Since the Clinton presidency, the pundits have regularly lamented the “polarization” of politics that divides the parties ideologically and allegedly results in legislative gridlock. Why such developments are necessarily problematic is more assumed than explained, but a recent study by Kyle Dodson of the University of California (at Merced) finds that increased polarization has its […]
Read MoreTo paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “There they go again.” Indiana University was the source for the notorious Kinsey Report. The same agenda that characterized the discredited 1953 report seems to permeate a new survey, the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, whose findings were released in October by the school’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion. […]
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The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart Bill Bishop Houghton Mifflin, 2008; 384 pages, $25.00 Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture Naomi Cahn and June Carbone Oxford University Press, 2010; 288 pages, $29.95 When Mexican poet Octavio Paz went to Spain in 1937 […]
Read MoreWhy ObamaCare Delivers the Wrong Family Medicine “When it comes to the cost of health care,” President Obama declared in 2009, “this much is clear: the status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government. America spends nearly 50 percent more per person on health care than any other country.” Americans indeed heard a great […]
Read MoreIf the study above, based upon the National Survey of Family Growth, does not deliver enough punches, a meta-analysis published the same month by psychologists at the State University of New York (Stony Brook) carries an even greater blow to the notion that shacking up before marriage is a good idea. Pulling together twenty-six studies […]
Read MoreIn greater numbers than ever, young American couples continue to fall for the bait-and-switch of premarital cohabitation. Summarizing data from the National Survey of Family Growth, a government report released in February indicates that the percentage of women ages 35 to 39 who had ever cohabited doubled in fifteen years: from 30 percent in 1987 […]
Read MoreWhile lamenting alleged sexism in the workplace for decades, the media have remained strangely quiet about the gender-specific impact of the recession that began in 2008. According a cover story in The Atlantic by Don Peck, the job losses of the past two years has turned into what others call a “he-cession,” which the deputy managing editor […]
Read MoreWhen homosexuality was deleted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association was motivated not by the scientific evidence but by a therapeutic desire to weaken prevailing social attitudes that allegedly damage the self-esteem of homosexuals. Consequently, much of the discussion of homosexuality by public-health officials and […]
Read MoreThe evidence continues to mount that the interests of American women have not been served by the social and economic changes of the past 40 years that feminists claimed would liberate them. The latest bomb, a working paper written by professors at the Wharton School of Business for the National Bureau of Economic Research, reveals […]
Read MoreFor a generation, the political class has heralded increased rates of educational achievement and labor-force participation of women as indicators of social and economic progress. Yet a review of international longitudinal studies by two German sociologists finds that the achievements cheered by feminists are actually drivers of new income disparities between families, especially in Europe […]
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