Retrospective and Prospective Exactly thirty years ago, I wrote and saw published my first substantive essay on the family crisis in modern America.[1] I had recently completed my doctoral dissertation, which had investigated the origins of family policy in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s.[2] A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, provided through the American Enterprise Institute, […]
Read MoreThe Law and Economics of Unilateral No-Fault Divorce A key argument being advanced to support the rewriting of U.S. marriage laws is that granting legal status, on par with marriage, to same-sex couples will have no effect on marriage as an institution, nor upon Americans who choose, or have already chosen, the natural pattern of […]
Read MoreHow the Downturn Reveals Forgotten Family Assets Bombarded by headlines during the past fifteen months announcing the failure of this or that bank, investment firm, or manufacturer, Americans may have missed reports of one downturn that comes as good news. For the first time in a long time, divorce lawyers are apparently experiencing a significant decline […]
Read MoreWhat Those Who Know Better Rarely Acknowledge As an undergraduate student at Brigham Young University, I was encouraged by a professor to research the economic costs of divorce to the State of Utah specifically and to society at large. Unknown at the time, this small project would take on a life of its own. Six years […]
Read MoreWhile many factors have contributed to the empowerment of the state and the politicians that oversee it, economist John Lott thinks that women’s suffrage cannot be ignored as a factor that contributed to the massive increase in size of government in the United States between 1920 and 1965. Updating the findings of his 1999 study […]
Read MoreWhat can be done to lower risks of diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and stroke, the leading causes of death and disability in the United States? Health professionals are quick to hound Americans about eating right and exercising regularly. Yet perhaps they should also be calling attention to the conclusions of a study by scholars at […]
Read MoreDivorce almost always forces children to be the adults in a family, making them adjust to the often child-like wishes of their parents. Moreover, that reversal of roles remains twenty years after divorce, judging from a clinical study, by Constance Ahrons of the University of Southern California, that found that adult children of divorce still […]
Read MoreSince 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 […]
Read More“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, […]
Read MoreCommentators 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 […]
Read More