Hispanic Family Values Essay Example for Free

Hispanic Family Values Essay MacDonald’s article reveals the grim reality of teenage pregnancy and unmarried mothers in the Hispanic community in the United States, backed up by statistical data on various circumstances surrounding unwed young mothers. Birth rates among young, unwed Hispanic mothers are so alarming that according to the Census Bureau, â€Å"one in four Americans will be Hispanics by mid-century, twice the current ratio; also, Hispanics will account for 46 percent of the nation’s added population for over the next two decades† (Mac Donald). Statistics show that the Hispanic women have the highest occurence of births outside marriage at 45 percent, â€Å"compared to the 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births† (Mac Donald). Only the black population exceed this figure at 68 percent. This can possibly imply a higher demand for a larger welfare state, if incidents of unplanned pregnancy among young Hispanic women surge. MacDonald spoke to several social workers and other people who provide aid and services to these young women in South California, where most illegal immigrants flock, to illustrate the situation of Hispanic young women. According to these workers, illegitamacy has become the norm among the Hispanic community and it is not unusual for young, unwed Hispanic women seek welfare and social services (Mac Donald). According to Dr. Ana Sanchez, it is noteworthy to look into the values system of the Hispanics and compare it with the values system of other cultures. For instance, Dr. Sanchez thinks that in a Hispanic household, having babies outside marriage is normal; whereas in an Asian household, parents strongly imbibe in their children that teenage pregnancy is a taboo (Mac Donald). Another factor that contributes to the increase in unwed teenage pregnancy is the most powerful Hispanic value – a tight-knit extended family (Mac Donald). While marriage is no longer a cherished value in the Hispanic community, a tight-knit family is still very much treasured and children are always a welcome addition to the family. It is an honor for a young girl to be have a baby at a young age. If the father of the child is unavailable, which is normally the case, the relatives are more than willing to help raise the child. The fathers of the children of unwed young Hispanic mothers are another factor that contribute to the problem of rising dependence of young Hispanic mothers on social welfare and services. It is not uncommon for fathers to run off after getting a girl pregnant, regardless of the age. They cohabitate with the mother of their child initially but this does not usually last long (Mac Donald). Girls who are impregnated by older men is another issue that raises the eyebrows of social workers. The fathers of these children can be as young as 13 or as old as the boyfriend of the girl’s mother. Situations where girls are sexually assaulted by their mother’s boyfriends are not uncommon in the Hispanic community (Mac Donald). The present boyfriend of their mother is usually not their father because even their mothers had them when they were their daughter’s age. If it is not their mother’s boyfriend, it is their uncle. The belief is that older men prefer virgins because they think that they cannot be impregnated on their first sexual intercourse and they are less likely to have sexually transmitted diseases. Another revelation in this situation is that the cycle of early, unwed pregnancy among young mothers is a prevalent issue because it is something that is imbibed to them by their elders. Young girls turn out to be like that because their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts went through the same thing at the same age. It gives them the impression that having a child before marriage is perfectly normal. Consequently, relying on social services and welfare has also become a normal part of their lifestyle. The last few paragraphs of MacDonald’s article provide the various solutions that are being implemented to address this issue. For instance, some schools in California have a day care center for the babies of their students. MacDonald also mentions the â€Å"Latina Adolescent Suicide Prevention Act aims to channel $10 million to â€Å"culturally competent† social agencies to improve the self-esteem of Latina girls and to provide â€Å"support services† to their families and friends if they contemplate suicide† (Mac Donald). There are also support group for parents of children who show signs of delinquency such as gang involvement and antisocial behavior; members are usually single mothers. The life of a young, unwed and single mother is not easy. On top of that, the Hispanic community still remains to be a minority in the United States, even if their population is expected to double in the coming years. Support groups such as the ones mentioned above will aid the single mother in coping with the harsh reality in a foreign country. However, the adage â€Å"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure† still works in this case. Aside from helping teenage moms, efforts should be allocated in creating an environment for young Hispanic women that will reduce the likelihood of pregnancy outside marriage. According to the study of National Council of La Raza’s Institute for Hispanic health, Hispanic communities misconstrue pregnancy prevention campaigns as â€Å"anti-family† campaigns (Elkins). NCLR suggests that programs should address family planning rather than the notion of pregnancy itself. According to the Latino Initiative, a very effective way of curbing unwed pregnancies among young women is to foster family values and strengthen parent-child ties because children who are close to their parents are more likely to enact safer sexual practices (Elkins). This intervention program not only works in Hispanic communities; it works almost everywhere as well.

