September to reopen the couple's 1999 divorce on Barreras's request that the child be produced.

Israel:

An Israeli man who refused to provide child support to his ex-wife for nearly eight years finally had to start paying up when he remarried and police raided the reception to seize wedding gifts.

The 40-year-old man had managed to avoid payments since 1997 by frequently changing address to escape the clutches of the law, Israel's Maariv daily reported on Friday.

With 198,000 shekels owed to her, his ex-wife finally tracked him down when a relative passed on a copy of a wedding invitation for his second marriage this week.

Police and bailiffs allowed the newlyweds to celebrate before confronting the groom and confiscating the wedding hall's safe in which guests had deposited cash and cheques, a tradition for Israeli nuptials.

Police decided not to arrest the stunned groom, but that was of little consolation to his distraught bride, who fainted as her wedding turned into a nightmare.

[links via The Comedian]

Roscoe Duke, my boss, is a good LDS man trying to start a family along with his wife. They've been trying since they married a few years ago but it didn't take until earlier this year. During the ultrasound that was supposed to determine the baby's gender some undisclosed complications were discovered and he had to take a few days off to follow up in Salt Lake City (the nearest metropolis with appropriate medical care).

He returned in good spirits - but then, he's that kind of guy. I was somewhat heartened when late last week he referred to the pregnancy in the present tense. He left today and said that what he finds out today will determine whether or not he'll be back this week.

Roscoe isn't the kind of guy to burden his coworkers or underlings with his problems. He didn't mention it having anything to do with the pregnancy, but reading between the lines I'm relatively certain that it's related to it.

Procreation is extremely important to people of LDS faith. While I'm not familiar with the particulars, I think it has to do with releasing souls from the Mormon equivalent of Purgatory. But coming from a non-LDS background, I'm absolutely certain that Roscoe would be an outstanding father. If there's one thing I've learned at Thrifthaven, this country needs more goods with outstanding parents.

I can only hope, wish, and pray that he gets the chance.

The The Sun reports that it does:

HAVING kids makes parents THICK, researchers said yesterday.

In a five-year study, they checked the IQs of couples who were planning to start families, then repeated the tests six months after their first child was born. .

"Pretty Provocative," I thought. I've heard arguments before that there is an inverse corrolation between intelligence and childrearing, but this was definitely the first I'd heard of a cause-and-effect.

Then I read the quotes from the director of the study:

Study head Dr Hosung Lee, of America’s Indiana University, said: “It explains why parents think their kid is the smartest in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time a 100-yard sprint.

“People who before were intelligent and open-minded turn into raving lunatics who want to blame a teacher or sports coach every time their mediocre child fails.”

Some became almost

"This has got to be a joke," I thought. Whatever the results of the study, no director would ever frame it in quite that manner.

Sure enough.

Some of the good people over at Fark wishes it weren't.

Over a month back, Kuff compared and contrasted the 2004 Texas Republican Platform with a new bill designed to help parents censor the movies they show their kids if they so desire. The basic accusation was that Republicans are hypocritical when it comes to raising kids. Though Kuff quoted the two sources without comment, the thrust of the comments was that parents need to watch over their kids

Except that's exactly what this law is designed to help them do.

The law would allow DVD manufacturers to put in a device that would automatically censor naughty words, sex scenes, violence, and so forth. This way parents that want to censor what their kids watch can do so while the rest of us are not saddled with watered-down material or more diffiiculty buying more risque or bloody features. The law doesn't even allow for the modification of movies by third parties, only how the product is used in their own home.

Win/win, right?

Apparently not because some people believe that they know better how you should raise your kids than you do. While I don't ascribe to the theory that there is no "right" and "wrong" way to raise a kid, I'm apparently more - for lack of a better word - liberal when it comes to allowing parents to raise their kids in a way that they seem fit than are some actual liberals.

Kuff follows up arguing that such devices make parents "lazier rather than more responsible." since it " does nothing to address the question of how one's kids will behave when you're not there to watch them."

Perhaps so. For my part, it is very unlikely that I would ever use such a device since I plan to (emphasis on "plan to") limit overall access to television. Oh, wait, but that would put me in the same category since I can't follow my kid everywhere. With that in mind, I should just give up, let them watch soft-core porn on HBO late into the night. It's the responsible thing to do since they're just going to see it elsewhere, right?

