June 20, 2025
What Kids Need—and Adults Need to Know—to Combat the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Starting this fall students in New York will join those in other states like California in not being able to access cellphones during the day. These bans are the culmination of years of education and activism by parents, teachers and researchers concerned about the effect of technology not only on academic performance but also on…
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….
April 25, 2025
What’s holding women back from starting a family?
Media influencer Brett Cooper did something last year that most people her age won’t: she got married. “It’s the most grounding experience I’ve ever had,” she told a crowd gathered at the University of Virginia for the National Marriage Project’s spring conference, cosponsored with the Wheatley Institute. Cooper is 23 and had celebrated her one-year anniversary…
April 25, 2025
A baby bonus is the wrong response to declining fertility
The Trump Administration is reportedly considering ways to reverse declining fertility in the United States, most notably a $5,000 “baby bonus” for any mother who gives birth. The administration is right to worry about the fertility rate, which has been on a steady decline since 2007 to the point where the number of new babies…