Peggy Drexler, Ph.D does her bit for the destruction of the nuclear family

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 August 2007 00:10.

Thanks to Micheal R for the link to this super-zivian tale of a Jewish psychologist. The Jewish News Weekly hits all the right buttons, so I will just post it and refrain from further comment.

Psychologist: BOYS FROM SINGLE MOTHER, LESBIAN FAMILIES TURN OUT FINE

According to research psychologist Peggy Drexler, boys will be boys, whether dad’s around or not.

In her book “Raising Boys Without Men,” Drexler details the results of her years-long study of single mothers and lesbian couples. Her most striking conclusion: It’s possible, even likely, that boys from those families will grow up emotionally stronger and more well-rounded than boys from traditional mom-and-dad households.

Drexler will be making several appearances at local bookstores and at a reception sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.

“What surprised me,” says the former San Francisco resident, “was that these mothers were establishing a creative new way of parenting. Good parenting was not anchored to gender.”

She also discovered that the boys in her study formed multiple healthy attachments with male role models other than their fathers, were deeply involved with sports, were diligent about completing household chores and related to women with respect and openness.

“That was the other thing that surprised me,” she says. “The boys were very savvy, with a lot of empathy and sensitivity to themselves and others.”

Drexler studied two populations, single mothers (by choice or circumstance) and lesbian co-moms. Her subjects for the latter group all lived in the Bay Area, and a large number of them were affiliated Jews.

Jewish herself (she formerly belonged to S.F.’s Congregation Sherith Israel), Drexler observed that Jewish families in her study “very much felt that the Jewish spiritual values would provide a strong sense of respect for community.”

The fact that so many of her subjects lived in the tolerant Bay Area may have played a role as well.

“A lot of the women chose to be here because of the presumptively accepting communities,” she says. “But even for these families, once the kids get out in the world, there’s a lot of anxiety about whether they are accepted.”

As a scholar with a focus on gender, Drexler says her main interest in the study was “this notion that a mom will undercut her son’s masculinity if there’s no father in the mother’s bedroom.” That, she learned, was not true.

“My own feeling is that so-called male and female qualities are human qualities and we all need them,” says Drexler. “I do think boys need male role models as mentors, but most children do OK if they have the love and support of at least one parent while growing up.”

That was certainly true for Drexler herself, who grew up in Elkins Park, a heavily Jewish suburb of Philadelphia. Her father died when she was young, a wound compounded by the fact that, as she recalls, “we seemed to be the only family in the neighborhood without a father.”

Her family belonged to a local synagogue, but she remembers feeling unconnected to Judaism until she moved to the Bay Area with her husband. Once they affiliated here, she says she felt “a sense of community and shared values.” The couple, now married over 30 years, have a son, 27, and an adopted daughter who will become a bat mitzvah soon.

“I feel quite identified as a Jew,” she says. “When I moved to San Francisco, I really began to change in terms of identification of religion. The culture of the Bay Area motivated my growth as an individual.”

Drexler has served as a clinician and lecturer at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical School, and locally was a member of the advisory board at the San Francisco Day School, as well as a member of the advisory committee on psychology education at S.F.’s McAuley Institute at St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center. She now lives in New York City.

As for her new book, Drexler hopes parents and prospective parents will read it, especially those who might fit into what are called “alternative” family structures, such as single-parent or gay/lesbian households. Of course, these days, it’s hard to tell what’s alternative and what’s mainstream.

“Fewer than 25 percent of families are of the mom-and-dad variety,” she notes. “Forty percent of children are born out of wedlock. The census says there are 100,000 families with two gay moms, and 10 million single moms. That’s what the familial landscape is made up of.”

While she hopes someday to tackle a mirror-image book about single fathers raising daughters, she’s already convinced that society needs to reexamine its value judgments about the family.

“We have to reshape our family trees,” she says. “The families I studied are legitimate, viable and raising fine boys. It’s not the number or gender of parents in the house. It’s how often you eat dinner with your kids that matters more.”

Tags: That Question Again

Comments:

Posted by Orion Blue on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:28 | #

They really pull no punches, do they? I wonder whether or not this prescription for the dissolution of the nuclear family will cut across ALL ethnic and racial lines, or is it just for the consumption of genuinely White Westerners?

