Reflections on African American Family Dynamics in the Twentieth Century  “How does it feel to be a problem?” asked sociologist W.E.B. Dubois in the opening chapter of The Souls of Black Folk (1903). African Americans have faced a perennial struggle with “double consciousness,” he explained, seeing themselves simultaneously from the perspective of their own black […]

In its last term, the U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases that implicated, in some way, privacy claims. One of these cases, Rodriguez v. United States, involved a claim that using a drug-sniffing dog at a traffic stop was unconstitutional. The other and far better known case involved the claim that the U.S. Constitution requires […]

Beginning 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 […]

A History of Academic Inquiry and Its Major Findings The dramatic connection between thriving, intact families being a woman’s and child’s strongest protection against poverty has been well-established for decades. Considering the significant detriment poverty brings to the lives of mothers and their children and all the other personal life issues it negatively affects—physical and […]