I actually don't plan to (emphasis on "plan to") run a PG household. Ideally, I'll be able to discuss matters of sex and violence and help guide the kids down a deeper moral understanding of the underlying issues with both of those.

But what I don't plan to do (emphasis on "plan to") is subject my children to (or allow my children to be subjected to) the degrading, vapid 24/7 skinfest that is pop culture. I'm relatively certain that they would get access to it elsewhere, but with any luck I will prevent them from being immersed with this junk.

I believe that one's environment does have a great effect on who they become. While I don't necessarily think it's in the kid's best interest to control the environment, I do believe in the "garbage in, garbage" out principle. Kuff may disagree, and such is his right, but I no more trust him to tell me the right way to raise a kid than I trust those that would tell me that the devil of temptation will irrevocably enter my kid if they see one stray boobie on TV.

And as for the laziness involved, some parents don't have the time sufficiently to raise their kids. This is particularly two in double-income households where both parents consider their careers non-negotiable as well as those that have to do it for financial reasons (hence all my "plan to"s above). I may or may not agree with this particular way of going about it (auto-edited DVD players, I mean), but I am disinclined to play judge and jury with their right to do so when this is a symptom of the larger problem of the destruction of the formal household... but if I say that I'm being judgmental, aren't I?

The SSA site has a list of the most popular baby names. It has some really cool indexing features where you can look at the most popular names of any given year or you can see where your name falls on the list. It's somewhat heartening to know that the most popular names aren't Dakota and Laetwynn, but rather time-tested names like Jacob and Joshua (though honestly, hasn't the name "Josh" run its course for a while?). I'm consciously skipping over #2. I was actually a bit surprised to discover that my first name is actually less common than my middle one, which is somewhat contrary to the impression that I've gotten over the years. My first name is apparently becoming less and less popular with each passing year while my middle name is holding pretty steady.

Not surprisingly, parents are a bit more creative with the girls names. Emily is a perfectly fine name, but can we stop naming girls "Son of Maud" just cause there was that mermaid in that movie that went by that name? I wonder if the fascination with that movie has anything to do with Hannah being #4. Probably not, but it's a weird coincidence. Little Chloe Zito should have more than a couple classmates named Chloe and Olivia Kuffner will likely not be the only Olivia, but as Pappa Kuffner says (and I'm sure Mama and Papa Zito would), they like the way it wounds (as do I, admittedly). And both names have historical backing and neither named after mermaids in 80's flicks. In addition to girls named Son of Maud, there are 6,000 girls named "Son of Coinneach." It's pretty messed up when more girls are named Jasmine and Destiny than Nicole and Katherine.

On the upshot, I shouldn't run out of pseudonyms for female characters any time soon.

As most anyone who reads enough to bother reading this blog knows, Bill Cosby has made some waves with some stern criticism of black youth culture. Many on the conservative side of the aisle are smugly praising Cosby for saying what "black people need to understand." The fact of the matter is that Cosby isn't saying anything particularly new and the points that he's raised have been brought up in the black community before. Even BET, in between rap music videos that praise violence and objectify women, regularly discusses the topic with a great deal of sobriety. There is some reluctance to bring the discussion to the public sphere because they (rightly) believe that many will argue that this proves that black poverty is a black problem. Cosby, because of his celebrity status, is just letting the rest of us in on the conversation.

Tom Hanna has a fantastic post about how it actually isn't black culture, per se, but youth culture that affects youths of all color:

Now I understand that Cosby is especially incensed that after the real struggles of blacks of his generation in the Civil Rights movement have taken this nation so far that black kids aren’t working harder. So many barriers to black achievement are gone and his generation worked so hard to achieve that for the upcoming generation that their laziness, with black male dropout rates approaching 50%, is a slap in the face. On the other hand, all that dropout rate really says is that a higher percentage of white kids are warming seats long enough to get a basically meaningless piece of paper and still not having any better grasp of their language. White men of Cosby’s age or a little older who won World War II and held the line against Communism in Korea and Berlin cetainly have every reason to feel the same way he does. I’m not even “old” since, apparently, 40 is the new 30 and I can’t imagine ever wanting my life to be in the hands of most of the white teens I meet.