Interesting, is it not, that the type of deficits that afflict other ethnic groupings are being touted as beneficial for Us?

It seems that the entirety of academe is hell-bent on undermining the very society that makes it possible for them to exist.

Maybe we will have the last laugh though, when these unwitting useful idiots are turned upon by their very own pets.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 01:42 | #

This woman is a Jewish caricature and the Jews are making absolute clowns of themselves with their non-stop production of this variety of pure crap. But that’s them. They’re not going to change — certainly not any time soon. All others can do is recognize them for the hopeless buffoons they are, who have quite a few screws loose, be patient and polite in front of them, saving your smirks for when their backs are turned (hey aren’t they asking for it with this stuff??????), and whatever you do, DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD THESE WEIRDO JEWISH SOCIAL SCIENTISTS SAY! Humor them, then avoid them like the plague.

Posted by Lurker on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 01:43 | #

“The [US I take it] census says there are 100,000 families with two gay moms”

Is it really as many as that?

Thats 200,000 co-habiting lesbians (with children). Can that number really be correct?

I suppose in g;e terms its not that high but it sounds like a big number.

Posted by Michael on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 03:48 | #

here’s a critique of the book

http://www.glennsacks.com/raising_boys_without.htm

According to Drexler, lesbian moms are “more sophisticated about how they teach their sons right from wrong” than heterosexual couples, and there are “real advantages for a boy being raised in this new type of family.” Heterosexual mothers don’t measure up in “moral attitude,” and are less likely than lesbian moms to “create opportunities for their sons to examine moral and values issues.” This in turn slows the “moral development in their sons.”

Furthermore, Drexler asserts that boys raised by lesbians “grow up emotionally stronger,” “have a wider range of interests and friendships,” and “appear more at ease in situations of conflict” than boys from “traditional” (i.e., father-present) households. Fatherless boys “exhibit a high degree of emotional savvy…an intuitive grasp of people and situations.” Best of all, sons of lesbian couples are much more willing to discard traditional masculinity than boys trapped in heterosexual households.

For example, Fiona’s son paints his nails, while both of Maria’s sons dance ballet. Ursula’s son chose sewing and cooking for his electives in 7th grade. Kathy’s son has rejected playing baseball as being “too competitive”—no surprise, because in their local, father-led baseball league, “the better players get more playing time.”

let’s ask ourselves the familiar question:
is turning boys into sissies good for the jews ?

Drexler believes that it is.

Posted by Steve Edwards on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 12:31 | #

Dr Drexler ought to ask herself how a country of utterly de-masculated, de-cultured, sissies, will be able to continue to bail out Israel, year in, year out. That covers the obvious strategic implications of her bizarre obsession. With regards to matters closer to home, she might also be interested in explaining how destroying the most philo-semitic nation on Earth will turn out “good for the Jews”.

Posted by Englander on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:42 | #

Although I’m loathe to place what might seem like praise onto lesbian couples, I do imagine that those couples who have settled down and started families are higher educated types. Drexler then has the whole gamut of dysfunctional families - including negro families - to compare the lesbians to.

Posted by Rnl on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:57 | #

Englander wrote:

Although I’m loathe to place what might seem like praise onto lesbian couples, I do imagine that those couples who have settled down and started families are higher educated types.

No doubt she has taken the best cases for her study, but these best cases have had, according to her own evidence, obviously bad results. The bad results that a critic of homosexual parenting would predict have in fact occurred, according to Drexler herself. She of course sees these bad effects as good; most of us will see her own informal study as proof that homosexual parenting is akin to legalized child abuse. A dispassionate account of lesbian parenting’s effects would surely turn up even more bad results, but Drexler has already done a reasonably good job.

Everyone should read the entire URL that Michael posted, not just the excerpt:

http://www.glennsacks.com/raising_boys_without_ev.htm

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:16 | #

The following is “sample of one” stuff, and therefore of no direct application, save that a useful principle lies at the close.

For 25 years of my life, until a few years ago, I lifted weights. Not using resistance machines with pot plants for company, but the real, ugly bars and bells in a real, ugly gym. For perhaps the last fifteen years of that time I was on friendly, conversational terms with a lesbian instructor. For the most part the conversation was about our respective daughters conceived at the same time ... hers by AI, ours by GIFT.

