The Political Theory of the American Founding Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom Thomas G. West Cambridge University Press, 2017; 428 pages, £26.99 I begin with praise for Professor West’s treatment of family questions in his book, The Political Theory of the American Founding. As he notes, there is a curious […]
Read MoreIn an iconic article published a decade ago and entitled, “The Motherhood Experiment,” the New York Times Magazine celebrated Sweden for solving the population and family problems of modern European society. It explained: “Curiously, Europe’s lowest birthrates are seen in countries, mostly Catholic, where the old idea that the man is the breadwinner and the […]
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Family Politics: Domestic Life, Devastation and Survival, 1900-1950 Paul Ginsborg Yale University Press, 2014; 444 pages, $35.00 Narratives of modern Europe, argues history professor Paul Ginsborg of the University of Florence, have commonly left families “off stage,” “hidden from history.” In Family Politics, he seeks to insert the story of the European family during the […]
Read MoreThe concept of the natural family rests on a vision of the good life: a regime of optimism, responsibility, and love. It presumes a culture that sees the marriage of a man to a woman as the primary aspiration of the young. This culture affirms and defends natural marriage as the surest path to health, […]
Read MoreShaping the Global Future This essay has been adapted from an address first delivered to an international interfaith conference:“The Family: At the Center of Human Development,” hosted in Manila, the Philippines, on March 27-28, 1999. The editors feel that it still accurately describes the early stirrings of the international pro-family movement, and sets the tone […]
Read MoreBeginning about 1830, a remarkable effort emerged to construct a rich and comprehensive ideology of the family. Its components included the concept of “separate spheres” for men and women, the primacy of “the domestic church,” and an elaboration of “true womanhood.” In a curious departure from American republicanism, the human archetype of this philosophy was […]
Read MoreFamilies, Self-Sufficiency, and Limits I’ll Take My Stand, by “Twelve Southerners,” appeared in 1930 as a new statement of agrarian fundamentalism. In the American experience, Thomas Jefferson had framed the classic case for this outlook in his 1782 book, Notes on the State of Virginia. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people […]
Read MoreThe “Sixties” actually opened as a continuation of the equally iconic “Fifties.” Through 1963, the social life of the United States remained defined by a seemingly strong culture of marriage and family. The average age of first marriage stood at record lows: 22 for men; 20 for women. The proportion of adults who were or […]
Read MoreThe American Evangelical Response to Griswold vs. Connecticut The United States’ Supreme Court 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut stands in ever bolder relief as a profound break in American and Western history. True, a quiet revolution in American behavior had begun during the war years, 1917-1918, as the old moral older was deeply shaken […]
Read More“It is true that I bel ieve in fairy tales—in the sense that I marvelso much at what does exist that I am readier to admit what might.” So commented G.K. Chesterton in his 1926 book, The Outline of Sanity. Hethen described a fairy tale of his own creation: restoration in 20th-century England of a […]
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