Being less than a decade away from being a white teenager, I might should take offense at Tom's remarks, but I really can't. I'm still in contact with very few of the people that I went to school with in Seabrook. Most of the ones I am in contact with I'm generally proud of in terms of who they are and what they've accomplished. But sample-selection plays a great role in that and I think of a lot of the others and while I hope that they've grown up, it's somewhat hard to when you spent your most formative years MIA developmentally.

This isn't a "black problem," though a case could be made that blacks are disproportionately harmed by it due to their economic status coming in to this world. But before whites start smugly nodding their head to Cosby's words, it would do us all a great deal to look more objectively at their factors and how they've influenced us and how they might influence our children.

Eel has a pet peeve: Yuppy names.

It struck me as an odd pet peeve at first. Why would anyone pick that, of all things, to have a pet peeve about? But since she's been delivering babies and assisting the deliverance of babies, it makes more sense than, for instance, my catastrophic loss vulnerability to finger-nail polish. She gets a lot of weird names day in and day out. Since getting up here I am in complete agreement with her. You would not believe the names that people up here have. One of my trainer's names at OmniStar was actually named Laetwynn (not a psuedonym!) and when they were talking about their families up there, I'd say the name Kaden was far more prevalent than the name Chris. Part of the rationale for this is for originality. But an article from Health & Medical News says that they might should hold their horses in that regard:

Some parents today who invent some original name for their baby, like 'Grast', could - through simple random chance - unwittingly be determining the names of thousands of children 10 years from now," said Bentley, of the college's Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour, which uses biological ideas to understand cultural change.

Using British and U.S. government data, Bentley and Hahn tracked the popularity of the top 1,000 first names for baby girls and boys in the U.S. for every decade in the 20th century.

They found that a few names were thousands of times more popular than the majority with many uncommon names. They said the distribution followed an "elegant mathematical function," called a power law, that is maintained over 100 years, even though the population is growing.

Hahn and Bentley developed a model which closely predicts the distribution of name popularity over the last century. The model is based on the population genetics concept of 'random genetic drift', in which the frequency of genes in a population fluctuates according to chance, and where there is only a small population of breeding parents.

The most yuppy name that I ever considered was Bailey, if Anna and I had a boy. It would actually be Rayford Baylor Whitlock with Bailey shorthand (yes, I'm aware that Bailey and Baylor are both 6 letters, but Charles and Charlie are both seven with the shorthand name having more syllables than the formal one). That would have been allowed because Baylor is a family name (I'm somehow actually related to the University's founder on my mother's side of the family). The chosen girl's name was Jodine Clair Whitlock, Jodie for short, named after grandrelatives. Eel will have to tell me whether that's yuppy of not :).

One name that hadn't been born yet and that I doubt I will consider in the future is ESPN. But apparently I'm behind the curve on that:

His parents said ESPN loves baseball, basketball and football, and Rebecca said she's hoping to have his room done in sports theme before the TV ESPN comes.

And, of course, ESPN enjoys watching SportsCenter every night with his father.

However, Michael and Rebecca said they don't think the name will put pressure on him to become a superstar athlete; they're just catering to his interests at the moment.

All in all, Rebecca said, she likes unique names. She wanted to name her two younger daughters "Disney" but was shot down both times by Michael. They compromised on Sterling, now 21 months, and Kendall, now 11 months.

If the McCalls have another son, would he be "The Deuce?"

Well, if ESPN had a twin, his name would be "EXPN." However, the McCalls don't watch solely ESPN for their sports. They planned "Fox Sports McCall" for a second son.

Espen (the way it's supposed to be pronounced) would be a yuppy name. I think it would be a disservice to yuppy names to call ESPN a yuppy name.

Subject: DEFENDERS OF THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE

[...]

*Bob Dole - divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through the
long recovery from his war wounds.
*Newt Gingrich - divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.
*Dick Armey - House Majority Leader - divorced
*Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas -divorced
*Gov. John Engler of Michigan -divorced
*Gov. Pete Wilson of California -divorced
*George Will -divorced
*Sen. Lauch Faircloth - divorced
*Rush Limbaugh - Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and four
divorces between them.
*Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - Barr, not yet 50 years old, has been married
three times.

