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August 27, 2025

In Pursuit: Marriage, Motherhood, And Women’s Well-Being

Marriage and fertility rates have reached all-time lows in the U.S. in recent years, as fewer people marry or have children. These trends are likely to continue in the future. In 2023, only 72% of 18-year-old women in the U.S. said they were likely to have children, down from 85% in the late 2000s.1 Though…

August 4, 2025

Where Are the Pro-Family Senators?

J.D. Vance and Mitt Romney had their differences when they served as senators together in the last Congress. But they shared a common commitment to family policies that served all families with young children — including those who relied on a family member to care for an infant or toddler at home — rather than just those…

July 29, 2025

Why Marriage Survives

“There is zero statistical advantage” to getting married if you are a man in America today, Andrew Tate argued in a viral 2022 video on “why modern men don’t want marriage.” Women, he believes, are worthless anchors—“They want you monogamous so that your testosterone level drops,” he posted on X last fall—and your marriage is likely…

June 16, 2025

Better Boys: The Difference Good Dads Make

The girls cleaned up at my (Brad’s) daughter’s middle school graduation in Virginia this month. Three out of four of the school’s top awards went to girls. A majority of the “President’s Academic Excellence Awards,” an award given to students who maintained an “A” average each semester throughout their middle school career, went to girls. This is par for the course….

June 16, 2025

The ‘Father Divide’ and What it Means for Our Kids

This Father’s Day, an estimated 72 million greeting cards will zip through the mail, according to Hallmark. Father’s Day ranks a respectable fourth on the list of the highest “card-buying” holidays of the year. But it’s still far behind the next-highest: Mother’s Day.  Dads probably shouldn’t take it personally. People tend to feel more sentimental toward their mothers. But while…

June 13, 2025

Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids: The Importance of Fatherhood in Virginia

Children in Virginia are more likely to flourish when their fathers are engaged and/or present. This is one of the conclusions from Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids: The Importance of Fatherhood in Virginia, a new report from an intellectually diverse group of scholars at the University of Virginia, the American Enterprise Institute, the American Institute for Boys and Men,…

May 23, 2025

How AI Will Harm Working-Class Families

Donald Trump rose to power in large part by appealing to working-class men. He was able to channel their frustration with trade deals and automation that destroyed working-class jobs, helped fuel thousands of deaths of despair, and powered a wave of anger in working-class communities across America. These economic shocks also proved devastating for all too many families in working-class communities across America. Job…

May 13, 2025

Out of Work and On the Dole — Is Uncle Sam Contributing to Young Men’s Malaise?

American men are in trouble. From Richard Reeves’ “Of Boys and Men” to Nicholas Eberstadt’s “Men Without Work,” we have learned that men are opting out of our most important institutions — work, education and family — in record numbers.  But what or who is to blame for this male malaise? Uncle Sam.  This was Allysia Finley’s…

April 30, 2025

Is The Collapse of Blue-Collar Marriage a Foregone Conclusion?

It’s been just over 40 years since Springsteen’s bestselling Born in the USA came out in 1984 — an album with “a rowdy indomitable spirit,” as Debby Miller wrote in Rolling Stone at the time. The melodies suggested a deep optimism but the lyrics were primarily concerned with “people … getting left behind” full of foreboding of the fate of small-town…

April 29, 2025

Good Jobs, Strong Families: How the Character of Men’s Work Is Linked to Their Family Status

Introduction Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH….