Since the early 1970s, legislators have done the bidding of activists arguing that easy divorce will liberate women trapped in bad marriages. But a study by psychologists at the University of Colorado suggests that no matter how liberal the laws, divorce means psychological and emotional havoc. To assess the psychiatric consequences of divorce, the researchers […]

“The psychopathic offender is among the most prolific, versatile, and violent of offenders.” So comment the authors of a study by scholars at Purdue University, the University of Pittsburgh, Duke University, and King’s College, London. These researchers devote their analysis to the attempt “to discriminate those children with conduct problems who will become chronic offenders, […]

Commentators have argued for decades that young people are better off socially and personally if they postpone marriage until they have finished college and are well launched in their careers. Many young people have been listening. Consequently, an overall pattern of delayed marriage defines the context for researchers who studied the differences separating young people […]

For models of good motherhood, naturalist Jane Goodall sees more to admire among the chimpanzees of Africa than among many modern humans in economically developed countries. In an interview with journalist Eduardo Punset, Goodall highlights the human relevance of chimpanzee social patterns. In particular, she stresses that humans have much to learn from zoologists who […]

While the media continue to glamorize the minority of mothers with careers, moms themselves aren’t fooled. Judging from a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, American mothers have few illusions that working full-time outside the home is all that it is cracked up to be. In fact, American mothers find outside careers even less […]

While fretting about every perceived gender inequality in employment, education, and sports, the politically correct crowd seems oblivious to the gender gap that arises from the consequences of premarital sex. Typical is sociologist Ann Meier of the University of Minnesota, whose study documents the heightened risk of depressive symptoms among teenage girls upon losing their […]

Back in 2001, law professor John Donahue and economist Steven Levitt made headlines with a study in theQuarterly Journal of Economics suggesting that legalized abortion may account for almost half the drop in the U.S. crime rates during the 1990s. Now a study by John R. Lott Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute and his colleague […]

Even researchers indifferent to traditional morality recognize that adolescent sexual activity entangles young people in serious problems. Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) are two problems that receive attention in a study of adolescents completed by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. To understand why some young people are more at […]

Public health officials have devoted considerable effort to understanding the lethal biochemistry of pediatric lead poisoning. Now medical researchers from Brown University are beginning to clarify the family dynamics of that distressing phenomenon. Toxic lead, it turns out, is less likely to end up in a child’s bloodstream if that child lives with a married […]

Commentators often dismiss concerns about family disintegration as a peculiar obsession of America’s religious conservatives. But the consequences of family breakdown are attracting ever more attention from scholars around the world. Indeed, those consequences received scrutiny from scholars from the University of São Paulo and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In a […]