From Rerum Novarum to Amoris Laetitia Every Roman Catholic magisterial document that confronts the key social issues of our contemporary culture should be compulsory reading for many, but especially for those researchers who reflect on the centrality of the family in the lives of every human being and of society at large. The great ideologies […]
Read MoreThere is usually a gap of some size—large or small—between the realities of life and the ideals of the law. The ideal in family law is to foster, support, and protect healthy, happy, and effective families. The reality, however, sometimes falls short of that ideal. Sadly, American family law sometimes impedes family success and frustrates […]
Read MoreIn 1888, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field wrote the majority opinion in a case involving the validity of an Oregon legislative divorce as it related to ownership of a land grant. In the opinion, Justice Field wrote: “It is also to be observed that, whilst marriage is often termed by text writers and in […]
Read MoreAbortion is one of the greatest tragedies that faces mankind across the globe. The Guttmacher Institute reports that 56.3 million induced abortions were performed worldwide between 2010 and 2014. That is an increase of nearly 6 million compared to 1990-1994.[1] These numbers represent 25 percent of pregnancies globally, meaning that a quarter of all children […]
Read MoreEvidence from a Randomized Staged Field Experiment in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala Asociación Puente (AP) is a Guatemalan non-profit organization, which seeks to reduce extreme poverty and prevent malnutrition through the development of skills in women who live in extremely poor rural communities with unmet basic needs. Between 2011 and 2014 the organization implemented the community […]
Read MoreThis past summer, I attended my 50th high school class reunion, in my hometown, Des Moines, Iowa. A near-classmate of mine at Theodore Roosevelt High School was Bill Bryson, who went on to become a bestselling author of volumes such as A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything. Among these […]
Read MoreA Comparative Analysis from a Global Perspective Nowadays, the general debate about family apparently revolves around a crucial question: Is the family founded on a marriage between one man and one woman still a resource for the individual and for society, or is it a bond from the past that hinders individual emancipation and the […]
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán On May 24-28 of this year, friends of the family from around the globe gathered in beautiful and historic Budapest, Hungary, for the Second Budapest Demographic Forum and World Congress of Families XI. The theme of the joint meeting was “Building Family-Friendly Nations: Making Families Strong Again,” and demography was a […]
Read MoreThe History and Significance of the Wedding Cake Wedding cakes today are in the news and legal briefs, as same-sex couples occasionally conflict with caterers with religious objections who refuse to prepare a cake for their wedding. The nature and resolution of this dispute is not the subject of this essay, at least not directly; […]
Read MoreIncreasing Mortality and Decreasing Fertility in America In late 2016, news sources across the U.S. reported a sobering statistic: The average life expectancy of Americans had fallen for the first time since 1993. The numbers are not, in some ways, startling. For an American man born in 2015, the average life expectancy dropped from 76.5 […]
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