February 14, 2024
Valentine’s Day Marred By Loneliness Crisis
This Valentine’s Day, the news is awash with stories of loneliness and atomisation among adults across the West. Though clinical attention has focused on this brewing crisis, the remedies are often misplaced. Last year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on this new national problem, which was exacerbated by the Covid lockdowns. Following his appointment to the…
February 14, 2024
Why You Should Get Married
Isn’t marriage a trap, mostly for men? Don’t most married couples end up getting divorced? And aren’t most men happier when they’re single? These are the kind of questions I get from young men whenever I make the case for marriage at speaking events at colleges and high schools across the nation—recently in North Carolina,…
February 13, 2024
The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on Marriage
“Is it morally wrong to have a baby outside of marriage?” “No” is the answer I received from about two-thirds of my sociology-of-family class at the University of Virginia last spring, when I put that question to them in an anonymous online poll. The class of approximately 200 students was diverse geographically, racially, and ethnically. But…
February 9, 2024
Don’t Buy the Soulmate Myth
Taylor Swift’s hit song “Lover” is the perfect anthem for this Valentine’s Day, especially since she is in the midst of a very public romance with her latest boyfriend, Travis Kelce. “There’s a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you,” she sings to her “magnetic force of a man.” This gets the start of a…
January 2, 2024
We Can Make Chicago Safer By Prioritizing Stronger Families
It was a cold winter morning in 2021 when my youngest son ducked into a local gas station to grab a snack before heading to work. As he came out and entered his car, a gunman approached, yanked on his door, pointed a gun at him and commanded him to give up his car. My…
December 11, 2023
How to make smartphones and apps safer for kids
“These are first-of-their-kind bills in the United States,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said in March at the signing of SB152, which required social media companies operating in Utah to age-verify users and obtain explicit parental consent for users under the age of 18 to open an account. “That’s huge that Utah is leading out in this…
October 27, 2023
What liberals don’t understand about men and marriage
There’s no question the bond between fatherhood and marriage is weaker today than it was 60 years ago. Whereas almost 80% of children were raised in an intact, married home with their father in the early 1960s, today only about 51% have that privilege. In the face of what seems like a fraying father-marriage bond, some left-leaning men’s advocates…
August 17, 2023
The ‘Utah Family Miracle’ and Why It Matters
Utah ranks at the top of many rankings of state performance across America. But perhaps the Beehive State is best known for its top rankings on the economic front. The “Utah economic miracle” — marked by exceptional economic growth, a favorable business climate and high rates of economic mobility — has garnered attention across the…
July 21, 2023
Can Spain Defuse Its Depopulation Bomb?
Over the past 40 years, no party has dominated the Spanish political landscape like the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, or PSOE, now headed by Pedro Sánchez. Yet frustration over its handling of key issues — from the economy to immigration to regional separatist movements — has provided an opening for the centre-right People’s Party (PP)…
June 30, 2023
House Republican Plan Penalizes Marriage
We just got more bad news about marriage. A record-high 25% of 40-year-olds in the United States were never married in 2021, according to sobering new statistics from the Pew Research Center. That statistic compares to just 6% of never-married 40-year-olds in 1980, underscoring marriage’s falling fortunes in recent decades. Digging further into the Pew data reveals that this retreat from…