November 9, 2024
NYC Safe Injection Sites Reduce OD Deaths—but Not in the Worst Neighborhoods
There is a glimmer—the slightest bright spot—of good news about drug overdoses in New York. The city’s Health Department reports that overdose deaths in 2023 declined compared to the previous year—but they fell just one percent, from 3,070 to 3,046. A close look at that number reveals not only is it tiny, but that an important indicator…
September 20, 2024
How Public Housing Fueled Boston’s Busing Riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the North’s worst episode of school desegregation–related racial violence: Boston’s busing riots. Mobs hurled rocks at buses filled with black students newly assigned to South Boston High School, set on the “heights” of that largely white neighborhood. At the time, and in retrospect, the violence was blamed on…
September 9, 2024
The Nanny State Is Not the Answer to Parents’ Challenges
The chaos of summer is over. Kids have gone back to school. But fall brings a whole new set of challenges. We parents have spent the past few weeks creating complex matrices — schedules for child care, after-school activities, and car pools. But by next week, someone will get sick, or a babysitter will quit, and…
August 30, 2024
When It Comes to Declining Donations, There’s More to the Story
To the Editor: New research showing a sharp decline in giving in 2018 — the year after passage of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — must be tempered by a consideration of the extent of nonitemized giving, which is often difficult to capture. Rasheeda Childress’s article “Donors Likely Giving $16 Billion Less Each…
August 15, 2024
Women Want More Children Than They’re Having. America Can Do More to Help
In the wake of the media storm generated by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s comment about “childless cat ladies,” fertility in America has vaulted to the top of the national conversation, with good reason. The fertility rate has hit a record low in the United States, with the average American woman now expected to have just…
June 18, 2024
Donald Trump is an Outlier on the Right: When It Comes to Fidelity and Marriage, Democrats Face Bigger Problems
The political and legal fallout of Donald Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels has not only complicated his run for the presidency, but it has also raised a deeper concern: Has the Republican standard bearer’s marital misbehavior eroded our collective commitment to the values and virtues that sustain the institution of marriage? On the left, journalist…
June 13, 2024
Why Married Fathers Matter
The eighth grade girls cleaned up at the middle school graduation I attended last week. Of the four major awards, three went to girls, and just one to a boy. This pattern is all too typical in American life today. Two-thirds of high school students in the top 10% are girls, while boys dominate the…
May 15, 2024
The American heart is closing to marriage and family. Can red states change that?
The American heart is closing. The signs, including dramatic drops in dating, marriage, and childbearing, are all around us. The falling fortunes of marriage and family across the nation can be traced back to cultural shifts (e.g., elite messaging celebrating “me-first” over “family-first” thinking), economic changes (e.g., young men’s eroding position in today’s workforce), and technological shifts (e.g., the ways in which social media discourages…
March 31, 2024
Can Local Journalism Be Saved?
American local journalism is withering away. Between 2004 and 2019, reports Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the country lost more than 2,000 newspapers, with the total number falling by about one-fourth, from 9,000 to 6,700. The decline bodes ill for democracy. Americans rely on local governments to provide basic public services, on voters to hold…
March 8, 2024
Jason Kelce, Family Man
In his tear-filled farewell speech, Jason Kelce brought his 13-year NFL career to a close by underlining what really mattered in life: marriage and family. The longtime Philadelphia Eagles player, who made the NFL Pro Bowl in each of the last five seasons after getting married to his wife, Kylie, in 2018, said in his retirement speech: It’s…