March 4, 2024
Teen Suicide and the Limits of Sociology
“No one, it appears, was free to just parent as they wanted to parent—free of the web of social ties that both gave their lives meaning and set firm constraints around expected behaviors.” This observation from a new book about the town of Poplar Grove—the fictional name for a real, wealthy community where there have…
February 15, 2024
Sacred Sex
A Sociologist of Religion on Protestants, Porn, and the ‘Purity Industrial Complex’”—so read the title of a recent New Yorker interview in which Isaac Chotiner asked sociologist Samuel Perry about the nexus between religion, pornography, and marriage among evangelical Protestants. You can probably guess how the Christian faith came off in this mainstream media outlet. Not well. The New Yorker interview left…
February 14, 2024
Want To Slash Your Risk For Divorce? Start Going To Church
Faith is bad for families. That is often the message that comes out of our pop culture, corporate media, and social media. A Daily Beast headline tells us “Religious Kids are Jerks.” The Nation asks, “Is Conservative Christianity Bad for Marriage?” and offers this answer: “Research Says Yes.” Online influencers like Pearl Davis suggest Christianity does little to stabilize marriage. Put…
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 7, 2024
To Save Local Journalism, Update The Public Broadcasting Act
During his time as the U.S. ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he faced a choice between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson would be disappointed with today’s trends. Increasingly, we are seeing government without newspapers, especially at the local level, where…
December 4, 2023
A Pro-Market and Pro-Social Economy
In The Next American Economy (2022), Samuel Gregg provides a refreshing defense of free markets, emphasizing the need to frame the case for economic liberty within a broader narrative about America’s values and identity. We need this book to help reframe the disagreement over trade protectionism and industrial policy. Gregg opens by examining the alignment between former President Donald Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren on the need for greater government regulation of the economy….
November 17, 2023
Male Malaise Is Not Just About ‘the Culture’
You are familiar with the litany of ills blighting our society: declining rates of work and marriage; rising rates of obesity and loneliness; soaring deaths of despair. All of these trends reflect the falling fortunesof the American male, a malaise magnified when we look at boys and men in poor and working-class communities. When the male malaise…
November 13, 2023
How The IRS Discourages Boomer Charity
Americans like to call ourselves the most generous nation on earth — but charitable giving is on the decline. In 2022, it fell 3.4% (10.5% when adjusted for inflation) to fall under $500 billion. It was only the fourth such decline in 40 years. What’s more, individual giving — distinguished from that of foundations and corporations…
October 24, 2023
Roanoke Atones for Urban Renewal—Artistically
Discussions of the ill effects of public housing, urban renewal, and urban freeways usually focus on big cities: the Chicago-lakefront hellhole called the Robert Taylor Homes, now-demolished; Robert Moses’s Cross-Bronx Expressway, which tore through the heart of that borough; the brutalist Boston Government Center, which replaced the vibrant Scollay Square. But a moving new exhibit…