Parenting Styles & Depression, Legis. Update

What Does the Governor Really Think?

As you know, Governor Eric Holcomb signed Senate Bill 480 into law last Wednesday. This makes Indiana the 13th state with a law requiring children to wait until they are 18 before taking gender-masking drugs or having surgeries that remove or mutilate healthy body parts. (The ACLU filed a lawsuit to block it not long after, as they tend to do when they lose a legislative battle.)

There are two lanes of thought on this. You probably know the dominant view. The Governor is a moderate who was not comfortable with the bill and called it “clear as mud.” After all, last year he vetoed a bill protecting girls’ sports from unfair biological male competitors identifying as female. So, the governor reluctantly signed the bill knowing it had overwhelming political support.

However, within the Statehouse there are some legislators close to SB 480 who think that the Governor’s comment was overblown, and he simply wanted to study the issue with the likelihood of signing it all along.

In any event, part of the Governor’s signing statement was strong and commendable. He stated, “Permanent gender-changing surgeries with lifelong impacts and medically prescribed preparation for such a transition should occur as an adult, not as a minor.” No rational person can disagree with that. I commend Governor Holcomb for doing the right thing for Hoosier children.

Parenting Styles and Mental Health of Children

There is a fascinating article from the Institute for Family Studies about research that looks at parenting styles and political beliefs and if they have different mental health outcomes for children. (One’s worldview impacts how we live, behave, and even how we parent.) Here are just a few highlights:

“Researchers have known for decades that teenage girls are more likely than teenage boys to be depressed. But some recent studies have called attention to the intersection of politics and depression among adolescents: namely, the finding that left-of-center adolescents are increasingly more likely to be depressed than right-of-center adolescents. This finding is so pronounced that left-of-center boys are now more likely to be depressed than right-of-center girls.”

[The article further points out:] “Haidt argues that the real reason that left-of-center kids are more likely to be depressed compared with right-of-center kids is that left-of-center kids have been taught to catastrophize events, to assume the worst, while right-of-center kids are taught to be more optimistic.”

The article’s author, a physician and psychologist, believes that the best parenting style is a lovingly firm style. She states,

“As recently as 10 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to find left-of-center parents who were authoritative, even strict. That is less common today. In my experience, permissive parenting is now more common among left-of-center parents than among right-of-center parents. That’s important because researchers have found that permissive parenting leads to young adults with “less sense of meaning and purpose in life, less autonomy and mastery of the world around them.” Other researchers have found that permissive parenting leads to lower emotional intelligence and lower personal growth. Still, other researchers report that permissive parenting is associated with an increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse, and lower academic achievement, while authoritative parenting is associated with a lower risk of drug and alcohol abuse and higher academic achievement. The children of permissive parents are more likely to become anxious and depressed.”

You can read this interesting article here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/do-your-political-beliefs-affect-your-parenting-

The 16,000-Hour Battle

One of my takeaways from the 2023 Indiana General Assembly comes from sitting through hours upon hours of testimonies on some of the biggest cultural issues of our time. In almost every issue, floods of education leaders, LGBT activists, teacher union representatives, librarians, administrators, and to a greater degree, students, have led me to a harsh conclusion. Here it is: There are a lot of people in our schools today or representing the educational system who really shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of a child.

A high school graduate in Indiana will have spent about 16,000 hours in K-12 education. If we think that two hours in church each week, or a couple of hours with the family an evening can counter some of the junk children are being taught, and all the other cultural and social media messages presented to them, we are naive. I don’t have an answer to this, and there may be different answers for different families, but if I have raised an eyebrow with this item, you may want to join me in reading or in my case, listening to, the book – Battle for the American Mind by Pete Hegseth.

P4P Conference

Purple for Parents of Indiana is holding a conference on April 22nd in Indianapolis that features several education and cultural experts. Speakers include Dr. Linda Jeffrey, Debora Simmons, Audrey Warner, Rhonda Miller, and Jon Schrock. (The conference is for adults due to certain topics such as the Kinsey Institute and the sexualization of children in our culture.)

You can read their bios, learn more about the conference topics and buy tickets to attend here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rsvp-america-restoring-social-virtue-and-purity-to-america-tickets-530784509757

In Their Own Words:

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky