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Research Archive

February 6, 2025

The 10th Annual American Family Survey: Opportunities and Obstacles to a Broad-Based Political Coalition for Families

Event Summary On February 6, Chris Karpowitz and Jeremy Pope of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy presented research findings from the 10th annual American Family Survey. Dr. Karpowitz examined how families across the political spectrum behave in similar manners. Whether Democrat or Republican, parents take pride in raising children. The survey…

January 30, 2025

American Greatness Depends on Strong Families

President Trump signaled his commitment to making America “greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before” in his important Inaugural Address last week. Crucially, Trump made a personal commitment to fight for parents and their dreams for their children. Meanwhile, Vice President Vance declared at last week’s March for Life it was “the task of our government to…

January 14, 2025

The Pornography Industry Should Not Be Allowed This Much Access to Our Children

Imagine someone drove a white van into your neighborhood, opened up the panel door, and invited children and teens from the neighborhood, including yours, to watch sexually explicit videos of men and women doing the most degrading things possible. In most of our neighborhoods, such a man would be arrested in minutes, and we would…

January 10, 2025

Marriage: America’s Keystone Institution

Marriage is linked to better financial, social, and emotional outcomes for children, men, and women—and many of these effects appear to have a causal dimension. Many social scientists have discovered these basic patterns of findings in their work over the years. But one new development in this research is that we are seeing more evidence…

January 7, 2025

Tax Policy Should Prioritize Shoring Up the Family

During the Biden years, tax policy related to the family revolved around the child tax credit (CTC). Attempts to expand the credit to make it easier for two-parent families to have kids and rely on a sole breadwinner were thwarted by objections that a child allowance would also promote single-parent families in which no one…

December 12, 2024

Which Men Cheat Least? Republican Husbands, Especially ‘Religious Wife Guys’ 

Republicans have an infidelity problem. If your only impression of Republican marriages was ripped from the latest headlines, this would seem to be a reasonable conclusion. But the picture appears different when we look beyond the headlines at the lives of ordinary Republican men. It turns out that Republican husbands, especially religious ones, are less…

December 11, 2024

The Often Overlooked Link Between Drug Use and Family Decline

Who are the victims when it comes to “deaths of despair”? Recent research has focused on the racial makeup of these tragedies — drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths and suicides. According to a recent study, the number of Black people and Native Americans in this category has been growing while the number of white people has…

December 2, 2024

The Pursuit of Happiness Starts with Families: A Conversation Between Brad Wilcox and Gov. Spencer Cox

Utah has been at the forefront of a national conversation about how to grow and strengthen families, thanks in part to the leadership of Gov. Spencer Cox. I recently invited Cox to speak at the University of Virginia about Utah’s initiatives that enable strong families, as well as the governor’s efforts to protect teens from…

October 30, 2024

The Geography of Fertility — Where are the Babies?

Blue states are better for families — at least that’s what many academics and journalists contend. In their book “Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture,” law professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone argued that blue states have the liberal values and policies they believe make for strong and stable…