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…
May 10, 2025
How Single Room Occupancies Could Be the Answer to NYC’s Housing Crisis
It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults. But those concerned with “affordable housing” have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an…
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 24, 2025
Musk’s High-Tech Polygamy Is a Dead End
Elon Musk told a conference in Saudi Arabia last year that his listeners “should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem [we] need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter.” In this way, he spotlighted his commitment to the pronatalist cause—the idea that…
April 23, 2025
In Case of Emergency, Open Block Grant: Part 2
Congress’s efforts to produce “one big, beautiful bill” that reflects President Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities is about to kick into high gear as the House and Senate turn to crafting their respective reconciliation bills. Yet one key source of contention between House and Senate Republicans remains the amount of mandatory savings included in…
April 23, 2025
In Case of Emergency, Open Block Grant: Part 1
Congress’s efforts to produce “one big, beautiful bill” that reflects President Donald Trump’s tax and spending priorities is about to kick into high gear as the House and Senate turn to crafting their respective reconciliation bills. Yet one key source of contention between House and Senate Republicans remains the amount of mandatory savings included in…
April 15, 2025
Utah Hands Parents the Keys to the App Store
Two devoted Utah parents experienced the unthinkable in 2022: They lost their 14-year-old son—a warm, football-loving boy—to suicide. In the painful days that followed, as they searched for answers, they discovered something chilling. Despite their best efforts to set up parental controls and screen time limits, their son had been relentlessly fed pro-suicide content by…