I found that being the father of a girl, and watching her feminine nature expand and express, is an enlightening experience, of course. I don’t believe there is anything I could have done ... taken her fishing ... taught her to box ... that would have corrupted or derailed the process.

But my lesbian friend’s daughter did not follow that track in life at all. During school holidays the child would appear in the gym for a few hours while her mother worked. I never saw her dressed in anything but boyish clothes of the sloppy joe type, never saw her hair done, nor the slightest sign that this child was not, in fact, exactly like her mother. The last time I saw her she actually brought a football into the gym and was practising close control around the equipment!

Lesbianism is rare ... much rarer than male homosexuality. I doubt if the child was actually lesbian. But if not, then I can only draw the conclusion that the family culture was the tightest possible mental straitjacket for the child, and she never had a chance of developing aright.

But what if she had been a he?

Superficially at least, a boy might have made more sense. He would have had male sporting interests, obviously, and a few masculine mannerisms acquired from Mum. I guess this is the level on which Drexler can tick enough boxes to justify her zivian intentions.

But that’s nowhere near enough. How would the boy ever be capable of comprehending the vastly different life a man has ... the handling of power, purpose and creativity, the duty of protection through strength, the will to compete and win. These things are essential to the male life, quite literally of the essence. And if they are not modelled though contact in childhood with a loving father, they will not fall into place as easily and naturally. The further away from such a relationship a boy is, the harder it will be for him to live out Nature’s destiny.

Every sensible human being undamaged by chromosomal disorder knows that. So does Peggy Wexler. She, though, is not answering to the same imperative.

Never trust the recommendations of a Jewish “expert” in matters of moral judgement.

Posted by danielj on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:29 | #

Although written by a liberal it has very interesting chapters on the science of gender: Why Gender Matters… by Leonard Sax

Mothers are incapable of being fathers.

Duh…

Posted by ROBERT CROSS on Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:58 | #

UN covenant on human rights,article23:the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and state.
2.The right of men and women of marriagable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognised.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:00 | #

“2.The right of men and women of marriagable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognised.” (—Robert Cross)

Government race-replacers can claim to respect the “right” while in reality taking away the “means” for all but non-whites, and accomplish their goals that way, paying lip-service to the “right” as they privately spit on it.

They want whites to be a minority, driven to that status by a combination of outright replacement with non-whites of every description and racial mixing of as large a portion of the unreplaced as possible. How do we know this is their plan and not some accident? Because it’s obvious that 1) exactly that is what’s happening, 2) that they’re pushing it overtly in that direction, 3) that they won’t tolerate complaint, 4) that they must see all this as clearly as we do, since it’s blindingly obvious to everyone down to a six-year-old child, and 5) it’s all easily halted and humanely reversed but they get hysterical at the slightest suggestion of so doing. Therefore, they know they’re doing it, they know what it is they’re doing, and they have every intention of seeing it to completion.

Whites have to now rise up non-violently and throw these criminals off. They have to do it NOW, as in FIVE MINUTES AGO. It can’t wait.

Posted by torgrim on Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:20 | #

Drexler is a fool.

Boys without fathers is not ok. Fillling the loss of a father with “sports, or a Jewish community”, is laughable.
First assault on our culture was the replacement of the Clan structure with the omnipresent Church in the early Middle Ages. Centuries later, especially after the cultural holocaust of WWII the nuclear family was jettisoned. Now the last bastion, or bastlastion is the role of the father and son.

Drexler belongs in the toxic catagory right along with Freidan and Steinham, strange, odd personalities, that remind one of Poe’s characters….only these modern personalities are not fiction.

Posted by Amber on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:17 | #

Lurker wrote:

“The [US I take it] census says there are 100,000 families with two gay moms”

Is it really as many as that?

Well considering that there are only around 30,000 children being raised by gay parents in this country I don’t see how it could be… But I do (begrudgingly) have to admit that she brings up a good point… Children raised by two lesbians are probably better raised than those of single mothers… But then wouldn’t further logic suggest that children raised by a mother AND a father would fair even better? She even says so herself, “most children do OK if they have the love and support of at least one parent,” the key word of course being “ok.”