America’s founding and tradition and the current thinking of many of its citizens are consistent with the premise that people are free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness unless they are harming others while doing so. This free-of-state-control perspective includes the education and upbringing of children. The correct and pertinent question in the land of […]
Read MoreThe state of foster care in America has stirred deep concern among public officials, social workers, and researchers for decades. More than 35 years ago, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) was already decrying the “continuing crisis in foster care,”1 a crisis evident in an explosion of the number of children in foster care—just 272,000 in 1962, […]
Read MoreParents have the natural right to be with their own children, unless they are guilty of some egregious act. . . . Stealing children from their own parents has historically been considered one of the most inhuman acts of tyrannical dictators. . . . Slave owners sold the children of their own slaves to other […]
Read More“Youth Rights” and the Shrinking Power of Parents Conservatives lit up the airwaves, blogosphere, and Twitter earlier this year, expressing outrage over comments by MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, who urged Americans to embrace a more “collective notion” of children—one that sees all children as “our children.”1 Harris-Perry’s remarks, part of an ad campaign supporting increased […]
Read MoreThe problem of adolescent bullying has attracted a great deal of attention in the media and in public-policy forums in recent years. Curiously, journalists and policymakers rarely acknowledge one of the root causes of that bullying—namely, America’s increasing reliance on the day-care center as a replacement for the at-home mother. But the role of the […]
Read MorePublic-health officials tirelessly encourage pregnant women to safeguard the future health of their child by receiving prenatal care. A new British study, however, indicates that one of the most important types of prenatal care may come not in a medical clinic but rather in a wedding chapel. This study clearly shows that pregnancy is far […]
Read MoreAs national healthcare costs spiral out of control, few questions press themselves more insistently than those predicting long-term health. Investigating precisely such questions, a team of researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-San Francisco recently completed a study designed to determine what childhood circumstances put individuals on a trajectory of healthy […]
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The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption Kathryn Joyce Public Affairs, 2013; 352 pages, $26.99 Four years ago, Kathryn Joyce published Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a critical treatment of an evangelical Christian group wherein women married and obeyed their husbands, had lots of babies, and stayed home to take […]
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What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George Encounter Books, 2012; 168 pages, $15.99 In june, Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court that held a law that retained the definition of marriage as a husband and wife for federal […]
Read MoreNon-Discrimination Legislation as a Shift from Equality to Privilege The understanding of freedom as well as policies affecting our attitude to family and family life have undergone a dramatic shift. What was unthinkable in recent history has become standard today. Still, for now, if everyone may do whatever he feels like doing, it follows that […]
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