On Whales: Did you know male sperm whales live near the poles while female sperm whales live near the equator? I guess that does away with toilet-seat arguments. Also, baby blue whales are the size of an elephant when born. Of course, their mamas are the size of a 737 so it's not too bad. Mother elephant seals do not eat at all while nursing their babies (for about a month). So they really do lose weight from breast feeding.
On Fathers: This is an interesting article on the effects of parental church attendance on their children. In brief, when mothers attend but fathers stay home, 2% of the kids wind up attending church as adults. When both parents attend, 33% grow up to attend church. But when only the father attends, 44% of the children grow up to attend church.
The article, while making the obvious point that the father's leadership is by far the most important, doesn't speculate on why the solo fathers have the best record. But I like to speculate. My guess is, the category of both parents attending includes a fair number of men dragged to church more or less against their will. The surveyors have no way of measuring this, but the children know. And I bet if they could divide them out, fathers hauled to church by mom would no more encourage their children's future attendance than fathers reading the paper on Sunday morning. Whereas where both parents were willing attenders, the percent of future church attenders would probably top 50%.
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