I'm not making this point to pick on Republicans. I'm not even goin to use the H-word that this item was clearly meant to bring to mind. Rather, I'm just going to point out that it's hard for conservatives to credibly lament the decline of family values when many of said politicians and commentators have done their part to further mainstream said decline.

Eel got the opportunity to talk to her mom yesterday, which is always a good thing. As a special treat, she got to talk to her youngest sister, Sally. Sally just graduated with a 4.0 GPA from Clemson University out east with a degrees in French and International Business. She's back in Louisiana while she assesses her job situation and was home when their mother made the call.

Among other things, one of the things that she shared with Eel was the likelihood that she wouldn't have any children. In and of itself that's not a big deal, but it brings something altogether interesting to light: of the four siblings that Eel and I have, none (0) plan to have children. That means that if Eel and I were to make it through and have kids as we plan to, they won't have any cousins.

I actually grew up without cousins, myself. On my father's sides, the first cousins I have are over a decade ahead of me. Their children are between ten and twenty years younger than I am. The only exception is my oldest cousin's step-son who is about half-way between my brother and myself. My mother's youngest sister has seven children, the oldest I think about five years younger than myself. However, due to intrafamily squabble between Mom and my aunt - and that they set roots in Virginia and we in Texas, I never got to know them very well. The oldest daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks (to a man named Whitlock, interestingly), but I won't be able to make it. I remember liking her the last time I saw her, but that was at least five years ago and maybe ten. The middle sister on Mom's side has two children, about two and four years younger than me, and they're probably the ones I'm closest to. Again, though, they live in Virginia so I don't see them very often.

Enough about my cousins and more about Eel's and my siblings. I always figured that my brother would have kids, but when he and my sister-in-law got married they announced that they weren't going to have any. That puts my parents in a spot because that means it's up to me to supply the grandchildren. Not a problem since I want children, but if things work out with Eel that's at least a few years down the road. On Eel's side, Camden said that she'd never even get married (though she did), much less have kids. Eel doesn't expect her to change her mind in that regard as she's not particularly temperamentally suited for parenthood (her husband is, though, which is kind of a shame). It caught me a bit by surprise that Sally didn't want children, because from what I've heard she would make a great mother. She may or may not change her mind in the future, but if she doesn't then that leaves the burden on Eel (who also wants kids but not for a few years). The only other possibility is my quasi-brother Scott (long story). No word on what he wants, though.

What's sad about this is that these are some pretty strong genes in the genepool that won't get passed along. Sally has a stellar academic record (her boyfriend is an enginner), Camden is graduating from Tulane law school this semester (her husband is a doctor), and my brother the master's degreed engineer (my sister-in-law is a licensed pharmacist). Any kids Eel and I would have would have a pretty darn smart mother, but their father would probably be weaker than all of the above mentioned kids that won't likely reproduce. This is under the assumption that Eel and I can reproduce. If one of us has reproductive problems and we have to adopt (which we gladly would), then neither of our immediate families would pass any genes on (Scott's not related by blood).

During my brother's extended bachelor party I met a Gerald. Gerald and his wife are both lawyers. Though I've never met his wife, Gerald is an extraordinarily thoughtful individual and it was apparent that he has a good heart. When the subject of kids came up, he said that he'd always wanted kids, but felt like he wouldn't have the time and energy to devote to them and he wasn't sure about whether or not it was a good idea to raise kids in a "world like this." He's a great guy, but kind of sullen.

With the possible exception of Camden (who really could probably be good at anything she put her mind to), all of the above future childless couples would probably make really good parents. Genes aside, they'd probably have a household in which their children were born to excel and become the doctors, lawyers, and engineers of tomorrow. It's somewhat depressing that they (as well as a number of really smart and capable couples I know) are chosing to do other things. Yet I understand how raising children right would get in the way or their professional goals. For my part, one of my dreams is to make independent movies. If I were to decide not to have kids, that goal would be immensely more attainable. But whether it's making a movie, career goals, or the desire to take a trip to Tuscany at a moment's notice, there is a powerful draw away from reproducing. And it's a shame.

Of all the problems regarding discipline and sexuality of youngsters, I'd have to say this is pretty low on the totem pole.

Or am I woefully naive, here? My experiences at these lock-ins are pretty bland. Of course, mine weren't at the school...