Elton John's family is covered up by a 'family shield' + pics of the week

Hiyall

I'm new here and find the conversation to be depressingly typical, with people failing to bother to understand each other's perspectives. A general lack of Empathy all round.

Personally, my view on the issue is that people should be allowed to live their lives as they see fit and that other people need to understand this simple fact. Catherine appears to be one who is far too concerned with ensuring that others adhere to her morality, than with engaging with the universe that others live in.

Having said this, she certainly hasn't made any personal attacks on anybody here. To claim that she has is to deliberately misread what she has said. I don't think that disagreeing with someone should be considered a personal attack, even when it is about something as centrally important as the decision to have children.

Her claim appears to have simply been that children of surrogate parents are more likely than other children to suffer adverse mental health outcomes. This should be no surprise to anybody, as like adopted children, one can expect that a significant number are often desperate to find their real parents. Like adopted children, we can expect that some will experience issues of identity that revolve around their birth parents.

While I can't say that I have known any surrogate children, I have certainly known a fair number of adoptees and in many cases they feel empty and as if something is missing, as they don't know who their biological parents are. Finding the parents never provides the catharsis (they were usually adopted for very good reasons), but the need is still there.

However, this isn't to say that surrogacy should therefore be banned, or is morally wrong. Just because a particular sub population can be shown to have worse mental health outomes, this doesn't mean that bringing those children into the world is bad. If it were, we'd have banned aboriginal's from having kids years ago.

The fact is that there is a combination of both nature and nurture involved and what makes a good parent is both very simple and very complex. I have no doubt that parents with surrogate children love them just as much as if they were their own biological offspring, but one should not pretend that there might not be particular issues that exist simply because the children are being raised by a non-biological parent. Claiming otherwise seems to be a bit like putting your head in the sand.

With respect to Catherine being a psychologist. Who knows? Certainly she isn't an academic, as she isn't citing peer reviewed research and her writing style is a bit too casual. I'm dubious about the research that she has cited. For example, beyond the one "study" I couldn't even find any information about the supposed "Commission on Parenthood's Future" online. They don't even appear to have a homepage.

The bio of the lead researcher is hardly impressive. Elizabeth Marquardt has a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in International Relations. She is also Elizabeth the director of the "Center for Marriage and Families" at the "Institute for American Values" (another lobby group with a name like lead). Nothing there to suggest that she is even remotely qualified, or experienced in how to properly conduct psychological research and everything to suggest that she has an agenda that she wanted to "prove".
http://betweentwoworlds.org...

While the secondary researcher is a Sociology Professor, I'm quite confident that this research is pure flam.

From a professional perspective, I would hope that Catherine is using much better research than this to guide her own practice.

The very nature of the organisation tells me that they are yet another of those American lobby groups that assert precisely the opposite of what they are after in their title. I'm guessing that these guys are more in favour of a "Commission on Parenthood's Past".

In any case, I would suggest that "research" from lobby groups be treated with the same respect as that from cigarette companies. As was pointed out they get the answers they want. Peer reviewed research is of more interest.

The suggestion, or "warning" that Catherine should shut up, in order to prevent someone reporting her to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) is just silly.

I have some familiarity with Psychological Registration and can confidently say that the agency is not going to investigate the comments made by some random, who may, or may not be a psychologist and who hasn't said anything within the context of her supposed role as a psychologist. If the comments had been extreme, grievous, or in breach of the law that might change (if for no other reason than to clamp down on some random fruitloop who may be impersonating a psychologist), but I see nothing in this thread remotely like that.

Tom's speculation regarding Catherine's supposed double identity is rather ammusing, but quite fanciful. Given the number of social conservatives in Australia, I don't think we need to invent consipracy theories in order to explain the appearance of one more.

Bugger discussions about who should have children and who shouldn't - I'm more interested in *how* they have them. Specifically, how did Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem give birth to a baby boy? I hope they taped it.