Census Blurs Definition of Traditional Family

INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES, April 23 — News reports of recent Census data claimed that “Ozzie and Harriet are back,” but the numbers don't add up, the Institute for American Values announced.

The Census report stated that 56% of American children lived in a “traditional nuclear family,” up from 51% in 1991. Sounds like good news. But what rose was not the number of children living with two married parents.

The increase was in the number of children living only with two married parents — no grandmothers, no aunts, no cousins, no siblings over 18. That's the “traditional nuclear family” as defined by the report.

The institute assailed the Census Bureau for confusing two issues: more two-parent homes (beneficial for kids) and fewer extended-family homes ("arguably harmful,” the institute noted).

The institute did its own analysis of the data, and concluded that in 1996 about 62% of children lived with their own two married parents (including adoption but not step-parenting). About two percent lived with their own two unmarried parents. And the proportion of children living with two parents (including stepparents) fell from 73% in 1990 to 71% in 1996.

First Illuminated Bible in 500 Years

DALLAS MORNING NEWS, April 14 — There hasn't been a new fully illuminated, handmade Bible in 500 years, the Dallas daily reported. And now there will be two.

A group of scribes at St. John's Abbey and University in Minnesota will finish their calligraphic New Revised Standard Bible in approximately six more years. Each page takes nine hours.

Meanwhile, Dallas resident James Gerald Pepper has spent 13 years carefully preparing his own illuminated King James Version (Protestant) Bible. He estimates he'll need about three more years.

Illuminated Bibles, common in the years before the printing press, are handwritten and decorated with detailed curlicues and scenes from the Bible or from everyday life. Both American illuminated Bibles will feature illustrations like daffodils, robins and even space shuttles.

A Mother's Care Is Essential, Says Study

WALL STREET JOURNAL, April 23 — A long-term child care study found that children placed in day care are three times as likely to show behavioral problems as those raised primarily by their mothers, the New York daily reported. A Journal editorialist asked whether women should reconsider their decisions to work full-time. Many writers have pointed out that day care costs (including increased medical costs, since children in day care tend to get sick more often) partially offset the extra family income a mother gains when she works full-time.

Moreover, the recent study from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development found that children in day care are more aggressive, disobedient, cruel and impatient.