Familienpolitik

CNN.com reports that today Judge Barbara Walther signed an order allowing all of the children seized from the Yearning For Zion ranch to be released to their parents. The order requires:

• The Department of Family and Protective Services will have the right to make unannounced visits to check on the children’s medical and psychological well-being.
• The parents of the children must attend and complete parenting classes.
• The families must remain in the state of Texas and notify authorities with 48 hours notice if they plan to travel more than 100 miles from their home.

What happens next in this sad story remains to be seen. If the claim of a “pervasive pattern” of sexual abuse at the ranch by the Child Protective Services is true, one can only hope that the measures listed above will either prevent continued abuse or provide the state of Texas with the requisite information needed to prosecute the offenders.

Tags: family policy, Polygamy, Underage marriage, YFZ

Corporal punishment of children is slowing disappearing in many countries. This Economist article says the U.S. may soon be one of the only wealthy countries and one of the only countries in the Americas to continue to allow spanking.

In recent years, several European countries (Greece and Portugal, for example) have quietly abolished parental smacking after a Swiss-based lobby group challenged them for being in breach of the European social charter, a Council of Europe treaty. Three Latin American states (Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela) joined the non-smackers last year.

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Tags: corporal punishment, family policy

This week’s Al Jazeera Everywoman is about Nepal. The first video looks at the social stigma Nepalese women who do not bear children faces and the widows of the British Army’s Gurkhas who don’t receive their husbands’ pensions.

The second video looks at women struggling to obtain citizenship for themselves and their children and girls who are considered living goddesses.

Tags: citizenship, family policy, Nepal, pensions

Something a little lighter from The Local, an English-language German news site:

Anyone with a mere smattering of German can see where Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer got her name from. But the 54-year-old Swede is not just named after the Berlin Wall, she reckons that she is married to it.

The short article goes on to explain that Berliner-Mauer believes the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a mutilation of her husband, whom she married in 1979.

Tags: family policy, Germany

New York Governor David Paterson’s spokeswoman Erin Duggan said today that same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries legally must be recognized in New York.

State agencies, including those governing insurance and health care, must immediately change policies and regulations to make sure “spouse,” “husband” and “wife” are clearly understood to include gay couples, according to a memo sent earlier this month from the governor’s counsel.

Despite the fact that same-sex marriage is not legal in the state, an appellate court has found, similar to the California ruling, that not extending benefits to gay couples is a violation of human rights laws. The state legislature could still choose to legalize same-sex marriage, or to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Tags: family policy, same-sex marriage, United States