At a time when national marriage rates are astonishingly low and national divorce rates remain distressingly high, Americans might learn something from a new Finnish study about the personal characteristics of those young people most likely to make enduring marriages and about the contrasting personal characteristics of those most likely to divorce. Conducted by a […]
Read MoreParental divorce seriously hurts American children, some progressives have argued, only because the United States is politically backward compared to advanced social democracies, such as, say, Sweden. But that line of thinking loses plausibility when assessed against the results of a new study of parental divorce in that very land of the progressives’ hearts’ desires. […]
Read MoreWhat makes young people open to the idea of divorce? What makes them resistant to that idea? Psychologist Daniel R. Stalder of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater offers illuminating answers to these questions in a new study of how “cognitive dissonance” affects marital thinking. “Cognitive dissonance,” Stalder explains, “is a psychological discom-fort created by an inconsistency […]
Read MoreAlthough the American Psychological Association (APA) boasts scholarly objectivity, the social-science guild has for years conducted studies that generate the results—from the alleged benefits of the “good” divorce to the virtues of homosexuality—that progressive activists’ itching ears want to hear. Consequently, it often falls to one brave solider to challenge the groupthink. Indeed, Mark Regnerus […]
Read MorePaul Amato, one of the revered deans of American sociology, has shown courage in bucking his academic peers, as he did when he suggested that a “good divorce” is not all that good for children (see New Research, Summer 2012). Yet the scholar has not demonstrated the same resolve in dealing with the academic and […]
Read MoreWhen it issued an official report on “lesbian and gay parenting” in 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) made the bold claim, based on fifty-nine published studies on homosexual parenting, that “not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual […]
Read MoreInformed observers claim that as many as two-thirds of all divorces in America are not really necessary, as they split apart couples who report average happiness and low levels of conflict. But what about the other third? Precise statistics are difficult to come by, but adultery may very well be the precipitating cause, judging from […]
Read MorePublic-health officials have expressed deep concern about the number of young Americans who are turning into couch potatoes fastened to electronic screens. Somehow these officials never get around to talking about the changes in family life that fostered such unhealthy behavior. But a study completed at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian School of […]
Read MoreSince the no-fault regime was established in the 1970s, the so-called helping professions have performed verbal gymnastics to soothe the consciences of divorcing parents, claiming that if they work hard and maintain a “good divorce,” the effects upon their children will be minimal. Yet a groundbreaking study by Paul Amato suggests that the very concept […]
Read MoreNearly a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt warned that unless the average man and woman would have at least three children, the country would die a slow death. Judging from the latest report from the National Center for Health Statistics, the vital signs of the United States, as reflected in birthrates, are not encouraging. For the […]
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