The Black Cat Essay -- essays research papers fc

A Glimpse Into the World of 'The Black Cat';   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Those who have read any of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories know that most of them are full of suspense and mystery and that they efflict a feeling of horror and shock upon the reader. Poe studies the mind, and is conscious of the abnormalities of his narrators and he does not condone the intellectual expedient through which they strive, only too earnestly, to justify themselves. He enters the field of the starkly, almost clinically realistic investigation of men who, although they may feel uneasy about their mental states when their tension lets up, are too far gone to understand their mania, let alone to control it (Gargano 171). His stories usually have a horrible murder theme in which there is a obsessive narrator and they follow the development of the theme step by step with a realism that, barring with genius, might case a history from the twentieth-century psychiatry. This could not be presented more clearly than in 'The Black Cat';. Those who may deny realism to Poe cannot be very familiar with our daily newspapers, which periodically carry true stories of murders committed under just abnormal psychological pressures as those described in 'The Black Cat'; (Buranelli 76). This story begins with the narrator ,who is about to be hung, confessing what he has done in some type of repention for his soul. The narrator step by step describes how he began drinking and then to neglect his dearly beloved cat and his wife. One day when he is maddened by the actions of the cat, he cuts out its eye and later kills the cat by hanging it. After his house burns down and he has lost all he owned he finds a new cat resembling all to well the first. One day while working with his wife in the cellar he is nearly tripped down the stairs by the cat, he then picks up an axe and tries to kill it but his swing is intercepted by his wife and he instead strikes her and kills her instantly. He conceals the body but then when the police come, he in a mocking manner taps the wall in which she is buried and reveals to the police what he has done(Poe). In Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat,'; his use of point of view, symbolism, foreshadowing, and theme all combine with what he calls 'a series of mere household events'; to show how the narrator is driven into madness (Poe 1).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tol... ...uld have not got the full effect that Poe was trying to convey, which is that just about anyone can be driven into madness and that the narrator in this story is not very different from any other person. Works Cited Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe: Second Edition. Boston: Twanyne Publishers, 1977. 76-77. Davidson, Edward H. Poe: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. 190. Gargano, James W. 'The Question of Poe's Narrators.'; POE: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967. 169-171. Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1972. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. 78. Poe, Edgar Allan. 'The Black Cat.'; Ed. Martha Womack. n.page.online. Internet 29 July. 1998. Available http://www.poedecoder.com./Qrisse/works/blackcat.html. Prinsky, Norman. 'The Black Cat.'; Masterplots II: Short Story Series. Ed. Frank N. Magil. Vol. 1. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1986. 231-34. Womack, Martha. 'Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat.''; n.page.Online. Internet. 2 August 1998. Available http: //www.poedecoder.com/essays/blackcat.

