Since October of 2003, hits have increased 162% on www.worldcongress.org and 24% on www.profam.org.  We are now averaging 6,043 hits per day on www.worldcongress.org and 1,864 per day on www.profam.org.

(Source: The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, based on WebTrend reports.)

Editor's note:  Sometimes, a censorious quote from an enemy is almost more satisfying than the most flattering remark from a friend.  -Karl J. Shields

"The conference's theme -'The Natural Family and the Future of Nations: Growth, Development and Freedom'- sounds benign and uncontroversial; in reality, it's a strategic camouflage for a familiar set of favorite ultraconservative causes: an intolerant version of heterosexuality and marriage that precludes recognition of gay unions, is anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti-sex education.

...The WCF is more than just a meeting place for likeminded conservatives to share their fears about gay marriage and abortion; its objective is to reverse progressive social initiatives on reproductive rights, gay rights and population issues, particularly those negotiated at the United Nations."

(Source: Gillian Kane, "A Family Affair: The World Congress of Families wants Governments to Decide What's Natural," Ms. Magazine, Fall 2004, p. 57-58,  [October 18, 2004 online], http://www.msmagazine.com/fall2004/worldcongressoffamilies.asp .)

For nearly 80 years, when women from Mexico immigrated to the United States, they brought with them a strong orientation to marriage, motherhood, and modesty. So successful were they in passing on family values, their daughters born in America actually experienced lower levels of nonmarital childbearing than their foreign-born moms. At least that was the case until 1970, when the pattern reversed and the generations born north of the border began to move away from the family way of the motherland, according to Elizabeth Wildsmith of the University of Texas at Austin.

Wildsmith studied data from two sources: samples from 1880 through 1990 of the IPUMS census files, which tracks "female headship" of households among whites, blacks, U.S.-born Mexicans, and Mexican-born women, and the 1995 Current Population Survey, which includes a supplement on the marital and fertility histories of women. She found that rates of female headship were universally low among all categories of women from 1880 to 1960, the lowest being among whites, the highest among blacks, and women of Mexican origin in between. After 1960, the rates increased for all women and dramatically so for blacks. Controlled for education, the levels of headship for Mexican-born women are virtually the same as for whites since 1970. But for Mexican women born in the U.S., levels since 1970 are significantly higher relative to native-born Mexicans and have increased over time.

By 1995, the differences were especially pronounced between the second and third generations of Mexican-origin women, the latter which were 2.24 times more likely to be heads of households and 2.72 times more likely to have given birth out of wedlock than white women. For blacks, those Odds Ratios were 4.28 and 5.68, respectively (all correlations, p<.05).

Wildsmith's regression analysis that tracked the relationship between education and nonmarital fertility found that while nonmarital fertility among white women was flat regardless of education, the higher nonmarital fertility rates for minority women depended somewhat on education. Having a high school education exerted a stronger negative influence on nonmarital fertility among first and second generation Mexican-Americans, but much less on the third-generation, whose high nonmarital fertility levels resembled that of blacks.

The limited effect of a high school education to lower nonmarital childbearing in the third generation may suggest other factors may be weaning later generations of Mexican-Americans away from pro-family patterns. Although Wildsmith does not suggest this, the federal welfare system that other studies credit with raising nonmarital fertility rates among blacks since the 1960s appears to have had the same effect on other minorities as well.

(Source: Elizabeth Wildsmith, "Race/Ethnic Differences in Female Headship: Exploring the Assumptions of Assimilation Theory," Social Science Quarterly 85 [2004]: 89-106.)