The epidemic of mental illness in recent decades has psychiatrists looking for causes. One of those causes of psychopathology—namely, marital failure—stands out clearly in a study recently completed by an international team of researchers. Affiliated with Kern Medical Center and California State University at Bakersfield in the United States and Chonbuk National University Medical School […]
Read MoreWith good reason, public-health officials worry about teen drinking. Those officials should attend to a new study probing alcohol use among adolescents and identifying as its causes disrespect for parents and absence of parents (caused by family disintegration). Conducted by researchers at the RAND Corporation, this new study draws on data collected in 2008 and […]
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What to Expect When No One’s Expecting America’s Coming Demographic Disaster Jonathan Last Encounter Books, 2013; 248 pages, $23.99 Jonathan Last’s What to Expect When No One’s Expecting is a surprisingly entertaining tour of demographics. A talented writer, Last takes a dry, academic subject and makes it come alive. He persuasively argues that demographic decline […]
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Getting the Marriage Conversation Right – A Guide for Effective Dialogue William May Emmaus Road Publishing, 2012; 82 pages, $5.95 When the socialist government of France began to move ahead with plans to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, some observers were surprised at the very significant public opposition that resulted. On January 13, 2013 […]
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The Righteous Mind – Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Pantheon Books, 2012; 448 pages, $28.95 “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in […]
Read MoreReplacing Families with Federal Food Programs At the end of 2012, amidst calls for reform and fears of skyrocketing dairy prices, Congress failed to agree on a renewal of the Farm Bill (technically the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008). Instead, our representatives authorized extensions of certain portions of the Farm Bill, and put […]
Read MoreThe Irrationality of American Food Policy About twice every decade, Congress enacts a gargantuan piece of agricultural legislation. The 2008 Farm Bill1 weighed in at 1,769 pages, with roughly half the word count of the King James Bible or three-fourths the length of the behemoth Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010.2 Although […]
Read MoreI am an economist only in the sense of being (at certain hours) a home economist. That means much of the time I look at food from the fairly limited perspective of my wallet, my larder, and my plate. In this I am probably not alone; when most of us think about farming of any […]
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 […]
Read MoreThis paper was originally delivered at the first Capitol Hill Symposium, sponsored by The Family in America, on December 7, 2012. Inthelastelectioncycle, we were treated to the spectacle of one political party accusing the other of waging a war against women. I agree that there is a war against women, but not the one we […]
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