Fictional Characters and Insurance Contracts Essay

1. Non-Argument, Piece of Advice, it’s because the statement says â€Å"strongly recommended† which is giving you an advice. 2. Non-Argument, Conditional Statement, it’s because it is an â€Å"if†¦then†¦Ã¢â‚¬  statement. 3. Argument P: Fictional characters behave according to the same psychological probabilities as real people. P: The characters of fiction are found in exotic dilemmas that real people hardly encounter. C: Fiction provides us with the opportunity to ponder how people react in uncommon situations, and to deduce moral lessons, psychological principles, and philosophical insights from their behavior. 4. Non-Argument, Opinion, it’s because the statement is a â€Å"statement of belief† from the words â€Å"I believe† which is also called an opinion. 5. Non-Argument, Report, it’s because it is a group of statements that gives info about some situation or event. 6. Argument P: In every insurance contract there is an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. P: The duty to so act is imminent in the contract whether the company is attending to the claims of third persons against the insured or the claims of the insured itself. C: When the insurer unreasonably and in bad faith withholds payment of the claim of its insured, it is subject to liability in tort. 7. Non-Argument, Expository Passage, it’s because the topic of the sentence develops or elaborates on it. 8. Non-Argument, Description, it’s because the statements makes us imagine of an image of what the statements have written. 9. Non-Argument, Report, it’s because the statements are reported by a certain person. 10. Non-Argument, Illustration, it’s because the statements seem to hide as arguments but the real point is to exemplify the statement.

Contrails The Controversial Cloud

While you may not recognize contrail  clouds by name, youve likely seen them many times before. The trail of cloud seen behind a passing jet plane, the messages and smiley faces drawn in the summer sky at the beach; these are all examples of contrails. The word contrail is short for  condensation trail, which is a reference to how these clouds form behind the flight paths of aircraft.   Contrails are  considered  high-level  clouds. They appear as long and narrow, but thick, lines of clouds, often with two or more side-by-side bands (the number of bands is determined by the number of engines (exhaust contrails) or wings (wing tip contrails) a plane has). Most are short-lived clouds, lasting only several minutes before evaporating. However, depending on weather conditions, its possible for them to last hours or even days. Those that do last tend to spread into a thin layer of cirrus, known as contrail cirrus. What Causes Contrails? Contrails can form in one of two ways: by the addition of water vapor to the air from a planes exhaust, or by the sudden change in pressure that occurs when air flows around a planes wings. Exhaust contrails:  Exhaust contrails are the most common contrail type. As a plane uses up fuel during flight, exhaust exits out of the engines, releasing carbon dioxide, water vapor, and soot into the atmosphere. As this hot, moist air mixes with the cold air aloft it cools and condenses onto soot and sulfate particles to form a local contrail cloud. Because it takes several seconds for the exhaust air to sufficiently cool and condense, the contrail usually forms a short distance behind the aircraft. This is why a gap is often seen between the aircraft tail and the start of the cloud.Wingtip contrails: If the air aloft is quite humid and nearly saturated, the flow of air around aircraft wings can also trigger condensation. Air flowing over the wing has a lower pressure than that flowing underneath it, and because air flows from high to low-pressure areas, a current of air also flows from the wings bottom to its top. These movements combined create a tube of circulating air, or vo rtex, at the wings tip. These vortices are areas of reduced pressure and temperature and can thus lead water vapor to condense.Since these contrails require a relatively moist atmosphere (higher humidity) to start with, they usually occur at lower altitudes where the air is warmer, more dense, and capable of holding more water vapor. Contributing to Climate Change? While contrails are thought to only have a minor impact on climate, their influence on daily temperature patterns is much more significant. As contrails spread and thin out to form contrail cirrus, they promote daytime cooling (their high albedo reflects incoming solar radiation back out into space) and warming at night (high, thin clouds absorb the Earths outgoing longwave radiation). The magnitude of this warming is thought to outweigh the effects of cooling. It should also be noted that contrail formation is associated with the release of carbon dioxide, which is a known greenhouse gas and  global warming  contributor. A Controversial Cloud Some individuals, including conspiracy theorists, have their own opinions about contrails and what they really are. Instead of condensation, they believe them to be mists of chemicals, or chemtrails, deliberately sprayed by government organizations onto unsuspecting citizens below. They argue that these substances are released into the atmosphere for the purposes of controlling the weather, controlling population, and for the testing of biological weapons and that the idea of contrails as harmless clouds is a cover-up. According to skeptics, if contrails appear in criss-cross, grid-like, or tic-tac-toe patterns, or are visible over locations where no flight-patterns exist, theres a good chance it isnt a contrail at all.