Contact: Don Feder, 00-1-508-395-0142; Evert-Jan Brouwer, 0031-6-10503828

AMSTERDAM, Aug. 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- Family and Education, Family and Professional Help and Marriage, Sex and the Rights of Families were the topics of discussion at the World Congress of Families V afternoon session on August 10, 2009 at the RAI Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The World Congress of Families is the premier gathering of individuals and organizations that promote the concept of the "Natural Family" from around the world.

One of the highlights of the afternoon session was a presentation by Dr. Pat Fagan, a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, titled "The Effects of Child Care (Day Care) on the Social and Psychological Development of Children."

Fagan stressed the importance of the early development of the Mother-Child relationship to the future psychological development of the child and, quoting Dr. Sigmund Freud, claimed that "the Mother-Child relationship is 'unique, without parallel, established unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest love-object and as the prototype of all later love-relations.'"

Fagan, citing a psychological study further contended that children from homes in which the mother worked outside of the home were more likely to be "nominated by peers for hitting and being mean."

Marie-Claire Hernandez, a founder and former President of the organization Family & Society, in Mexico, spoke on the "Threats to the Family from Addiction to Internet Pornography" and said that exposing a child to pornography is like "having drugs in the kitchen cupboard for school lunch boxes."

According to Hernandez, early exposure heightens the risk of pornography addiction: "Children become easy prey, and once the addiction takes hold, it quickly converts to a loss of freedom."

William L Saunders, Senior Council at Americans United for Life, delivered a speech on "Human Rights and Parental Rights."  Citing the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Saunders claimed that States act contrary to their best interests when they stray from the role of protecting the family.

Saunders: "If the State presumes to usurp the rights of parents to choose the education of their own children, it damages the family, violates its own obligations, and undermines the foundation of a just society and State."

World Congress of Families V will continue through the evening of August 12, 2009.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60  countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society.  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org).  To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).  A fifth World Congress of Families is being  held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 (www.worldcongress.nl).