MARRIAGE HEALTHIER FOR ALL THE FAMILY THAN COHABITATION

Marriage is the healthiest option despite the fact that marriage is losing ground to cohabitation a new research from Britain confirms. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show this is especially true for men. Women who are married -- or have been -- and have children are the healthiest, unless they are lone parents, in which case they are more likely to suffer a long-term illness. Divorce and separation are also associated with poor health.

Six years of government data on family life show that children are also more likely to develop illnesses if they live in non-traditional family groups. Teenagers whose parents are married, and those who live with just their mother, are more likely to stay in education past the age of 17, than those of cohabiting parents.

The number of cohabiting couples in Britain has increased by 65 per cent in a decade, with a more gradual rise in the number of single-parent families. In 2006, couples in nearly 70 per cent of families were married, but that proportion could drop to less than half by 2014. Childlessness is increasing along with cohabitation: there are over 1.3 million couples living together without children compared with around 854,000 a decade before.

Reference: Marriage healthier...

UNFPA BLAMES SKEWED SEX RATIO ON GENDER BIAS

A United Nations conference on "sexual and reproductive health" in the Asia-Pacific region held at the end of last month highlighted the dramatic sex-ratio imbalance in parts of the region without admitting the contribution of the UN's own population policies to the problem. Papers commissioned for the meeting by UNFPA, the Population Fund, focus on the tradition of son preference in China, India and other countries. The papers treat sex ratios badly-skewed towards males as largely gender equality and gender violence issues requiring a change of attitude to women.

A summary of a paper giving an overview of the problem does not even mention population control policies and the legalisation of abortion as causes. It blames the "opportunistic behaviour of families who want to beget more sons than are biologically determined" by using pre-natal ultrasound and amniocentesis, leading to selective abortion of girls. "In many regions, several generations will be affected by a severe marriage squeeze, regardless of what is done today," says UNFPA.

A paper on the emerging sex imbalance in Vietnam, however, acknowledges government policy on family limitation as a factor in a national ratio which now stands at 110 male births for every 100 female -- about where China was ten years ago. Vietnam has had a population control policy since the 1960s and this was intensified during the 1980s and 1990s. The policy is still "strictly controlled by the government", according to interviews conducted by the researcher. "People try to negotiate the two-child family norm by covertly using scientific methods to select the foetus's sex. Ultrasound is perceived as a good choice not only by the farmers, but also by the state's cadres."

Reference: Sex Ratio Imbalance...

Cyber faithful flock to GODTUBE by the million

A Christian website which allows visitors to chat and exchange religious-themed videos was recently named America's fastest-growing website, drawing more than four million users last month. Texas-based GodTube combines the video clip-sharing principle of YouTube, the social networking feature of Facebook and live webcasting.

Popular attractions include music, comedy (for example, a squirrel singing I Will Always Love You) and heated theological debates. The site contains 25,000 videos with 300 to 500 fresh ones arriving each day. Their content is monitored by a team of seminary students. Members of other religions are invited to participate but they cannot proselytize. Atheists are welcome too, and they may share their point of view "as long as it's done respectfully".

Chris Wyatt, GodTube's founder, said he set it up because churches were having difficulty reaching young people "in a language they can understand". He says GodTube users on Sunday mornings outnumber the congregation of mega church pastor Joel Osteen in Houston. The site is growing so rapidly that it recently launched its own news service. Another spin-off, Godcaster, will soon allow any church in the world to stream its services free.

Autism and the TV: A study case

What have television, bad weather and autism got to do with one another? Quite a lot, according to new research led by Michael Waldman of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. The incidence of autism has grown tenfold over the past 30 years, from one in 2500 children to one in 166 children in the United States -- with similar levels elsewhere. Apart from general agreement that both genetics and environment play a part in the condition, very little is known about what causes it.

One smoking gun is the growing amount of television and related media watched by very young children, due to the growth of cable TV, VCRs and DVDs in the last few decades. Waldman and colleagues figured the highest rates of TV watching would occur in places where there was more rain and/or snow, and these places would have higher rates of autism. Analysis of data for three states -- California, Oregon and Washington -- showed autism rates were positively linked to levels of precipitation. And data from California and Pennsylvania showed a link between autism and the percentage of households subscribed to cable to TV.

"Our precipitation tests indicate that just under forty per cent of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation, while our cable tests indicate that approximately seventeen per cent of the growth of autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s is due to the growth of cable television," they conclude. The researchers also point out their findings are consistent with concern in the medical community about the exposure of young children to electronic media.